"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!" For your love is better than wine (Song of Solomon 1:2).

Here begins the song that depicts the passionately loving relationship between Solomon and his Shulammite bride. While much of Scripture emphasizes other kinds of love, physical love is depicted here — with one major caveat: such passionate love is reserved for one's own spouse. Thus Solomon writes in Proverbs, "Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth," and may you be ever intoxicated with her love (a paraphrase of Proverbs 5:18–19).

This is a wish, but it is also accompanied by a command: "Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well" (Proverbs 5:15).

When you read the whole of Proverbs 5, it becomes clear that Solomon is not talking about well water, but about reserving sexual relations for one's own wife.

Of all that is fleeting in life this side of heaven, the enjoyment of one's wife is commended as a virtue in the midst of the vanity: "Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life" that God has given you under the sun (a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 9:9).

Friends, however we interpret the Song of Songs, we can be sure of this much: the Bible clearly affirms passionate love within marriage. Unfortunately, the world has twisted the beauty and poisoned the purity of passionate love, so that passion is separated from love. The sexual act then loses its connection with the purity and goodness of a right relationship and motive, which give it meaning and beauty. Consequently it becomes empty, ugly, and destructive — like a medicine designed to heal that instead destroys when taken without the guidance of a prescription.

Many people, experiencing this separation of love and passion, fall into sexual immorality, adultery, and divorce.

Friends, I encourage you to use this reading of the Song of Songs to rekindle your passionate love for your spouse. Yes, Solomon was a king and the Shulammite a beautiful commoner, but perhaps God chose this picture of marital passion so that we might treat each other as kings and queens and see each other as eminently handsome and beautiful. He could have given us a picture of such love between two plain commoners, but we are given this match to help us see that the focus of these two lovers was not on their position or their looks; it is clear from their dialogue that, despite their shortcomings, they were infatuated with each other and had eyes only for each other.

Now, friends, I wonder: has your love grown cold, or your passion dry, and you're at a loss as to what to do? Don't we experience something similar in our bodies when we don't eat right or exercise? Isn't this the same state of our souls when we are not daily in God's Word and prayer? Isn't this the state of our families when we don't invest time and attention in our children? And our finances, when we are not responsible and wise with money?

I don't raise these questions to discourage you but to encourage you. Passionate love in marriage may be just like these other things: it takes work. It is hard, perhaps frustrating and even painful at the start, but as with every other discipline, later "it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness" to those trained by it (Hebrews 12:11).

If we work at it, we can heal and rekindle passionate love in our marriages. Are there keys to this in Scripture? I think so. The Song of Songs itself is a good resource, teaching us to focus on the positives in our spouse — even to delight in them, celebrate them, and tell others about them.

But there is more. I encourage you to meditate on Ephesians 5:21–33, which speaks of wives and husbands and their privileged obligations to one another. Here I want to focus on husbands. Paul says husbands should love their wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church (a paraphrase of Ephesians 5:28–29).

I want to key in on one point that is not often emphasized: "Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies." What does this mean? How do you love your own body? With rare exceptions, don't we all want to look and feel good? We like to enjoy our favorite foods, but we also try to eat right so we can look good and stay healthy. Some of us are into gadgets or sports, because that's how we're wired. If we were wired instead for fine clothing and fine dining, we would pursue those.

I suspect this principle lies behind Gary Chapman's best-selling book The Five Love Languages. I'm not sure about reducing everything to five ideas, but it gets us thinking about what our wives need, desire, and enjoy. If we love them as our own bodies, we recognize that just as our bodies have needs and wants, so do our spouses.

The Bible teaches us to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility to count others more significant than ourselves, each looking not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others (a paraphrase of Philippians 2:3–4).

Shouldn't we begin this kind of selfless, others-valuing ministry with our own wives? While these commands are given to all believers, they are reinforced by the command to husbands to love their wives as their own bodies.

