The Model for Marriage (1)

In previous installments we have examined the meaning and motives for marriage. In the next few, I would like to share a wonderful blessing with you, namely, the model for marriage. And there is no better model in all of Scripture than the book titled, “Solomon’s Song.”

The title “Song of Solomon” that appears in several English translations comes from verse 1, which states that the book was written by Solomon. The ancient Hebrew versions, however, call it “Song of Songs.” This title translates the superlative in the Hebrew, as does “Holy of Holies,” for example (Ex. 26:33-4). In other words, of the 1,005 songs that Solomon wrote, this is the song, Solomon’s best.

Solomon’s Song is a love story, and what a story it is! Once in a while a writer will pen a good love story, and once in a great while a movie is made that tells a good love story (instead of the typical lust story). But here is a real love story, one that is beautiful and absolutely pure. Once again, while it’s not perfect, simply because people are not perfect, it does serve as a perfect model. In light of the perversion of love and marriage in our day, Hebrews 13:4 captures the heart of this love story: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” As this story underscores, the physical relationship between husband and wife is, as the Greek amiantos (“undefiled”) indicates, unpolluted, unstained, and unsoiled by sin.

There are two principle characters in the story: Solomon, who is referred to as “the Beloved” 32 times in the King James Version (inexplicably, the margin in the NIV refers to Solomon as “Lover” and the maiden as “the Beloved.” Why such a total reversal of what has been recognized through the ages?), and the Shulamite maiden. 

While her identity is uncertain, three possibilities stand out. One is that she was an unknown maiden from Shulam, but there is no other mention of Shulam in the Bible or the known extra-Biblical literature. Other interpreters say that it is simply another name for Shulem, located in lower Galilee, but that seems conjectural. The third possibility makes more sense. In the Hebrew, “Shulamite” is actually the feminine form (Shulammith) of Solomon (Shelomoh). As scholar Augustus Strong points out, because the definite article is present, the term is “a pet name.” In other words, having become Solomon’s wife, she took his name, which was a common practice then as it is now, and which was instituted in Genesis 5:2, as God called “their name Adam,” not just his name.

Solomon’s Song has been variously interpreted. Both the allegorical and typological views don’t approach it literally. In one way or another, they make the characters and events mean something that’s not stated in the text. The most common idea is that the whole story depicts God’s love either for Israel or the Church. The Church, however, cannot possibly be in view because it was a mystery in Old Testament times, hidden from the foundation of the world and not revealed until the New Testament Apostles and Prophets (Rom. 16:25-6; Eph. 3:9). Even more basic than that, however, nowhere in the book is God’s love the subject, rather the love of a man and woman.

We should also interject that such spiritualizing has caused hymn writers to refer to Christ as the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley (2:1), but that simply is not so; the Shulamite maiden used both terms not of Messiah but of herself, considering herself as common as those flowers. Solomon, however, disagreed in the next verse by saying that she was not just any lily but “the lily among thorns.” 

We submit, therefore, that by spiritualizing Solomon’s Song, we totally miss its literal, deep, and vitally important message. There is no justification whatsoever for viewing the book in any other way than to take it at face value, to look at it in a normal, literal fashion. When we do, we see in its three main sections Solomon’s days of courtship (1:2-3:5), his wedding and early days of his first marriage (3:6-5:1), and the growth and maturing of that marriage (5:2-8:4). While we might wonder how Solomon could have been the author of this song when he indulged in the forbidden pagan practice of polygamy (700 wives and 300 concubines, I Kings 11:3), the answer is undoubtedly that this was his first marriage, as implied in Ecclesiastes 9:9: “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of [your] life.” We’ll continue in the next several installments.