Over the years there have been many views as to how to interpret Solomon’s Song of Songs.  Allegorical and figurative or historical and literal.  Is there 2 main characters, the wise loving king Solomon and the bride. Or are there three main characters like in the trio view where you have, a flattering evil Solomon, the bride and her true shepherd lover.

This post will briefly go over the most popular Jewish and Christian allegorical views (which I reject) and then go over the two main literal, historical views and which one I believe is correct.  First the Allegorical views.

The Allegorical views

There are many Allegorical views the most popular are the Jewish and Christian views.

An Allegory view assumes that the real meaning is not at the surface level.  Meaning when the Song mentions “Solomon” it doesn’t mean Solomon but either God or Jesus in an allegorical view.  And when Solomon wrote it he didn’t mean he intended the Jewish audience to interpret it literally but figuratively.

The Jewish view.  If you were a Jew they thought the Song was an allegory and not an illustration of God’s love to Israel.  They would put God in the place of Solomon and then explain the text in a way that God did something similar with the people of Israel.  God was in a covenant relationship with Israel that had some similarities between the covenant relationship a man is with his wife.  God often uses marriage language when speaking to and about Israel like God being their “Husband”  Jer. 3:14,

Since the Jew saw God as their Husband then the husband in the Song must be God and not literally “Solomon”, for every Scripture has a higher meaning (they believe).

My view on the way of this matter is that The Solomon’s Song of Songs is a Love Poem “Love” 8:6.   Its a love poem set in a marriage context.  The love Song is not about a Father’s love to a son, but of the intimate, unquenchable fire of the love of a suffering husband to a wife, a friend to an enemy 5:16, a King to a slave (redeeming love), a shepherd’s love to a follower.  The love of Israel’s Messiah to his people for Solomon was a Messiah of Israel.   This love is seen in the Song and in Kings.    The love of a high priest for Solomon “burned incense” in the temple 1 Kings 9:25.  All these “loves” are seen in the Song to one degree or another, thus illustrating the Loves of Solomon. Song 1:2  for your “loves” YLT 1:2, are more delightful than wine.  His love to his people, his wife, God and His enemies the Gentiles.  Since the woman in the Song is a sunburnt Gentile and Solomon loves her then here we see the love of a holy king of peace to his enemy despite outward appearances but inwardly she had true “love” in her heart.  She had no common love like that of everyone in the world but she had a “special love” in her heart because of God’s special love to her in the person and work of the coming Christ, her Husband whom she was always united to.  Because God’s special love to her in Christ united Himself to her, before the foundation of the world for God’s love always was toward the couple.  Toward the two that were one.   God in the person of the Son always was in His Mind one with Christ.  The t

If you were a puritan you generally thought that when the man was talking that it wasn’t Solomon but Jesus and that the bride wasn’t a real woman but meant believers of all ages.

I reject both allegorical views.  The Song is an illustration of God’s love to Israel and an illustration or reflection of Christ’s love to the church or Christ’s love to each believer, but not an allegory, you can’t substitute or take out Solomon and put Jesus into the text, but you can and should see Solomon as a type of Christ and argue from the type to the Anti-type.

 

Refuting the Trio view part 1

Here is a popular literal historical commentary on the trio view of the Song of Songs.  Below in red is what I think of it.  I do hold a literal historical view but not the literal historical trio view.

Although I completely reject it. The Jehovah’s witnesses have a good video here explaining the trio view.  Watch the video here.

Here is Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament in black, my writing is in red.

We have here a precious love story. It involves three characters: a lovely maiden, forced to work by her family (1:5–6; 2:15); her beloved, undoubtedly a neighbor lad who has won her heart, who is also a shepherd (1:7) (Read 1 below); and King Solomon, who is known for his attraction to beautiful women (1 Kings 11:3) (Read 2 below). While on one of his trips to examine his lands (where do they get this info, they totally make it up to fit their view), Solomon meets the lovely maiden and takes her to his palace. There she can think only of her beloved back home (1:1–2:7  (she thinks of her beloved Solomon, the one she loves). She tells the women of the harem (“daughters of Jerusalem” in 2:7, 3:5, 8:4) not to try to persuade her to forsake her true love(not “forsake, but not to arouse or awaken her love until she desires“). In 2:8–3:5 she recalls her beloved and even has a dream about him. Solomon visits her (3:6–4:16) to try to win her love, but she cannot forget her beloved back home (This statement just totally shocks me,  her beloved Solomon outright calls her his “bride” 6x in Chapter 4 alone proving that she is his bride and not some other spherpherd boy,  and where do they get the fact that he is a boy?). Her beloved sees her in a dream (5:1–6:3). Again, the king tries to win her (6:4–7:9)  (this is a deserved praise and not flattery) , but the maiden refuses (7:10–8:3) . She is not impressed with the king’s wealth, spices, lands, or flattery. Finally, true love wins out and the maiden is set free. She flees to her beloved (8:4–14) and is restored to her family again.  (she doesn’t flee for she was always with Solomon, they have to make up that she flees)

