Song of Solomon

Purpose & theme

The Song of Solomon — “the Song of Songs,” the best of songs — is a collection of love poetry celebrating the goodness and beauty of covenant love between a man and a woman. In an exchange of tender, joyful, and passionate words between a bride and her beloved, the book honors romantic and marital love as a good gift of the Creator, to be delighted in within the faithfulness of the marriage covenant. Against every tendency either to treat the body and desire as shameful or to cheapen love into mere appetite, the Song presents love as precious, exclusive, faithful, and strong — “love is strong as death... Many waters cannot quench love” (8:6-7).

Through the history of the church, the Song has been read on two complementary levels. On the plain level, it dignifies human love and marriage, affirming that the mutual delight of husband and wife is not only permitted but celebrated by God. On the deeper, canonical level, this covenant love between bridegroom and bride becomes a window onto the greater love between God and His people, and supremely between Christ and His church. The New Testament calls marriage itself “a profound mystery” that refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32), and it looks forward to “the marriage of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:7). The Song thus celebrates a real and good human love that, in the whole story of Scripture, images the truest and strongest love of all.