A love song without apology — celebrating covenant love between bridegroom and bride
I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine.
Song of Solomon 6:3Song of Solomon — also called the Song of Songs, Canticles, or the Song — is the most beautiful and most debated book in the Hebrew Bible. Its Hebrew title means 'Song of Songs' — the superlative form, the way 'King of kings' means the highest king. The Hebrew rabbis treated it with great reverence; Rabbi Akiva said 'all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.'
The text is, at the surface level, a rhapsodic dialogue between a bridegroom and a bride celebrating their mutual desire and devotion. Solomon and the Shulamite woman speak alternately, with occasional chorus interjections by the daughters of Jerusalem. The poetry is sensual, intimate, and unembarrassed. There is no theological narration, no mention of God's name (the divine name Yahweh appears only once, in 8:6, possibly), no commandments, no doctrine. Just love — passionate, mutual, covenantal, and holy.
The interpretive traditions divide into three approaches. The literal-historical view reads it straightforwardly as a celebration of marital love, affirming sexuality within covenant as a good gift of God. The allegorical view reads it as Christ's love for his Church — drawing on Paul's claim in Ephesians 5:32 that marriage itself is 'a great mystery' about Christ and the Church. The typological view holds both: a real love song that anticipates the greater love of Christ for his Bride. Most modern Christian commentators hold this third view. The book is what it is — and it is also more.
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Paul writes in Ephesians 5:31-32: 'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.' Paul reaches all the way back to Genesis 2 — the institution of marriage — and reveals that the design itself was always pointing forward to Christ and his Bride. If Genesis 2 is the foundation of this typology and Ephesians 5 is its key, then Song of Solomon is the longest sustained meditation on it in all of Scripture. The book is a love song. It is also a parable of the love between Christ and his people.
The refrain appears three times in the book (2:16, 6:3, 7:10), each time slightly different. 'My beloved is mine, and I am his' (2:16). 'I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine' (6:3). 'I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me' (7:10). The progression matters. The first puts self first. The second balances. The third loses self in the beloved. This is the trajectory of mature covenant love — from 'what is mine' to 'what is ours' to 'I am his.' The same trajectory describes the soul's growing intimacy with Christ. We start asking what we get from Christ; we end resting in the fact that we belong to him.
Throughout church history, Christian interpreters from Origen to Bernard of Clairvaux to John Owen have read the Song of Solomon as a sustained portrait of Christ's love for his people. This is not because they were uncomfortable with sexuality — many of them wrote eloquently about it elsewhere. It is because they took Paul's revelation in Ephesians 5 seriously. Marriage is itself a sign of something greater. The Song is not less than a celebration of marital love; it is also more. It is the bride's song to her bridegroom — and through it the Spirit gives us language for the soul's relationship to Christ. Read literally, it teaches that sexuality within covenant is good. Read typologically, it teaches that the goal of all our longing is union with Christ.
Near the close of the song comes the verse most quoted from the entire book: 'Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.' This is the theological pinnacle of the book. Real love — covenant love — is as powerful as death itself, cannot be drowned by floods, cannot be purchased with money. This is the same love Paul describes in Romans 8:38-39: nothing in all creation can separate us from it. The bride's description of her love anticipates Christ's love for his Church.