The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs

“Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful.” – Song of Solomon 1:16

One rabbi wrote that the Song of Solomon is “a lock for which the key had been lost.” Reading this book does evoke a singular longing. The romantic love depicted here has a balance and depth that our world so rarely attains. The language is sexually provocative, but never spiritually impure, something most of us don’t know much about in a culture which, as Phil Ryken writes, “impatiently pushes past the erotic to experience the pornographic.” Admiration is made of not only the physical but the non-physical: the bride extols his “name,” which at that time referred to reputation and character. We see a love that is strikingly exclusive, yet evolves within the context of a faith community (“we will exult and rejoice,” 1:4). We hear from a woman who is unafraid to be the first to speak and to state her desires, yet asks the man to initiate (“Let him kiss me… Draw me after you,” 1:2, 4). 

And while these songs can be read literally, it is impossible to miss the allusions to God’s love for us. The book is set in a garden (4:16) and in Jerusalem (1:5, 3:5), following the geographical story arc of the Bible, which begins in Eden and ends in the New Jerusalem. The bridegroom emerges “from the wilderness like columns of smoke” (3:6), as God did. Isaiah tells us that “your Maker is your husband” (Isaiah 54:5); Paul that the mystery of marriage “refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). As Ryken puts it (in the book from which this post gets its title), “The Bible repeatedly uses marital imagery to describe God’s love relationship with his people. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is the trailer for an epic romance that ends with the Son of God marrying his beautiful bride, the church. The Song of Songs is the soundtrack for that story. Its love is not merely human but also divine.”

I confess I don’t know exactly how this works. I just know the key has not been lost. It is found in Jesus. One day our union with him will be something that rewrites all the broken love songs and tawdry romance novels of our world, that unlocks the best fairy tale ever told. This book is here for a reason. It is okay to look our desires in the eye, to look through them to Jesus, the one who says to us, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love.”