Brothers, I don't think many of us have done enough, or realize the magnitude of our responsibilities to our wives. For the same passage tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, to sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish (a paraphrase of Ephesians 5:25–27).

We are to love our wives with the self-sacrificial love of Christ, and to this end: that we might present them as the fruit of our greatest attention and effort, so that in one sense who she is and what she does becomes a reflection of our own glory (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:7).

Brothers, I share this today not as one who has applied these things but as one who needs to, so help me God. Let us not neglect this great and needful ministry to our wives!

AI-Expanded Reflection

The comment's opening — "however we interpret the Song of Songs" — acknowledges one of the longest-running discussions in biblical interpretation. For much of church history, the Song was read primarily as an allegory of the love between God and Israel or Christ and the church; Bernard of Clairvaux preached eighty-six sermons on just its opening chapters. Since the Reformation era, and especially in recent centuries, many interpreters have read it primarily as a celebration of human love and marriage, as the comment does, while often recognizing that marriage itself is a picture of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). Both readings have deep roots, and they can enrich one another.

One feature of the Song that supports the comment's encouragement is its mutuality. The woman speaks more lines than the man, initiates as often as he does, and declares, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" (6:3; compare 2:16 and 7:10, "I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me"). Many commentators see 7:10 as a deliberate reversal of Genesis 3:16's "your desire shall be for your husband" — the distortion of the fall healed in covenant love.

On Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11:7, Christians hold a range of views about headship and mutual submission in marriage (see the note at #1746). All agree with the comment's central point, which is the passage's own emphasis: husbands are called to the self-giving, sacrificial love of Christ.

I didn't know who the lady was or the significance of a Shulammite, but if this was an inappropriate union I could see the significance of this book's position to serve as a warning to lust; not to say the least that more passages would make sense.

Chapter 3

After being home alone she seeks her love, finds him and desires to bring him back home... But nothing else is said.

A great build of desire then...

5, I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

It seems that they could have broken integrity. They flirted so close to the line then as if they omitted the rest to say whether they did or not

It is interesting, but I can also see the Ecclesiastes message of enjoy this vain life, yet do not forget the Lord, with reminders like 'don't cross the line, until its time.'

Chapter 4, she is his wife. But in Jewish thinking, engagement is marriage, but it is not consummated for a time.

So the tension, and only the tension, is appropriate. They are committed but can they consummate, have they given their vows? If so why the hidden end? I think they are fiancés and have not completed this phase of their relationship.

Chapter 8

1 Oh that you were like a brother to me who nursed at my mother's breasts! If I found you outside, I would kiss you, and none would despise me.

Again, they have to hide their affection. They risk being 'despised' by others for showing their love. Then again, we are given a scene with an intimate embrace:

3 Your left arm would be under my head, and your right arm would embrace me.

But this is hypothetical. Chapter 7 one shares a tantalizing idea to go and give to each other. Then chapter 8:1, A shared dreamy desire, a passion shared, but not left to its own will:

4 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

It is as if throughout this whole book there is a chase of passion and lust. An approach of crossing the line, but then when it is about to be fulfilled, we are warned not to cross the line.

I don't see a wedding before or during this book. I further think this demonstrates the power of lust, even well intended lust, such as these 2 engaged this since, even after multiple warnings of 'not crossing the lines' she closes with an invitation:

14 Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices.

So the point? I think it has something to do with the Ecclesiastes message of eat drink and be merry for all is vain. Then a shared application. They both however point to boundaries to be kept from unrighteousness.

*as a closing thought, if this bride is being inappropriate what has confused me in chapter 5 could make more sense.

5:7, The watchmen found me as they went about in the city; they beat me, they bruised me, they took away my veil, those watchmen of the walls.

These watchmen of the walls may be literal and figurative.

8:9, If she is a wall, we will build on her a battlement of silver, but if she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.

This was speaking of their little sister's virginity, with a wall metaphor.

