Song of Solomon 1:1-17

The Song of Songs

Song of Song of Solomon 1:0

"The Song of Songs" means the supreme song, the very best song of the kind ever known or ever sung. We have the expression "King of kings," "Lord of lords," indicating supremacy; supremacy, if it be possible, of a superlative kind; an undisputed and eternal primacy. The Hebrew delights in this kind of expression, multiplication of words, even to redundance of assurance. This is, therefore, not only a song, it is the Song of songs, the music of music; a high degree of that which is already immeasurably high. Yet there is not a religious word throughout the whole song. It is acknowledged to be a piece of secular literature by the most spiritual and evangelical annotators. The name of God does not occur in it, in any sense signifying adoration or piety. There is an exclamation which simply recognises the greatness of God, but from beginning to end the song is one of Eastern love, and is not to be forced into religious or spiritual uses. It may be accommodated by legitimate adaptation to such purposes; on the other hand, it may be regarded as the sweetest love-song ever sung, and it need not be made to do service in the house of the Lord at all. For a long time it was uncertain whether the song should be put in the sacred canon or not; so to say, it hung in the balance; a vote either way determined its canonicity. Here we find it, however, and there are certain things which we may see in it which may prove to be practical, useful, legitimate.

We are right, for example, in associating the idea of Christ's union with his Church as one marked by the tenderest love. There is a place for love in religion. This thought, now so commonplace, is nothing less than a revelation from the eternal God. The world has been used to awe, fear, veneration, prostration, abjectness of self-obliteration, in the presence of majestic or frowning heavens; enough of that the world has seen, with all its brood of superstition, ignorance, and uses of the most degrading kind; it was reserved for the Scriptures, as we regard them, a distinct revelation from the Father, to associate love with pity. Love is a child's word; it is indeed the word of a little child, of a bud-like opening heart. Yet it is a word which cannot be fathomed by highest intellect; it cannot be measured by most comprehensive vision. It is like the word God itself; it has become so familiar that we think we know it, yet with all our knowledge of it we cannot define it. Who can define "God"? or "Love"? or "Home"? or "Truth"? or "Life"? Yet these are the little words of the language. In very deed the little words are the great words. As we increase syllables we seem to lose meaning. There is no thought known to us worth having and worth using which cannot be stated in the shortest words. It would seem to have pleased God that it should be so. Collect all you know, and see how far the knowledge admits of being stated in words of one syllable: the chief of these, of course, is God; the next might be Man; but surely the word that binds these two is Love. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind." The fear is lest having become accustomed to this word we suppose that it did not require a revelation to disclose it. Point out in other sacred books the function of love. Does not love mean a measure of familiarity? May not love go where fear dare not venture? May not love make great prayers, whilst fear contents itself with sighing and with trembling wonder? Does not love give boldness, courage, hope, confidence? May not love go higher than any other inquirer or worshipper? Many there are on the first step of the throne; some a little higher up; but what figure is that, highest of all, white-clothed, with a face all light, with an eye kindled at the sun? The name of that highest, purest, sweetest worshipper is Love. It is therefore not strange that there should be in the Bible even a book steeped in love, a soul sick of love, a heart without a dividing passion, a consecrated flame of affection. That such a book may be put to wrong uses is perfectly true; but what is there that may not be abused? What flower is there which a villain may not pluck and put upon his breast as a seal of honour? What bird is there which the cruellest hand may not kill? What word is there in all speech which a perverted imagination may not use for immoral or corrupting purposes? The Song of Solomon sanctified is a necessary element in the constitution of the Church's work. Every syllable of it is needed, not perhaps as Solomon used it, but as it may be used by a heart sanctified and sweetened by the grace of God. There comes a period in the history of the Church when it must have all signs, figures, emblems, charged with meanings that the heart wishes to convey, yea, cypher signs which only the heart itself can make out in all their profound and tender significance.

