In our journey along Route 66 we come today to what some translations of the Bible call The Song of Solomon. Others call it the Song of Songs. In either case we must remember that the titles of books of the Bible were not originally part of the text.
Author
This book is called The Song of Solomon by some perhaps because verse 1 seems to ascribe authorship to Solomon. But some scholars think that verse 1 is a later addition to the book. And verse 1 could mean a song by, for, or about Solomon. Solomon is referred to seven times and several verses speak of the king, but Solomon’s authorship is doubted by most scholars today. Like the other Wisdom books of the Bible, The Song of Songs shows signs of being worked and reworked over many centuries. At the oldest level are love poems, perhaps wedding songs, many of which could go back to the time of Solomon. At the latest level are Persian and Greek phrases that indicate additions made after the exile. Perhaps the Song of Songs is best thought of as a collection of poems extolling the undying power of love between two people.
Date
Traditional scholars appeal to the mention of Solomon to claim an early date for the Song of Songs. Others appeal to the language to claim a later date. The contemporary scholarly consensus is that the poem was either composed or at least edited in the 4th or 3rd century BCE by an anonymous poet or editor.
Themes
Many different views of this poem have been held by scholars over the past 2500 years. The Song of Songs is probably best categorized as an epithalamium—a love poem written in honor of a wedding. However, the poem depicts erotic love between two young people who are not yet betrothed. The description of love in 8:6-7 seems to confirm that the Song belongs to the Wisdom literature and that this book contains wisdom’s description of an amorous relationship. This understanding of the Song contrasts with the long-held view that the Song is an allegory of the love relationship between God and Israel, or between Christ and the Church, or between Christ and the individual soul.
It is important to note that God is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Song of Songs shares this feature in common with the book of Esther. Furthermore, the New Testament nowhere quotes from or alludes to the Song. The Song shares with the love poetry of many cultures its extensive use of highly sensuous and suggestive imagery drawn from nature.
The voice of love in the Song, like that of Wisdom in Proverbs 8:1-9:12, is the voice of a woman, suggesting that love (in this case, sexual love) draws men powerfully with the subtlety and mystery of enticement. This feminine voice speaks profoundly of sexual love—its beauty and delights, its exclusiveness, and insists on the necessity of its pure spontaneity. She also proclaims the overwhelming power of sexual love which rivals that of death. Song of Songs 8:7 says, “If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.” Or as the Beatles sang more recently and simply, “Money can’t buy me love.”
Structure
- Title: Solomon’s Song of Songs (1:1)
- The Woman Speaks (1:2-6)
- Dialogue: between the lovers. (1:7-2:3)
- The Woman Speaks (2:4-4:1)
- The Man Speaks (4:1-5:7)
- Dialogue: the woman and the maidens of Jerusalem. (5:8-6:3)
- The Man Speaks (6:4-7:10)
- The Woman Speaks (7:11-8:7)
- Dialogue: between the woman and her brothers. (8:8-12)
- The woman’s final invitation to her lover.
Key Concept—The Singing of the Birds
I know of a pastor of a large church who preached virtually the same sermon on the same text once per year as a sort of anniversary sermon, a sort of State of the Church address. He preached every year on the verse in Nehemiah 6:3 where Nehemiah says, “I am carrying on a great work and cannot come down.”
Now, I don’t plan to preach the same sermon again every year. But I do propose to revisit today the very first sermon I preached in this church. The very first time I preached at this church was for a sort of trial sermon that was recorded and broadcast to the congregation because we were then, in the summer of 2020, in the first throes of Covid. For that sermon I chose as my text Song of Songs 2:11-12 where we read…
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come.
These are verses that speak of the Springtime of Love.
The Song of Songs is a rich and sensual love song. It has been understood allegorically as a poem about love between God and humans. But, at its most basic level, the song is about the love between a man and a woman, and some commentators have thought that this piece of Scripture was originally composed as a wedding song, perhaps for the king.
Tom Gledhill writes of this section of the Song of Solomon,
The verses of this poem have such simple evocative power that any comment seems almost superfluous. The text is so marvelously alive, that any comment will appear to be very pedestrian. Beautiful poems can too often be reduced to dust and ashes by dry academic analysis. But, for the purposes of our exposition, we can divide the poem (in chapter 2) quite naturally into the girl’s eager anticipation (verses 8-9) and the boy’s urgent invitation (verses 10-14)
The NIV captures well the girl’s thrill and excitement as she hears her lover approaching. Her sense of anticipation is almost tangible as her boy leaps and springs over the hills towards her. He is as fleet on foot as a young gazelle, with boundless energy, and alert ear, a lightness of touch. Within no time at all, he is at her wall, peering through the windows, eager to catch a first glance of her before she comes out to him. And then he invites her to come away with him to enjoy the explosion of nature in the springtime…
The boy’s invitation is a model of literary construction. The wonderful passage on the explosion of nature is framed between the words of invitation, almost identical, at 2:10 and 2:13, ‘Arise my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.’ There is a strong sense of temporal movement in the poem from the past through the present to the future. The cold winter rains of the drab gloomy weather are now completely gone. They are a thing of the past. And now the tiny spring flowers are sparkling forth amongst the new shoots of the undergrowth. The turtle doves are cooing, the time for singing… has come…
You may think this was a strange passage to preach on for my first sermon in this church. All I can tell you is that this is the Scripture the Lord kept impressing on my mind and heart as I considered becoming the pastor of this church. “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come.” I think it not inappropriate to re-visit these verses three years on.
