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What Solomon's Song Of Songs Is Not


Music is one of the many wonderful gifts of God. It is able to move people, and even animals, in a way that nothing else can. Since the fall of our first parents, through which sin and death entered this world, the use of music has been corrupted by the heart of sinful man from its original purpose, which was to give glory to God. Further, a case could be made that Satan in some way orchestrates, or at least actively instigates, this perversion of music. Satan may have been God's most glorious angel, created with an incredible gift for music, and responsible for leading the worship of God, before his fall. In any case, what is most distinctive about secular music seems to be its focus on man and this world, rather than on the glorious Being who created all things.


Spend only a little time listening to the latest popular songs, more or less irrespective of genre (e.g., top-40, country, rap), and it will be observed that the particular focus is on romantic and erotic themes. Secular music is about romantic love, sexual desire and attraction, heartbreak due to the breaking apart of a romantic relationship, and so forth. The focus of secular music is upon the things of this world and especially upon sexual or romantic relationships. It is only in the church of the redeemed where music is used to extol, glorify, and pour out thanksgiving to God. When human hearts are renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit, on account of the sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ, worship is restored to its original purpose, and even exalted beyond its original purpose, because unlike among the company of unfallen angels, and unlike any singing that may have taken place in the Garden of Eden prior to Adam's fall, worship of God now includes thanksgiving and the giving of glory to him for his marvelous work of redemption.


Tremper Longman, an Old Testament scholar who has taught at multiple institutions including Westminster Theological Seminary and Westmont College, asserts that Solomon's Song of Songs, one of the sixty-six books of the Bible, "is a collection of poetry that extols the love that a man and a woman have for each other." He rejects the notion that this book, which is situated between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah in most contemporary Bibles, and which is almost never preached on in the church, should be interpreted allegorically or figuratively. Based largely on a comparison of the book with secular Near Eastern poetry and literature, Longman believes that the "primary aim" of Solomon's Song of Songs "is not to portray the relationship between God and his people, but rather to extol sexual love between a man and a woman." He detects multiple erotic references in the book, believes that the book serves as a reminder that the act of lovemaking, physical sex, is a gift of God, and that despite being (as he believes) a collection of human love poems with no reference to God or Jesus Christ, the book provides "divine insight and instruction about an important area of human experience: sexuality." Longman also concedes that there is no reference to marriage in the book. All of the quotations I am citing are drawn from An Introduction To the Old Testament, which Longman coauthored with Raymond Dillard.


What shall we say about all of this? First, if the book is a mere collection of poems about romantic love or sex, with no mention of marriage, it is difficult to understand how it provides "divine insight and instruction" about sexuality. Longman tells us that the book "reminds us that sex is good and pleasurable," but do we really need an entire book in Holy Scripture to remind us of that? With the important exception of those who have experienced some form of sexual abuse, it is not clear to me that men and women really need to be reminded that sex is pleasurable. Why would so many people engage in it, within and (especially nowadays) outside of marriage, if they didn't already know that it was pleasurable? Why would so many secular songs and poems make romance and sex their theme, if it were not pleasurable? Further, would a canonical book that is merely about the human experience of sex really leave out the institution of marriage? I agree with Longman that sex is a good gift of God. It was created by God for the exclusive context of marriage between a man and a woman. However, in addition to containing no reference to marriage, the book provides no guidance about the source or origin of sex itself. If Song of Songs is a mere collection of love poems, with no mention of the marriage covenant, or of the fact that God created sex, what "divine instruction" can it possibly give us? I think the question answers itself.


Second, in his attempt to understand Scripture, Longman seems to spend more of his energy comparing Scripture with extrabiblical Near Eastern literature than he does comparing Scripture with Scripture. In the chapter on Song of Songs in An Introduction To The Old Testament, there is not a single reference to or comparison with Psalm 45, which closely parallels and almost seems to be a compendium of Song of Songs. In the chapter on the Psalms in An Introduction To The Old Testament, Psalm 45 is said to be "a royal marriage psalm" and to bear "a number of similarities to the love poems of the Song of Songs," yet no mention of these similarities is mentioned in the genre analysis of the Song of Songs itself.


Third, for anyone who is somewhat familiar with Tremper Longman's overall body of work, it is noteworthy that he disparages a "literalistic" approach to understanding the early chapters of Genesis, even expressing a willingness to entertain the notion that Adam was not a historical figure, yet takes the "literalistic" approach to understanding Solomon's Song of Songs. In both cases, the driving force seems to be the weight Longman gives to extrabiblical literature, which he seems to consider a crucial tool for a proper understanding Scripture.


Fourth, and finally, can we for a moment think that a book in the Bible entitled "Song of Songs", which means "the most superlative or preeminent of all songs," is devoted to no higher end than to exalt physical lovemaking between a man and a woman? Think about it. There are songs throughout the Old and New Testaments that extol the glory of God, including his various attributes and extraordinary works. Look at the songs found in the Book of Revelation. They all have their focus on God and his Son Jesus Christ. To cite just one example, in Revelation chapter five, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fall down before the Lamb and sing, "You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth" (Revelation 5:9–10). The words of the song in chapter fifteen of the same book go like this, "Great and marvelous are your works; Lord God Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O king of the saints! Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested" (Revelation 15:3–4).


Does Longman believe that a mere collection of poems about human sexuality is greater and more exalted in theme than the songs just cited from the Book of Revelation? Are we to believe that a collection of erotic poems is more superlative than any of the 150 songs found in the Book of Psalms? Surely, the very title "Song of Songs" is determinative of the fact that whatever may be its genre, this book of the Bible is certainly not a collection of poems put together "to extol the love that a man and a woman have for each other." That would be akin to dubbing the head of China or the head of any other country the "King of kings," which would be blasphemy in light of our knowledge of Jesus Christ.


The great 19th-century German Old Testament scholar Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenburg (1802–1869), someone contemporary Old Testament scholars would do well to become acquainted with, says the following in a monograph on the Song of Songs:

Even [Albertus] Magnus cannot avoid finding in the name given in the superscription to the work—"The Song of Songs"—a proof that the writer of the superscription, who, as we have shown previously, can be no other than the author of the poem itself, intended the whole to be interpreted allegorically. "For," he says, "had he really regarded his book in the light of an ordinary love-song, the title given to it would have been a thorough lampoon of all the other writings of the Old Testament. What Israelite could dare to consider a worldly song as more excellent than the many divine compositions of a Moses, a Miriam, a Deborah, a Hannah, and a David—or even than the God-inspired discourses of the prophets, which may, after all, be styled שירים ?" A correspondence may be traced between the superscription—"The Song of Songs"—here, and the expression, "thou art the fairest amongst the children of men," in Psalm 45:3;—and with the greater right, as the reason assigned in the superscription for the exaltedness of the poem is, that it relates to the most glorious of all subjects, namely, the heavenly Solomon, (chap. 1:1).

A detailed interpretation of Solomon's Song of Songs is for another study. However, we can be sure of one thing as we enter such a study. This book of the Bible is certainly not a mere collection of poems about human sexuality.

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