8:10, I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers; then I was in his eyes as one who finds peace.

I think she has confessed to no longer being a virgin I think she lost it to Solomon. I also think the guards bruised her since she was out late looking for a man inappropriately.

AI-Expanded Reflection

This contribution pays close attention to the Song's recurring moments of approach and restraint. Its observation about the refrain in 2:7, 3:5, and 8:4 is particularly valuable: love is powerful enough that it should not be forced or awakened according to an outsider's convenience. The refrain creates a rhythm of desire and caution. It does not, however, explicitly tell the reader that each preceding scene describes an almost-completed sexual transgression.

The Song's poetic form makes a continuous chronology difficult to establish. Scenes of seeking, finding, dreaming, absence, and reunion may be arranged for emotional and literary effect rather than as a diary of consecutive events. Song 3:11 explicitly mentions Solomon's wedding day, although readers differ about how that scene relates to the central lovers. The statement that there is no wedding anywhere in the book therefore needs qualification. Likewise, the use of bride language in chapter 4 does not by itself establish a precise interval between betrothal and consummation for every scene.

The wish that the beloved were like a brother in 8:1 concerns the freedom to express affection publicly without contempt. It is not a wish for an incestuous relationship. Nor does the anticipated disapproval conclusively prove that the couple's relationship is illicit. Social expectations about public affection and the poem's imaginative language both matter. A reader should avoid turning every unreported detail into evidence supporting one reconstructed plot.

The wall imagery in 8:8–10 also resists the conclusion that the woman confesses lost virginity. She identifies herself as a wall in response to her brothers' discussion of protecting a younger sister. The contrast can express strength, maturity, and her own account of readiness. The NET translation and notes discuss the defensive imagery; the text does not explicitly say that she has become a door or abandoned the quality represented by the wall. Her own voice deserves attention rather than being overridden by an assumed confession.

The violence of the watchmen in 5:7 is an especially important boundary for interpretation. The poem reports that they strike and strip her; it does not authorize their conduct or say she deserves it for seeking her beloved. Explaining that violence as justified punishment would add a moral judgment the passage does not provide. Even if one adopts a dream interpretation or a symbolic reading, the scene conveys vulnerability and distress rather than a rule permitting mistreatment.

The contribution's concern for boundaries can thus be retained while its conjectures are tested. Faithful love includes patience, responsibility, and respect for another's freedom. Careful interpretation includes a corresponding discipline: recognizing what the poem says, considering plausible implications, and leaving unresolved what its compressed scenes do not establish.

Friends, along with many of you, this is my umpteenth time to read the Song of Songs (or the Song of Solomon). Today's reading for me in the New Living Translation seemed even more sensually graphic than in other translations. For the first time the intense emphasis on beauty, even comparative beauty, and erotic love made me uncomfortable. I was made uncomfortable on two levels. First, it was physically arousing. Second, it was theologically disturbing. Could the one who wrote, "Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; but a woman who fears the LORD will be greatly praised" (Proverbs 31:30 NLT), have penned this book?

But then I thought, when I think of Solomon, he is somewhat of an anomaly. How can the wisest man in the world be such a fool as to fall for the women of Canaan, leading to the division of the monarchy? I also thought, not everything in Scripture is meant to be prescriptive. So, when we read of Abraham lying to Pharaoh or Judas hanging himself in remorse, we are not to follow in their footsteps. We compare Scripture with Scripture and bring both the progressive revelation of Scripture as well as the whole counsel of the completed canon of Scripture to bear in interpretation. We know that it is wrong to lie and certainly wrong to betray the Messiah, and so we condemn the actions of both Abraham and Judas. Now, if we can say that certain passages are not written prescriptively for our application, why not an entire book?