Of course, this interpretation does not put Solomon in a very good light. But he was not faithful when it came to marital matters, and certainly it is not wrong to see him as a type of the world, trying to woo the believer away from her true love. This will become clearer as we examine the different interpretations and applications of the story. (Solomon was faithful when young, but not when old, the woman in the Song is his first true love.)

The Song of Solomon magnifies and sanctifies married love. God made both male and female and it was He who “invented” sex. The love of a man and wife ought to be a beautiful experience, as described in this book, but sin can destroy this beautiful gift. In the Book of Proverbs, Solomon warns against sexual sins; in Song of Solomon, he extols the beauty and joy of married love.

(This view puts sex and faithfulness as the main point of the Song and missed the true intent of Solomon which was to illustrate love in Marriage.  And also the oneness that ensues when two people have true love in their hearts Songs 8:5-7.)

Wiersbe, W. W. (1993). Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the Old Testament (So). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

My view disagreeing with the words of the above commentary.

1.  “who is also a shepherd”    In Song 1:2-4 it is clear that the woman loves and wants to be kissed and married to “the king” 3 verses later in 1:7.   She speaks to the “one she loves”  who is a shepherd.   Since the one she loves is “the king”  he is also a shepherd.  Solomon was also a shepherd, the greatest shepherd of sheep Israel has ever had  

Ecclesiastes 2:7

“I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me.”

1.  Above when they say Solomon is “know for his attraction to women” the quote 1 Kings 11:3 which they fail to see the next verse 1 Kings 11:4, which has Solomon going astray when he was “old“.   Solomon is the exemplary husband to his first wife but fails when he is old.

Other Scholars who reject the trio view.

Refuting the trio view part 2

The Keil and Delitzsch commentary doesn’t agree with the trio view either.

F. Delitzsch (1813–1890) is perhaps the foremost expositor of the two-character dramatic interpretation. Delitzsch was reacting against the violence done to the text in the three-character drama and had no doubts about the validity of his interpretation. Commenting on his initial 1851 monograph on the Song, Delitzsch wrote: “I certainly succeeded in finding the right key to the interpretation of this work” (Delitzsch, 4). His interpretation is careful throughout. He is determined to destroy the three-character drama (or as he and others call it, the “shepherd hypothesis”). On Song 5:7, he observes that the woman seeks her beloved not in the open field, nor in the villages, but in the city. This is “fatal to the shepherd-hypothesis,” he claims (Delitzsch, 96). If not fatal, it at least scores a point.

(The Keil and Delitzsch commentary refute the trio view often in their commentary and for real good reasons.  I only quoted one of many.)

Refuting the trio view part 3

Worthy Praise or Sinful Flattery?

If the woman is worthy of the praises then it is not flattery and the trio view or shepherd view falls completely apart.

My issues with the trio view are many but I will focus on a few.  First, those who hold that Solomon is sinfully wooing the bride away from her true shepherd lover think that anytime their is a compliment of the bride in the Song that it is not a legitimate praise of the brides inner or outer beauty.  Depending on the context but each time he compliments her, they say, he is trying to steal her away from the supposed 3rd character of the Song, the shepherd, with flattery.

With flattery the motive would be evil.  With a legitimate or worthy praise the motive is love.  It would be to much to go at length here to explain each praise and why the bride is worthy of them but I will briefly explain the “mare” compliment or flattery which ever way you look at it.

I strongly believe you can’t read Solomon’s later sinful life into his early years as a king unless the Song itself talks about it!!

The first praise is that Solomon compares her to a mare in battle.  Fearless, swift and beautiful in her pursuit of a closer more intimate relationship with himself.  This is both a praise of her inner beauty and outer beauty.   Her character is swift and wastes no time in her pursuit of Solomon and she is fearless.   These are character attributes that the bride is worthy of.  She said “Let us hurry” in 1:4, therefore the swift behavior.

She was fearless in her pursuit.  And she is “the most beautiful woman” 1:8,  therefore she is worthy of the “mare” compliment in 1:9 that the one she loves gives her.  All the other praises of her excellent character are not flattery because she had a superlative unquenchable “love” in her heart Song 8:6-7.   The bride is also worthy of all the wonderful praises of her head, body, hair, cheeks, lips, breasts, stomach, thighs and feet because she is externally “the most beautiful woman”.  Which shows Solomon’s admiration of the inner Beauty of God reflected in the external beauty of his wife!

