The Pulpit Commentary — Song of Songs — Section 20

HOMILETICS. Vers.1-4.-The prologue. I. THE INSCRIPTION. 1. The title. We are told (1 Kings iv. 32) that the songs of Solomon were a thousand and five. This is the chief of all, the Song of Songs. It stands alone in the Old Testament. It is a pastoral drama of singular loveliness. It shows a delight in the beauties of nature such as we might look for in him who "spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; of beasts also, and of fowl, and of creeping things." It exhibits a touching picture of early affection gradually ripening into the blessed love of wedlock-that love which, when pure and unselfish, tends more than anything that is of this world to elevate and refine the soul. And it has a higher meaning. Holy men of widely different times have seen in it the spiritual converse of the Church, or of the individual soul, with the heavenly Bridegroom. A famous Jewish rabbi, after saying that all the books of the Hagiographa are holy, describes the Song of Songs as a holy of holies; and a great Father of the Church says that in this book the perfected, who have the world beneath their feet, are joined to the embraces of the heavenly Bride- groom. Thus it combines all the elements which give a charm to poetry-beauty of form and elevation of thought; a delicate appreciation of the attractions of external nature; a deep sense of the sweetness and power of the most universal, the most domi- nant, of human affections; and an uplook to higher things, an uplook from that love which is of God-for such surely is the love of husband and wife (see Eph. v. 25-28)- to God who is love. Thus the title is abundantly justified. There are great difficulties here and there; but yet much of the Song of Songs has ever sounded to believing souls like far-off echoes of the new song which only the redeemed from the earth could learn (Rev. xiv. 3). There are few passages of Holy Scripture sweeter to the Christian heart than those thrice-repeated words," My Beloved is mine, and I am his." 2. The author- ship. "Which is Solomon's." The Hebrew preposition may be translated "of" or "for." In the titles of Ps. lxxii. and cxxvii. it is rendered in our Authorized Version "for Solomon," "of Solomon" standing in the margin. Ps. cxxvii., like the rest of the "songs of degrees," is almost certainly post-Exilic; and in Ps. l.xxii. the LXX. trans- lators are probably right in regarding Solomon as the subject, not the author, of the psalm. If the Song of Songs was written by Solomon himself, we have in it a most awful warning of the fickleness, the sinfulness, of the human heart. Solomon, who knew so well what is the sweetness of pure and holy love, was led astray by that sensual passion which usurps the name of love. Solomon, who was called Jedidiah, "the darling of the Lord," whom "the Lord loved" (2 Sam. xii. 24), who himself" loved the Lord'' (1 Kings iii. 3)-tbat same Solomon "loved many strange women" ~l Kings xi. 1), and " whtn he was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods.' "Let him that thinketh be standeth take heed lest he fall; " "Ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate the thing that is evil." The soul that would live in the love of Christ must hate, and reject with horror and loathing, the very smallest beginnings of that sin of impurity which separates a man from God utterly and with a fearful rapidity. If, on the other hand, it was written by some prophet or poet of Northern Palestine in Solo- mc,n's time, we have an explanation of those peculiar words which 11ome scholars regard OH, I. 1-17,] THE SONG OF SOLOMON. 9