I am just throwing this out for discussion, but is it possible that the Song of Songs was not written to be prescriptive for us but simply descriptive of Solomon and the Shulammite's lusty nature, by which he made the Lord angry and led to the division of the kingdom? Its emphasis on beauty, especially external beauty, is contrary to other texts that extol inner beauty and the greater value of character. Its titillating references to erotic love have no equal in the rest of Scripture, which seeks to do just the opposite; that is, where Scripture could be graphic, it chooses not to be (e.g. little description of Noah's nakedness and little detail of David's sin with Bathsheba).

If my conjecture here is correct, then it turns the application of this book on its head. There is a reason that God is not mentioned in this book. It is not like Esther, where although God is not mentioned, His providence can be clearly seen in every chapter of the book. God may not be mentioned in the Song of Songs because He has been deliberately set aside in order to idolize love. Physical and emotional love is elevated to an almost desperate and intoxicating level.

I have not found this perspective anywhere, and so the old dictum, "What is true is not new; what is new is not true," may apply here. Since I can give no precedent for my view, please take it with a grain of salt and let it merely challenge you to think more deeply about the text.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The comment models an honest encounter with a biblical book that unsettles the reader's expectations. Its proposal should be heard as the exploratory interpretation the writer explicitly calls it. The question is significant: does the Song celebrate love, expose disordered desire, or require some combination of affirmation and restraint? Answering it calls for close attention to the book's literary signals rather than assuming that either discomfort or attraction determines its purpose.

The distinction between description and prescription is sound, but its application must follow the particular text. A narrative may report an action and then supply consequences or evaluative comments that identify wrongdoing. The Song is lyric poetry, with shifting voices, recurring images, and scenes whose sequence is debated. It does not explicitly narrate the idolatry of 1 Kings 11 or connect the lovers' relationship with the division of the kingdom. Reading the whole book as a condemnation of Solomon's lust therefore requires connections that the Song itself does not directly establish.

Proverbs 31:30 also need not stand in opposition to an appreciation of physical beauty. Its contrast identifies the enduring basis of praise in the fear of the Lord; it exposes the inadequacy of charm and beauty as ultimate measures of worth. It does not say that bodily beauty is evil. Proverbs 5:18–19 itself speaks positively and vividly about delight between spouses. The canonical question is consequently how desire is ordered by faithful love, rather than whether every sensual expression must indicate moral failure.

The claim that God is absent from the Song requires a qualification. Song 8:6 contains an expression translated by some versions as a flame of the Lord and by others as an intense or mighty flame. The NET notes explain the interpretive question. That debated wording cannot by itself settle the book's theology, but it makes an argument based on God's complete nonmention less secure. More broadly, a biblical book may disclose the goodness of created life without mentioning God in every scene.

The repeated warnings not to awaken love prematurely and the insistence that love cannot be purchased (8:7) provide internal material for thinking about restraint and integrity. Desire has power, but people are not commodities to be acquired by wealth or driven by another's timetable. These themes allow readers to appreciate the Song's embodied affection while resisting possessiveness and exploitation.

The original proposal is most fruitful as a prompt to test assumptions. A careful reader can ask what the speakers affirm, where the poem signals caution, and which conclusions remain conjectural. Scripture's inclusion of human longing invites neither embarrassment about the body nor uncritical indulgence. It invites patient discernment of love that honors the beloved as a whole person.

