Old Testament · Wisdom and poetry · book 22 of 66 · 2 min read
The book of Song of Solomon
Eight chapters of frank love poetry with no theology in it, which the tradition has spent two thousand years allegorising and which reads perfectly well as what it is.
“Many waters can't quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned.”
At a glance
- Chapters
- 8
- Author
- Attributed to Solomon; likely a collection
- Written
- Uncertain; possibly compiled over a long period
- Written for
- Two lovers, and everyone since who has wondered why this is in the Bible
- Themes
- desire, mutuality, longing, the garden
What it is about
The Song is a sequence of poems between two lovers, alternating voices, with a chorus of watching women. It is sensual, specific and entirely unembarrassed, and it never mentions God.
For most of Christian history it was read allegorically — Christ and the church, God and Israel — partly because the plain reading was considered indecorous. Most modern readers, including most modern Christian readers, take it as love poetry that the canon includes because embodied love is not a lesser subject.
Its final chapter contains the only line most people can quote, and it is the one moment the book raises its voice into something like a thesis: love is strong as death, and it cannot be bought.
Where to start
Chapter 8, for the passage everyone quotes, then chapter 2 if you want the poetry at its most characteristic.
The chapters worth knowing
- Song of Solomon 2 — The poetry at its most characteristic, and the source of several familiar images.
- Song of Solomon 5 — The night search through the city, which is the book's most unsettling passage.
- Song of Solomon 8 — Love strong as death, and the line about many waters that everybody knows.
What people get wrong about it
That it must be an allegory to belong. The allegorical reading is ancient and respectable, but the book gives no internal signal that it is one, and reading it as love poetry is not a modern liberty.
Questions
What is the Song of Solomon about?
Love and desire between two people, in alternating poems, with no explicit theology. Its inclusion in the canon is an argument in itself about how embodied love is regarded.
Is the Song of Solomon an allegory?
It has been read that way for most of Christian history — Christ and the church — but nothing in the text signals allegory, and the plain reading has a long history too.