I love passages like this in the Bible because they reveal that Scripture has an interest in all of life, not just the explicitly religious. I think the Song of Songs reveals that God cares about our whole lives—our loves, our relationships, as well as our church life.
So, these simple verses evoke for me the joy of Springtime. However, to me, these verses do not merely suggest the Springtime of Love; they evoke the Springtime of Life.
The boy and the girl in this poem are obviously coming together in the Springtime of their Lives; they are young.
In the springtime of my life, I came to this church. As many of you know, I visited this church for the first time with my parents while I was still a boy. We were on the Cape for vacation and happened to come here on a Sunday. My first response to this church was to run out of the Sunday School class and hide in our family station wagon in the parking lot. There is a sense in which I have been running from the church all my life, but God keeps bringing me back. And in his humor and grace, God brought me back here in 2020, not as a Sunday School student but as a pastor. Will God’s wonders ever cease?
As many of you also know, when I was young, I used to watch Robert Schuller on television with my mother. And Schuller was one person that God used to lead me to faith. On one occasion I remember hearing Schuller quote these very verses from the Song of Songs. He quoted these verses as ones that speak of renewal. There is a renewal that happens in nature every Springtime. There is a renewal that can happen, not only in nature, but in individual lives and in churches. There is a Springtime for individual human beings and churches that can seemingly come around more than once.
But getting back to the Springtime of life, one might ask: how long does it last? I don’t know for certain. These days people are living longer and longer. So, let’s say someone lives to be one hundred years old. And there are four seasons. So, I guess that means that Springtime lasts until one is twenty-five years of age.
By the time I was twenty-five, I had graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary, and I had married Becky. Here we are 35 years later. Still serving the Lord and his people together. During the first 25 years of our marriage, the Summertime of Life, we served churches of many types and sizes in six states, and we even lived in Ireland for one short stint.
By my calculation, I am now in the Autumn of Life, having turned 60 in August. But, in some ways, I feel like I am experiencing a second spring. The time for the singing of the birds has come. We hear the singing of those birds off our back porch every morning. And God has put a new song in my heart, a song of renewal, which I sense in this place. I trust, by God’s grace, my first three years have proved to be a time of renewal for this church, and that our years together will continue to be a time for the singing of the birds.
If there is a Springtime of Love, a Springtime of Life, a Springtime for individuals and for churches, I wonder if there is a Springtime for the World as a whole? I think there is.
But that Springtime feels long past, doesn’t it? When we think of Springtime, we naturally think of all things new, just coming alive, perfect. In fact, when we think of Springtime we think of Eden.
Edenic Springtime did not last for long on this earth of ours. It was kind of like Springtime in Vermont, a mere blip between winter and summer. In the Bible, Edenic Springtime lasts for only the first two chapters of Genesis. Then all is ruined by the selfish choices of Adam and Eve.
One might sum up the story of the Bible that we have been studying in four seasons:
1. Creation
2. Fall
3. Israel
4. Then Jesus & The Church
Just as in nature every winter leads to spring, so in the supernatural realm, Jesus is leading us out of the wintry death of sin into a new springtime of everlasting life. That spring is not fully here yet, but it is on the way, ever since Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. And as the church, we are called upon to bring that springtime renewal to our community and world by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Bible teaches us that when that work is complete, once the Good News has been preached to all nations, then Jesus will return, and he will usher in the final Springtime that will never end, a Springtime that will spell resurrection, not only for these old, decaying, dying bodies of ours, but for the body of the whole world, the whole universe in fact.
As you know, I am a bit of a C. S. Lewis fan. But what many people do not know about Lewis is that before he wrote any of the Narnia books, or Mere Christianity, he was a poet.
Now, not only is C. S. Lewis my favorite author, but one of my favorite places in the world is Lewis’s beloved Oxford. And one of my favorite places in Oxford is Addison’s Walk. It is a sort of circular pathway within the grounds of Lewis’s old college, Magdalen. And several years ago, the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society had a plaque placed along the walk with this poem by Lewis…
I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.
Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.
This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.
This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.
This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.
Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.
Though Lewis does not use the word, that poem is really about resurrection. One day, the old cycle of nature is going to come to an end. The spell of sin will be completely undone. When Jesus returns to this old world of ours, he is going to make all things new again. And then we will truly be able to say, “The time for the singing of the birds has come!”
Until then, Jesus calls us to sing the good news of his resurrection and love with our warbling voices, inviting the whole world to come to life.
Shall we continue to sing that song together?
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