From the very first verse, we are told that “The song of songs… is Solomon’s.” He is mentioned seven times throughout the book, and he is also identified as the groom. According to 1 Kings 4:32, Solomon “spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand and five.” And this song has 49 words that appear nowhere else in scripture and was most likely written early in his reign, though we are told in 6:8 that by this time Solomon already had “sixty queens,…eighty concubines, and virgins without number.” Yet with that said, by the time we read in 1 Kings 11:3, the full extent of his harem will reach “seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines,” and more importantly, we read that “his wives turned away his heart.”
Based upon this book, we see that it was a historical event written in as a four-act play depicting the four parts of marital love. The play is set in Jerusalem and in a field that the bride’s (a Shulamite woman) family has leased from the King (Solomon, who becomes the groom). It has only three main characters:
•The Bride: She is a Shulamite (the feminine form of Solomon: Truly she is Mrs. Solomon before she ever knows it). She has two brothers and two sisters but is forced to work the vineyards and tend the flocks as her family is poor. She is the “Cinderella” of the story, as she has to work hard and has become tan in the hot Israeli sun. The groom always refers to her as “my love.”.
•The Groom: He is King Solomon, who, during his search for the meaning of life, apparently goes out onto his property, and as the king tends the sheep when he spies out this tanned beauty. They fall in love without her knowing that the handsome shepherd is really the king. The bride always refers to the groom by the words, “my beloved.”.
•The Friends: These friends are made up of “the daughters of Jerusalem” and “her brothers.”
It appears as though Solomon is truly in love, which would suggest that his “sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number” were political in nature and not romantic. Make no mistake about it; this book looks at marital intimacy but puts it into the parameters of marriage. Oh, how Satan has polluted the pure stream of intimacy by playing both sides of the fence.
•He has made it dirty, something to be hidden and repressed and only thought of in terms of reproduction.
•Then he has made it entertainment, something to be exploited and driven without restraints like mere animals.
The Song of Solomon presents human intimacy as God intended it to be between a man and a woman who have united together in their mutual love for God and each other. Not just physically driven by our desires but spiritually led by the Holy Spirit into a molding into one from two of our body, soul, and spirit.
Though this is a historical play of marital love, it also is a great picture of God’s love for his bride, the Church, and the beauty of these 8 chapters goes far deeper than what a man and woman can experience in a marriage united to Him.