My main objection to the shepherd or trio view is that Solomon is praising his noble and beautiful wife because she is worthy of it and not flattering her away from her supposed true shepherd lover.   Solomon is both the king and a shepherd she loves.  Many think that Solomon was a sex hungry king with lots of women in his harem so they read his sinful hunger for women into the text of his early life and into the Song.  I see no evil flattering Solomon in the Song only a wise man praising his wife as he ought to as it says in

Proverbs 31:28-30

So those who hold the shepherd or trio view say Solomon is flattering the women and not giving her legitimate compliments or praises.”

The first reason I reject the fact that Solomon was adulterous at the time of the writing of the Song of Songs is because of 1 Kings 11:1-4.   It states that Solomon didn’t go astray until he was “old“.   The word for “old”  here means a bearded man or elder.  Which has to put him at about 50 years old when he went adulterous.

Another reason I believe Solomon had an excellent character was because the Song itself says so.  The woman wanted “the king”.   Solomon was “the king“.   She wanted him because he name was like perfume poured out,  which is why all the single ladies wanted to marry him.  He had and excellent character.  To have a name like perfume poured out is to have an excellent character.  A man who slept with lots of women would not have an excellent character.  Even David was seriously disciplined by God when he slept with Bathsheba.

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
    for your love is more delightful than wine.
³ Because of the savour of thy good ointments your name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee!
⁴ Take me away with you—let us hurry!
    Let the king bring me into his chambers.”  Solomon’s Song of Songs 1:2-4

Another verse that states that the bride’s husband had an excellent character above any other husband is Song 5:9-10, where her beloved is “Chief among ten thousand”  and is a “beloved above all other beloveds“.  This is easy to understand if you take into account that Solomon

1.  Had unmeasurable wisdom.  1 Kings 4:29
2. “Love God”  1 Kings 3:3
3. Was a “child”  when he was anointed king, compare 1 Kings 3:7
4. Solomon also had two crownings or anointing 1 Chronicles 29:22.  One anointing in Song 1:2-3 and another on the same day of his wedding Song 3:11.  Since he is acknowledged as king on the same day of his wedding this puts Solomon, the king as being very young (Age 12-18) and not old and adulterous when he got married in the Song!
5. Solomon’s character is flawless in the Song, but not in his whole life.  Solomon was not flawless his entire marriage for the Song doesn’t record the whole life and marriage of Solomon’s first wife.  The Song only records portions of Solomon’s relationship with his bride.
   1. The first two days of their meeting  Chapters 1 and 2
   2. The wedding day Chapter 3
   3. The wedding night Chapter 4 and 5
   4. The night and day after their wedding Chapters 6 and 7
   5. Sometime after the marriage when they are completely one.  Chapter 8

So the timeline of Solomons Song of Songs is a recording of 4 consecutive days from Chapter 1-7.  Chapter 8 has up to 3-4 different scenes that could have happened in either one day or up to 4 different days.  So you have 4 days in a row starting with his anointing and their first date on day one, day two they are engagement, day 3 is the wedding and wedding night,  Day 4 is the day after their wedding or one day sometime after their wedding then the last chapter 8 concluding the Song.  Solomon only chose to write about what was pertinent to the purpose of the Song, which was to illustrate true love in marriage and how two enemies become one in love.

So on day one you have a child king anointed and courting Chapter 1, On day two they get engaged in chapter 2:16, then the wedding and honeymoon all in chapter 3 and 4 on the third day. Chapter 5,6 and 7 is when the honeymoon is over and chapter 8 concludes everything.  So really you only have the first week of Solomons kingship when he was a “child” 1 Kings 3:7 in view for the first 7 chapters!

The Song makes Solomon out to be the perfect exemplary husband for the first week of his being king and one day sometime later.   The whole of Solomon’s life has him faithful and “loving God” in the beginning 1 Kings 3:3 and spiritually adulterous when he was “old”.

The three-character theory is artificial. According to that approach, for example, chapter 7 describes an attempt by Solomon to seduce the girl and her rebuff of his advances. This would mean that the poetry of 7:1–9a, spoken by the man, was not genuine love but cheap enticement. The girl, moreover, in saying, “Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside” (7:11), was not speaking to the man with her but to an absent lover. This can hardly be the intended meaning.

Garrett, D. A. (1998). The Poetic and Wisdom Books. In D. S. Dockery (Ed.), Holman concise Bible commentary (p. 254). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

I believe in the two character, historical, literal interpretation because clearly 1 Kings 11:4 tells us that Solomon was fully “devoted” to the LORD until he was “old”.  Therefore Solomon was faithful until the end of his life or she died before he got “old”.

