Song of Songs has a varied history of interpretation. Is it primarily a reflection on the erotic love between a husband and wife? Is it primarily an allegory about the relationship between Christ and the Church? Clearly there are elements of both. The love poetry shows up instantly on the surface, following the dramatic conventions which are reasonably common in antiquity. Yet to consider the text as an allegory does not require any particular literary structure. This is a matter of interpretation rather than of the actual literary construction. From the earliest mentions of the text in the Christian period (Hippolytus, around A.D. 200) the text has been considered allegorically in some way. This allegorical view has problems, however. After all, many of the early Christian apologists were heavily influenced by Platonism, in which they would tend to distance any sort of physical pleasure from the Christian life. In more recent years, by the mid-nineteenth century, the allegorical interpretation was tending to give way to an interpretation that said the text was exemplary of the kind of love a married couple should experience.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Authorship and dating are tied together quite firmly. There is a hint in the superscription that the book may have been written by Solomon. Yet the superscription is not terribly clear. Also, the picture of the man in this book is a bit different from what we would expect of Solomon, who had many wives and did not seem to have a strong and special loyalty to any one of them. On the other hand, many of the details in the book do point to someone very much like Solomon. The historical information given seems consistent as well.
THEOLOGICAL MESSAGE
Humans have a long history of perverting sexuality from the way God gave it to be used. This book points to the sexuality within marriage as a good and pleasurable thing. Husbands and wives are to delight in one another, not to be ashamed before one another.
APPROACHING THE NEW TESTAMENT
Ephesians 5.22-33 pictures the intimacy of marriage as a picture of the intimacy of Christ and the Church. It is certainly appropriate to consider the close intimacy husbands and wives have, then to revel in the fact that Christ's love for his Church is even greater than that of a husband for his wife.
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Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com
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