The Media Desk takes a look atthe Song of Solomon

Part One: About the Book, and other studies of the Song of Songs.
Part Two: we do an in depth study of the book itself.
Part Three: A bit of review and .... stuff. (links below)

Produced by TheMediaDesk, ©2026

      The idea occurred as a question... "what is the LEAST studied book of the Old Testament?"
      The answer included a list of several of the books of the Minor Prophets, which we wrote an in depth study of a few years ago. Then the Book of Job came up, but we've used Job, and various speeches in it, in other essays... "He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing." (Job 26 : 7) for ages. So then we had to actually think about what books we have never heard a sermon about, even some of the books that various 'church fathers' have said should not be in the Protestant Bible.
      "bingo!"

      There are those that say the "Song of Songs which is Solomon's" is totally allegorical, including some Jewish documents which we will mention and then quote later, that it never happened in the real world, with real people, doing 'real people things', and is totally an illustrative story about ... well, everything from God's acceptance of Israel, to the Church as the Bride of Christ, and no living humans ever got all hot and sweaty.

      One of those was the famous Saint Augustine. The Doctor of the Roman Church whose influence goes far beyond the pages of the Catholic Catechism.
      Let's look at what he said about the book we're looking at, and then look at why he said it, and then carry that statement out into the world as we go.
      This passage in "City of God" (de Civitate Dei) is one of the few places Augustine of Hippo (?354 - 430?) even mentions the Song of Songs. And here he states:

"But now the Song of Songs is a certain spiritual pleasure of holy minds, in the marriage of that King and Queen-city, that is, Christ and the Church. But this pleasure is wrapped up in allegorical veils, that the Bridegroom may be more ardently desired, and more joyfully unveiled, and may appear; to whom it is said in this same song, Equity has delighted You; Song of Songs 1:4 and the bride who there hears, Charity is in your delights. Song of Songs 7:6 We pass over many things in silence, in our desire to finish this work."
Available from NewAdvent.org, link below.

      No. We're not blaming the misreading of the Song of Songs for the last three thousand years on Augustine (everything this side of the Essenes who were real desert Ascetics! See background link below.). Nor are we blaming the malignant spread of a totally un-scriptural teaching from the contamination that leaked out of the Roman church and into everything from secular groups to Protestant "Lady's Studies"on him even though as a "Doctor of the Church" his influence has been felt throughout Christianity and even well into the Secular realm. And we are not going to leave the intentional dissemination of what amounts to fanciful, and even impressively misguided statements made about the Song laying at his feet. No, there's plenty of blame to go around, and everybody from Jimmy Swaggart (1935 - 2025) back to Jerome of Stridon (400 AD) and even Origen of Alexandria (around 200 AD) can all have a nice slice of it... as we can see being set up in the following quote that opens his collection of homilies on the book. However, later on, Origen does float the idea that the book is presented as a drama, but he mostly leaves that idea un-pursued, instead focusing on mystical symbolism. And he also gives you the idea that he never actually read the thing.

The Song of Songs a Drama of Mystical Meaning
"It seems to me that this little book is -an epithalamium, that is to say, a marriage-song, which Solomon wrote in the form of a drama and sang under the figure of the Bride, about to wed and burning with heavenly love towards her Bridegroom, who is the Word of God. And deeply indeed did she love Him, whether we take her as the soul made in His image, or as the Church..."
"Origen Adamantius of Alexandria: The Song of Songs - Commentary and Homilies"
Full work available For Free at the Internet Archive, link below.
An "epithalamium" is a poem written to celebrate the bride on the evening of her wedding day.

      Many of the commentaries we looked at preparing for this study were quick to point out that the original text was in Hebrew, and that it was in a specific style of Hebrew poetry, that, while of a totally different subject matter than we dealt with in the Minor Prophets, had some stylistic similarities, even though the Song was dealing with romance, and even eroticism, instead of doom and destruction.
      There is a broad history of this sort of poetry throughout the ancient Middle East, including several poems with similar language and themes from Rudaiki (lived around 900 AD), who is credited with beginning what is now known as Persian poetry, many with erotic descriptions. Such as this from a sequence of several poems about 'the beloved' on a wide range of topics ranging from 'crying for' to 'submission', beginning with:

In Praise of the Beloved
"A hundred-petaled rose, musk, ambergris,
Apples, white jasmine and fragrant leaves,
It contains all of these, your beauty,
O Beauty, who captivate kings...."

Father of Persian Verse - Rudaki and his Poetry, page 89, Abu 'Abdollah' Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki (880 - 941), from the Internet Archive, link below.