I strongly believe you can’t read Solomon’s later sinful life into his early years as a king unless the Song itself talks about it!!  Does the text of the Song have Solomon sinfully flattering or praising the woman?  If you read the text in context, by itself without reading into it an evil Solomon, you will find that the woman is worthy of the praises.  If you read in context that the woman is worthy of the praises then Solomon is doing something noble and not evil when her praise her inner and outer beauties. If you think before reading the text that Solomon is an evil woman hungry king then its easier to see that the words he says would be flattery and not a legitimate praise.

Plus, how can you get away from Song 1:3 where “the king” has a name like perfume poured out!  If Solomon was after lots of women then he would not have a good reputation but a bad one.  All the women wanted him because of who he was as Israel’s Messiah and his character.  Solomon even had unmeasurable wisdom which made him a “beloved above all other beloved’s” and literally “chief among ten thousand” other husbands Song 5:9-10.  It is highly unlikely that a shepherd boy would be literally a beloved above all other’s and chief among ten thousand other husbands, yet it is more likely that Solomon who had unmeasurable wisdom AND “loves God” 1 Kings 4:29 would be “chief among ten thousand”.

Its also interesting to note that when you look at the Youngs literal translation of Song 1:7 you get no language that speaks of the one she loves as being a shepherd of sheep which is the main text supporting the trio or shepherd view.  So if there is no shepherd of sheep in 1:7 then you have no shepherd view.  I don’t know Hebrew well enough to conclude this though.

“Declare to me, thou whom my soul hath loved, Where thou delightest, Where thou liest down at noon, For why am I as one veiled, By the ranks of thy companions?” Song 1:7

Authors refuting the shepherd trio view

“The first act of the melodrama, which presents the loving relationship in the glow of the first love, now opens, 1:5, 6, are evidently the words of Shulamith. Here one person speaks of herself throughout in the singular. But in vv. 2-4 one and several together speak. Ewald also attributes vv. 2-4 to Shulamith, as words spoken by her concerning her shepherd and to him. She says, “Draw me after thee, so will we run,” for she wishes to be brought by him out of Solomon’s court. But how can the praise, “an ointment poured forth is thy name,”—an expression which reminds us of what is said of Solomon, 1 Kings 5:11 [1 Kings 4:31], “and his fame was in all nations round about,”—be applicable to the shepherd? How could Shulamith say to the shepherd, “virgins love thee,” and including herself with others, say to him also, “we will exult and rejoice in thee”? on which Ewald remarks: it is as if something kept her back from speaking of herself alone. How this contradicts the psychology of love aiming at marriage! This love is jealous, and does not draw in rivals by head and ears. No; in vv. 2-4 it is the daughters of Jerusalem, whom Shulamith addresses in v. 5, who speak. The one who is praised is Solomon. The ladies of the palace are at table (vid., under v. 12), and Solomon, after whom she who is placed amid this splendour which is strange to her asks longingly (v. 7), is not now present. The two pentastichal strophes, vv. 2-4, are a scholion, the table song of the ladies; the solo in both cases passes over into a chorus.”  K and D

Song 3:2. How could this night-search, with all the strength of love, be consistent with the modesty of a maiden? It is thus a dream which she relates. And if the beloved of her soul were a shepherd, would she seek him in the city, and not rather without, in the field or in some village? No; the beloved of her soul is Solomon; and in the dream, Jerusalem, his city is transported close to the mountains of her native home.

But Schlottm. agrees with us in this, that the marriage which is here being prepared for was the consummation of the happiness of Solomon and Shulamith, not of another woman, and not the consummation of Solomon’s assault on the fidelity of Shulamith, who hates him to whom she now must belong, loving only one, the shepherd for whom she is said to sigh (Song 1:4a ), that he would come and take her away. “This triumphal procession,” says Rocke,57 “was for her a mourning procession, the royal litter a bier; her heart died within her with longing for her beloved shepherd.” Touching, if it were only true! Nowhere do we see her up to this point resisting; much rather she is happy in her love. The shepherd-hypothesis cannot comprehend this marriage procession without introducing incongruous and imaginary things; it is a poem of the time of Gellert. Solomon the seducer, and Shulamith the heroine of virtue, are figures as from Gellert’s Swedish Countess; they are moral commonplaces personified, but not real human beings. In the litter sits Shulamith, and the appiryon waits for her. Solomon rejoices that now the reciprocal love-bond is to find its conclusion; and what Shulamith, who is brought from a lowly to so lofty a station, experiences, we shall hear her describe in the sequel.

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