“It’s a Song!” – FBC Morning Light (5/28/2024)

The Song of Songs as Poetry and Wisdom Literature

What a good Tuesday morning to you. So today and tomorrow our Bible reading plan is to divide up the Song of Solomon and read those eight chapters into two days, and then move on from there. Well, what I'd like to do is take a few days and really kind of deal with the Song of Solomon, and mainly for a couple reasons.

One of them is that it's really one of those books of the Bible that is highly overlooked and neglected. You know, we read it in our personal devotion time, maybe, and if we do the through the Bible reading in a year thing, but then you don't usually hear too much about it any time other than that.

So I'm just about finishing up a series on Sunday night services on the Song of Solomon, and so I thought it might be helpful just to share some of the insights in the book in the next few days, and actually probably go beyond the Bible reading plan for the rest, at least the next couple of days, anyhow.

So what I want to do this morning is just, first of all, give some guideposts for understanding what this book is really all about. Now, these guideposts are not unique with me. One of the commentators that I used in this study, Douglas O'Donnell, he shared these four guideposts, and they serve to help us understand and interpret this book in its rightful place.

It Is a Song of Poetry and Figurative Language

So here they are, here's guidepost number one. Guidepost number one is that this is a song. Excuse me, this is a song. And the nature of a song is that it is poetry set to music, poetry set to music. So the thing I want us to understand is that the song is a poem, and the nature of poetry is that you don't take everything literally, and poetry is by nature very highly figurative and sensual, not in the essential, but it appeals to the senses, it causes you to think about, and you have to ask yourself the question, what is this poem doing?

What is this figure of speech really all about? For example, later on in the book you'll read that the husband, the groom, is praising the beauty of his bride, and he says that her neck is like a strong tower.

Well, what does that mean? You know, what does that mean? Is it like the Eiffel Tower? Is it like the Leaning Tower of Pisa? You know, what is the significance of that? So, poetry. It's a song, it has poetry, it is filled with poetry and poetic symbolism and poetic pictures and descriptions.

So you have to ask yourself the question as you're reading along, what does the poetry want us to feel? What is it trying to get us to think about and to understand? So, it's a song. Then secondly, a second guidepost is that the Song of Solomon is a song, it's a song about human love set in the context of marriage.

Human Love Set in the Context of Marriage

So this is a song about a bride and her groom, and you have constant dialogue between the two of them. You have the groom speaking of the beauty of his bride, the bride speaking of the majesty of her groom, you have this refrain, I am his and he is mine, and so forth.

But it's filled with language and concepts that are connected to marriage, such as that which I just said. That statement, I am his and he is mine, is a statement that married couples say to one another, and there are other examples of that as well.

But I just want us to get the guidepost. It's a song about human love set in the context of marriage, and the third guidepost is that it's found in the Bible. It's found in the Bible, which means that we need to see it in the larger context of the Scriptures.

We need to understand that it has a bigger part to play. So for example, yes, it's a song about human love set in the context of marriage, but when we think about marriage, that should drive us, for example, to Ephesians chapter 5, where marriage between a man and a woman is supposed to represent Christ and his bride, Christ and the Church.

Now Paul makes that very clear. So there are a lot of things that are portrayed in this poem about human love set in the context of marriage that you can see pictures of the relationship between Christ and his bride.

Wisdom for the Unmarried and for Married Couples

So it's a song, it's a song about human love set in the context of marriage, it's a song that is in the Bible, it's found in the Bible, and then the fourth guidepost, it's a song about human love set in the context of marriage, found in the Bible, that is number four, written to give us wisdom.

It's written to give us wisdom. Song of Solomon is in the genre context of the wisdom literature of the Bible. What are the other books of the Bible that are wisdom literature? Well, you've got Job, the book of Job, the book of Proverbs, and the book of Ecclesiastes.

So these four books, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon, form the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, of the Bible. So as wisdom literature, it is intended to communicate some wisdom about some particular subjects, okay?

And the wisdom literature that is the Song of Solomon is directed to two different groups. One of those groups is unmarried, single, young women. So you see a couple of different times, three or four different times in the book, the reference to the daughters of Jerusalem.

These would be virgin women, and they are counseled. The wisdom that comes in this book is that they need to wait for intimacy until they become a bride, and the voice that speaks to these women is the voice of the newlywed bride.

Now there's something interesting you should catch about Song of Solomon in relationship to the book of Proverbs. So the book of Proverbs is written with Solomon's counsel to sons, this counsel to sons.

So the word son appears more than 40 times in the book of Proverbs. Daughter doesn't appear at all. So for example, Proverbs 31, verses 10 to 31, you know it's the section about the virtuous woman, and essentially what Proverbs is saying to the son is, my son, stay away from that kind of woman, the strange woman, the foreign woman, the off-limits woman, the adulteress, the harlot.

Stay away from that kind of woman, but save yourself, my son, for this kind of woman. What kind? The Proverbs 31, 10 to 31 kind of woman. So Proverbs is, you could say largely, Solomon's wise counsel given to his sons.

The Song of Songs is Solomon's wise counsel given to girls, given to girls. And the message is patience. Patience. Patience until marriage, and then passion. As O'Donnell puts it, he says, uncompromised purity now, and in marriage, unquenchable passion then.

Wisdom for Married Love and Intimacy

So on one hand, one of the purposes for this wisdom literature is to give wisdom to unmarried, single, young women. And a second direction for the counsel is to married couples, to married couples. So when the bride says, my beloved is mine and I am his, she's communicating mutual compatibility and absolute intimacy.

And that's the kind of thing that our marriages should represent. Mutual compatibility and absolute intimacy. So the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, is asking those of us who are married, it's asking us, how is your love life?

How is your love life? And O'Donnell summarizes it this way, he says, this song is God's provision to sustain loving marriages and to renew loveless ones. It is his, God's, provision for increased intimacy that reflects the intimacy of Christ's love for the Church.

So these four guideposts. The Song of Songs is, first of all, a song. It's a song about human love set in the context of marriage. It's in the Bible, and it's written to give us wisdom. So let those guide you as you read the song.

Our Father and our God, we thank you for this extended poem, these songs that comprise the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. May we learn from it, we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. All right, pardon the little longer devotional today, but I had to set the stage for the next couple of days.

All right, have a good day, and may the Lord richly bless you.