We are right in thinking of Christ himself as the cause or origin of all this love. "Draw me, we will run after thee" ( Son 1:4 ). There is a drawing force in life, a gracious impulse; not an impulse that thrusts men forward by eager violence, but that lures them, beckons them, draws them, by an unspeakable but most mighty magnetism. "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." Observe the difference between the words to draw and to drive. It is the special function of love to attract, to fascinate, to shut out all other charms, and to fix the vision upon itself; and under that sweet compulsion men will dare any peril, face any darkness, traverse any distance, though the road be lined by ravenous beasts. "We love him because he first loved us." God does not ask from us an affection which he himself has not first felt: the love is not on our side, except as an answer; the love is on God's part, as origin, fountain, spring, inspiration. "God is love." If God were only "loving" he might be something else a mixture, a composition of elements and characteristics: God is more than loving, or he is loving because he is love. We say of some men, They are not musical, they are music; they are not eloquent, they are eloquence. In the one case you would but describe a feature or a characteristic; in the other you indicate an essence, a vitality, an individualism bound up with the thing which is signified. This love may be resisted; this drawing may be put aside. We may say even to him who is chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely, We will not have thee to reign over us; we have made up our minds to turn the day into night, and the night into one horrible revelry, and we would not have thy presence amongst our orgies and supper or feast of hell. Thou wouldst plague us; the feast would turn to poison under thy look or touch; so we banish thee, and enclose ourselves with evil spirits, that we may make night hideous. A tremendous power is thus given to man. He could not be man without it. Every man has the power to leave God, but no man has the right to do it. Am I asked what is this drawing? Hear the apostle when he puts the inquiry, "Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" Do not mercies break thee down in tears? Does not daily kindness penetrate thy obstinacy, and turn thy stubbornness into prayer? This is an appeal which is manifest, and not merely sentimental. The appeal is founded upon the goodness of God, and the goodness of God is the common story of the day; it begins to be seen when the dawn flushes the awakening earth with earliest light; it grows with the growing sun; it burns visibly and comfortingly in the setting day; all night it breathes its whispered gospel upon the heart of man; it is written on the front-door of the house; it is inscribed on every window-pane through which the light comes with its needed blessing; it is in every loaf, turning it into sacramental bread; it is in the cup, stirring the contents into holy wine, as sacramental blood; the goodness of God was at the birth of the child, rocked the cradle of the child, watched over the growing life of the child, and will never forsake the advancing life, unless indeed that life shall grieve the Spirit, and quench the Holy Ghost. Doth not the goodness of God lead thee to repentance charm thee, lure thee, fascinate thee? It was not meant to be a providence only, but a gospel; a gospel speaking through Providence; a great spiritual revelation incarnating itself in the house and home, and bread and garments, and all that makes life substantial and enjoyable. Where men do love the Son of God they are the first to acknowledge that their love is only an answer; they say, We love Christ, because he first loved us; when his love began to operate we cannot tell; we have searched into the history of this Man Christ Jesus, and we read that he was slain from before the foundation of the world; and verily that is true, for all his love comes to us with an impress of venerableness, a touch of eternity, a mystery not time-bound; it must be a love ancient as the duration of God.

This is what is meant by it being "all of grace." It never occurred to the heart of man to seek God or to love God. Who can love omnipotence? Who can love omniscience; or who can love ubiquitousness, omnipresence a mere occupation of space? Love does not answer such ideas; there may be a bowing of the head, a closing of the eyes, a wondering of the imagination, a standing back as from an intolerable glory; but love does not know that sphere, love does not speak that language. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son": now we begin to feel a new emotion, there is upon our arm a human touch; there is mingling with our fellowship a human voice; there is a shrouded Deity, a concealed God. "Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." Accompanying that revelation there is a drawing power, and having been once drawn we wish to be closer still; our cry every day is, Draw me: there is another height to be conquered, there is another land to be seen, there are other gardens growing with all the fulness and odour of the paradise of God: draw me, and I shall not see the danger; draw me, and I shall fly where I cannot walk. This is the ministry of grace; this is the ministry of providence; this is that spiritual ministry which operates without bound or time or space---the very ghost of life; the spiritual action that invests even matter itself with a strange sacredness.

So far, then, we are right in associating this Song of Songs with the worship of Christ, with the love of God, with the right cultivation of those affections which make not men only, but religious or spiritual men.

We are right in thinking that vital union with Christ is associated, not only with joy, but with supreme joy "We will be glad and rejoice in thee": we will be glad with gladness, joyful with joy. This is more than Hebraistic amplification of words; this redundance is necessary to the expression of our emotion. There is a joy which seems to be spread over all living things; but our gladness must be higher than that transient rapture; we must have a rational joy, an intellectual gladness, a spiritual realisation of ecstasies that lie beyond language and form. We are to "rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." So the Greek can be as redundant as the Hebrew; it is not any one language that thus speaks, but the heart that talks, and when the heart takes to speech how rapid, urgent, impetuous, ecstatic is the eloquence! Herein the Church is not like the academy or some school of pedantic criticism, where words are measured, and where conciseness is often considered a supreme virtue; the heart wants all things to help it in its unutterable utterance; yea, it would have the floods clap their hands, it would have the hills leap up in holy dancing; yea, it would ask the sea to roar in its fulness, and infuse into the lofty song the needful bass. When the spirit of man is in high religious rapture not lost in fanaticism or folly he asks for organ and harp and trumpet and instrument of ten strings, and constitutes the universe into an orchestra, and says, Now begin the mighty thunder; call the everlasting doors to lift up their heads, and the eternal gates to fall back, that the King of Glory may come in. Let us beware of a cold religion, a religion of paper and mechanism and arrangement; a religion that begins, continues, completes itself, and ends in frigid decency. Religion is nothing without enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is nothing without sacrifice; across everything must lie the sign of sacrifice; the image of the Cross must have its shadow on the sun; yea, it must throw a mournful, yet tender, yet hopeful, significance upon all creation. The Church has lost enthusiasm. We have joy, but it is regulated joy; a joy that is set down in the calendar; a joy of feasting that is appointed for us by external and unapproachable authority; but if we were true to the passion, the inspiration of love, we should say, "Thy love is better than wine... thy love more than wine." These expressions we find in the opening of this song; we find in the second verse, "Thy love is better than wine"; we find in the fourth verse, "We will remember thy love more than wine": let "wine" stand for the highest earthly exhilaration or joy. The love which we are to feel towards Christ is not only to be joyous, but supremely joyous; when we have ascended the whole line of earthly love we then, so to say, take wing and become distinctively joyous in Christ; up to that point we have had a common joy with man, and bird, and beast, and every fair thing that lives in all God's ample house called creation, but at a certain point we begin to separate, to enter into the peculiar joy, the special rapture, and if in that high ecstasy we are alone, having left behind us all meaner choristers, yet we are not alone, for the Father is with us. Have we a supreme joy? Does the Sabbath Day brighten over the whole week like a sun beaming its blessing upon every other day with encouraging benevolence? Is the church the largest house, the highest, brightest house, the house that encloses all our little dwellings, and makes them, as it were, nests in the altar of God? Have we lost enthusiasm, joy, madness? Are men no longer beside themselves for Christ? Or have they sacrificed everything to rigid uniformity, to a scheduled bill of particulars, by which they take their motion day by day, and by which they measure their worship? In the New Testament there is no mere duty. Duty is a cold military word, which has been displaced by Love hot as the heart in infinite pity, and spontaneous as all the blessing in which God himself lives. Let us compare ourselves with Christ, who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross.