If Solomon were writing this today, he'd essentially be composing an essay on ancient Jewish matrimonial relationships — courtship, marriage, and everything that followed, giving us a window into what such a relationship might have looked like in his time. Part of what makes Solomon a compelling writer here, and part of why the book is often read from a woman's perspective, is that Solomon had many wives and concubines and the wisdom God had given him — so he'd studied women closely, and wrote about the intimate relationship between a man and woman from that vantage point. I think Song of Songs can be read literally, allegorically, figuratively, and typologically. Literally, it's about the intimacy between a man and woman. Allegorically, without digging too deep, it's about a man and woman becoming one. Figuratively, it pictures God and the King's relationship with Israel. The typological reading is worth addressing separately — according to the study notes in my apologetics study Bible, this approach reads the book as speaking to God's intimate relationship with His people through the marriage analogy, treating the poems as genuine love poetry that also carries, by extension, a picture of the marital bond between God and His people (a paraphrase of study notes from the HCSB Apologetics Study Bible). In other words, the typological reading combines the other approaches and suggests we can read the book in whichever way speaks most directly to our hearts. If that's the courtship-and-marriage allegory, that's how we "get" what Solomon is saying. If it's more like understanding Christ as the bridegroom who sacrificed Himself for the church, that's how we "get" it instead. There's also another angle worth mentioning: the same study notes point out that Song of Songs belongs to a well-established ancient genre of matrimonial poetry, since other surviving documents from the period are wedding compositions too. If other writers in Solomon's time were writing about marriage and what follows it, Solomon may simply have been drawing on that same tradition, writing down an experience of his own. What better subject to write about than lived experience? Maybe that's right, maybe not — I don't know. But however you read it, Song of Songs is a beautiful book of poetry.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The range of readings this comment lays out — literal, allegorical, figurative, and typological — is worth noting as a genuine, long-running interpretive question rather than a settled matter: Jewish and Christian interpreters have debated for centuries whether Song of Songs should be read primarily as a celebration of human marital love, primarily as an allegory of God's love for His people, or as legitimately both at once. That range isn't a weakness in the text; if anything, a book willing to describe human intimacy in such unguarded, celebratory detail, while also being read for millennia as pointing toward something larger, suggests Scripture doesn't treat embodied human love and covenant love for God as competing categories — the first can meaningfully illuminate the second without either one being reduced to a mere symbol for the other.

Introduction to Song of Songs

Just as "Holy of Holies" means holiest, and "Lord of lords" signifies the highest Lord, "Song of Songs" signifies the most excellent song. This most excellent song is a song about love. In a similar way, when Paul introduces his great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13, he does so by promising to show the Corinthians "the most excellent way" (a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 12:31). Though expressed in countless modern songs today, it was the ancients who first recognized love as the most excellent thing.

The book is a poetic drama without stage directions or cues — a dialogue between characters discernible only through context. Another difficulty is the constant movement between literal reality and metaphor; sometimes a "garden" or "vineyard" is literal, and other times it's a metaphor for individual sexuality. Complicating things further, a couple of passages may describe the Shulammite dreaming rather than experiencing something literally (Song of Songs 3:1–4; 5:1–7). These complexities, along with the book's frank, sometimes startling erotic imagery, have opened the door to a wide range of interpretations.

The book is attributed to Solomon (Song of Songs 1:1), telling the story of his budding relationship with a young Shulammite woman. Solomon, often called "my beloved," and the Shulammite, often called "my darling," are both described at length throughout. It appears to trace their courtship (1:1–3:5), marriage and consummation (3:6–5:1), and post-marital relationship (5:2–8:14). This is one interpretation, and the one I think best reflects a plain reading of the text. Interestingly, "Shulammite" (6:13) is simply the feminine form of "Solomon" — coincidence, perhaps, but it may also suggest the Song is a somewhat idealized or composed account, even if based on real people.

The Song of Songs pairs nicely with Ecclesiastes, which precedes it. Ecclesiastes focuses on the vanity of life; the Song of Songs extols the virtues of love. Ecclesiastes's pessimism is balanced by the Song's optimism — in Ecclesiastes, every pursuit seems futile, while in the Song, love makes everything meaningful. Once again, this echoes Paul: without love, even the most impressive spiritual gifts, sacrificial generosity, or unshakeable faith amount to nothing at all (a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13:1–3).