We are right in thinking that the love of Christ is connected with a certain quality of personal character. In the fourth verse we read, "The upright love thee." Whatever may be the varying translation of that word "upright," we seem here to touch a religious chord; here at all events is a moral line. "The upright love thee." Where the character is perpendicular there is a corresponding affection for Christ. The upright seek thee, are lonely without thee, cannot live without thee. God has always put his finger upon character, and marked it as his own when good, and written it all over with condemnation when it was self-seeking and evil.

We are right in thinking that the love of Christ does not blind us to our personal defects "They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept" ( Son 1:6 ). Here is an acknowledgment of personal shortcoming, neglect, unfaithfulness; and yet the love of Christ is not suspended or withdrawn. Were God to withdraw his love from us because our prayer was short or meagre, because the day was marked by neglect, because we sometimes, in a cowardly spirit, evaded duty, who could live before him? Where sin abounds grace doth much more abound. Some can say, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee: though but yesterday I denied thee, though but a week ago I played the coward, traitor, blasphemer, yet deep, deep down in my heart is a passion which the sea cannot drown. I love thee, thou Son of God! Who does not know that mixed experience, hating oneself, yet loving Christ; doing the forbidden thing, yet turning to the forbidding God with a look all tears, a sigh that trembles with contrition, and a consciousness that within us is the seed of God which cannot die? Have we this love? The signs will be clear: "Perfect love casteth out fear": "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren": "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" Beware of the mere sentiment of love; the flower is more than the fragrance. What did Christ's own love lead him to do? let that be the standard. O Saviour of the world, thou didst love us: what did thy love lead thee to do? Hear the answer given in the Scriptures: "He was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor"; he "gave himself for our sins"; he "went about doing good." These are the standards: can we set ourselves beside them, and abide the result? A love that is nothing but song is no love at all. A love that expires in rapture never began in reason. If we have the love of God within us, then shall there be in us the mind "which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth." The joy came after the sorrow; the joy was the blossom of the root of sorrow. If we have not known the same sacrificial love, we shall never know the same triumphant joy. Who shall know the power of the resurrection of Christ? Hear the apostle: "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." If we suffer with Christ, we shall also reign with him.

Note

"Much of the language of the Song of Solomon has been misunderstood by early expositors. Some have erred by adopting a fanciful method of explanation, and attempting to give a mystical meaning to every minute circumstance of the allegory. In all figurative representations there is always much that is mere costume. It is the general truth only that is to be examined and explained. Others, not understanding the spirit and luxuriancy of Eastern poetry, have considered particular passages as defective in delicacy, an impression which the English version has needlessly confirmed, and so have objected to the whole; though the objection does not apply with greater force to this book than to Hesiod and Homer, or even to some of the purest of our own authors. If it be remembered that the figure employed in this allegory is one of the most frequent in Scripture, that in extant Oriental poems it is constantly employed to express religious feeling, that many expressions which are applied in our translation to the person belong properly to the dress (ch. Song of Solomon 5:10 , Song of Solomon 5:14 ; Son 7:2 ), that every generation has its own notions of delicacy (the most delicate in this sense being by no means the most virtuous), that nothing is described but chaste affection, that Shulamite speaks and is spoken of collectively, and that it is the general truth only which is to be allegorized, the whole will appear to be no unfit representation of the union between Christ and true believers in every age. It may be added, however, that it was the practice of the Jews to withhold the book from their children till their judgments were matured." Angus's Bible Handbook.