If Ecclesiastes appeals to the mind with undeniable logic, the Song of Songs appeals to the heart with irresistible passion. But whether describing life's preoccupation with its own vanity, or life's obsession with love's intense longing, the reader understands both are gifts from God. Ecclesiastes explicitly names God as its source, while, like Esther, the Song of Songs never mentions God directly — fittingly so, since Ecclesiastes expresses knowledge of God through reason, while the Song expresses it through feeling. This may be why many Jewish readers see the Song as depicting God's intimate love for Israel, while many Christian readers see it depicting Christ's intimate love for the Church.

Some background study and imagination help in appreciating the book's more vivid descriptions. For example, Solomon compares the Shulammite's hair to a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead, and her teeth to a flock of freshly shorn, newly washed ewes, all bearing twins, none of them missing (a paraphrase of Song of Songs 4:1–2). These certainly aren't the images you'd expect in a modern romantic film. But picture, from a distance, a flock of black-haired goats streaming down a mountainside — appearing almost like waves of dark hair — or the pure white of freshly washed, newly shorn young ewes. In an era before modern dentistry, a complete, straight, white set of teeth ("not one among them has lost their young," "all of which bear twins") would have been genuinely remarkable. The more you engage your imagination reading this book, the more you're likely to appreciate what's actually being described.

One specific note: many commentaries, including Tommy Nelson's popular exposition of this book, attribute the repeated refrain — an oath to the daughters of Jerusalem not to arouse love before its proper time (Song of Songs 2:7; 3:5; 8:4) — to Solomon rather than the Shulammite. Everyone agrees this expresses restraint; the disagreement is over who's actually saying it. I believe it's the Shulammite speaking. The only clear references identifying who addresses "the daughters of Jerusalem" appear in 1:5 and 3:10, and both are clearly the Shulammite's own words. Furthermore, she's the one most plausibly associated with restraint, describing herself as "a wall" — a metaphor for restraint — as opposed to "a door," a metaphor for its absence (cf. 8:8–12). Solomon, meanwhile, describes her as a virgin, a locked garden, a sealed spring (4:12) — and given his many wives, concubines, and later reputation for loving them all indiscriminately (cf. 6:8–9; 1 Kings 11:1–3), he hardly exemplifies restraint himself. It was also the Shulammite who initially didn't open the door to Solomon in 5:2–3.

Like Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs saves its central message for its final verses: asking to be set like a seal on the beloved's heart and arm, since love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unrelenting as the grave, its flames a blazing fire no flood can quench or drown — a love so valuable that offering all of one's wealth for it would be utterly despised as insufficient payment (a paraphrase of Song of Songs 8:6–7). These verses capture both the passion and the unshakable permanence of committed love. Throughout the Song's dramatic story, love's beauty, distress, longing, and idealized expression all testify to its power.

This has been the most difficult book for me to work through, even after many readings — I've had to repeatedly revise my own introductory comments and exclude interpretive claims I wasn't confident had solid biblical grounding. Even though attributed to Solomon, the book seems to be written largely from a woman's perspective, which may be why it's been so hard for me to fully unravel. I'd genuinely welcome the women in this group to share their own perspective. It's a beautiful book that seems to extol courtship, marriage, and consummation, along with the ongoing issues, resolutions, and affirmations involved in building a marriage afterward — though I remain hesitant to draw too many firm applications, given my own uncertainty in parts of the interpretation.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The interpretive debate this introduction wrestles with honestly — whether to read the Song primarily as literal romantic poetry, as an extended allegory of God's love for His people, or as some blend of both — has genuinely divided serious readers for centuries, with rabbinic tradition and much of Christian history historically favoring the allegorical reading, and more recent scholarship generally favoring the literal, human-romance reading this comment settles on. Both approaches can point to real support: the allegorical reading fits comfortably alongside other biblical marriage-and-covenant imagery (Hosea, Ephesians 5), while the literal reading takes seriously that the text never once mentions God and reads, verse by verse, like genuine romantic poetry between two real people. This comment's own closing humility — uncertain, still revising, wanting other perspectives — may be the most honest posture available for a book this genuinely difficult to pin down with confidence.