      And there are those that disagree with it being in the Bible at all, or, as we've seen and will come back to, that it doesn't mean exactly what it says.
      And those that say other things, and.... well, as always, we'll link to an assortment of those below, as well as material that is more relevant to the study.
      Going in, we'll say it like this: The author, whoever it was, which we will look at in the study, intentionally, if poetically, meant exactly what they said, in the way they said it. And, 'appropriate for the Junior High Sunday School Class or not', what it says it what it says. Instead of being the only OT book that 'doesn't mean what it says'.
      Also, if certain translators have "Turned Down the Heat in Revelation", and glossed over some of the more unpleasant aspects of the Minor Prophets, see references linked below to our work on those, can you imagine what they've done to "the Song"?
      For an example we'll have Martin Luther (1483 - 1546) stand up and take a bow. Yes, the Martin Luther of "95 Thesis" fame, wrote an extensive review of The Song, in which he seems to think that 'the woman' is a daughter of Pharaoh, and that the entire work was allegorical, and, for some reason, he labeled it as "Solomon's Politics". And, as you can see in the work below (the link was working as of this posting. Other free copies of Luther's works, from five hundred years ago, are all but impossible to find.) It would seem that Friar Luther did as many others did, see what they want to see in the book. And another study, by a more modern writer, painted the infamous "four stages of love" on the text, which is laughable. If you search for it, you can find it.
      Well, we're not going to do any of that. We WILL speculate on exactly what some of the poetic language, such as: "I compare you, my love, to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots..." (1 : 9), and flowery descriptions, "As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men." (2 : 3, both ESV, link below) mean in real life and what the various 'personal interactions' actually were. And, yes, SOME of the language is allegorical, at least we hope it was a very poetic description and nobody really had "hair like a flock of goats". And, to protect the sensitivity of those who have sensitivities that they think need to be protected, when possible, and meaningful to the discussion at hand, we'll use medical terminology, and tell any who are still worried about it to NOT read this study.

NOW HEAR THIS!
      There are those who will say we're trying to turn the "Song" into some sort of cheap adult entertainment (according to some that would be 'pornography', never mind the fact that there are plenty of 'adult topics' elsewhere, such as incestuous rape.), and others who will claim that what we are seeing in the source text is what Everybody has seen, and that Everybody knows is wrong, so Nobody talks about it, and the Desk is an Idiot for mentioning it.
      Well, Everybody knows that the Desk is an Idiot, but perhaps the reason nobody mentions these things is that they're afraid to discuss aspects of the Song that nobody else will. And they may also be afraid to look it up and see what is in the Hebrew.
      Going way out and discussing things and chasing angles and aspects that ALMOST nobody else does is a Specialty of the Desk...... and we're good at it.

      So... Let's go.

      First off, we'll talk about what we're talking about.
      The book known as "the Song of Solomon", or "Canticle of Canticles" (from Jerome's Latin edition, the Vulgate, link below) is one of the poetry books that is found after Psalms and Proverbs. In some versions of the Old Testament, namely the Septuagint (the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek in about 300 BC, see below), the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches and certain others, the Song is listed with books like the "Wisdom of Solomon" and "Sirach", which are not included in the usual Protestant Bible. However, it has been in "the Bible" since the Hebrew canon was more or less solidified between 500 and 300 BC, as one of the "Five Scrolls" (the Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther).
      We know it existed in at least 500 BC, but is it from the time of Solomon, about 950 BC? That is a bit more shaky, there are good academic reasons to think that it might be 'in the style of Solomon' but written during the Babylonian exile, just after 600 BC, possibly as an entertainment piece of nostalgia, which we'll come back to in a moment. Whether Solomon would have written something that makes him out to be a bad guy, trying to steal a working man's girlfriend, is an open question. But, it really doesn't matter, the text is here, and we're going to deal with it.
      The poetic book we have was found, in several pieces, but found and identified nonetheless, in the cache of Dead Sea Scrolls, and was copied before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. What we have in various old versions of the book in the Hebrew is identical to what is readable from the caves. However, what has been translated into English is a different story, see links below.

      Which brings us to looking at the text. We'll do the study later, but right now we're looking at the overall presentation of the poem itself. Both in the Hebrew, and in other versions of the text, including Jerome's Latin in the Vulgate and several different English versions. As we've already identified the title of the book, which is verse one, we'll start with the person that has the most lines to say in the thing.
      While EVERY translator and commentator agrees that the first person speaking is a woman, most agreement about her ends there. Some identify her as 'the Bride', which she will (probably / might / maybe) be later on, but not yet. Others say that she is "the Shulamite (Shulammite)", which she is identified as later by somebody else. Others simply dodge the issue and label the speaker as 'she' or 'the woman', and a few editions of the Bible leave the parts unidentified. In the Hebrew text, there are no 'speaking parts' assigned. Which we'll come back to in a moment.
      The second voice we hear is also labeled as different people. Some call them, and the pronouns used by the speaker is plural, so it is a group, some call them 'the friends', or the "Daughters of Jerusalem", which they are known as later. We don't know if it is the same group all the way through, and it is never explained how they came to be in the middle of all the action.
      The real kicker comes in verse 8. Many translations identify this speaker as King Solomon. It could be, or it could be the woman's boyfriend 'the shepherd' (but probably not for assorted reasons which we will look at), who she talks about and who comes up later in some depth (again, whether he ever speaks or not we'll touch on in the study), but in any case, it is probably a singular male speaker, and the way he speaks is somewhat different in tone and usage, so it could be the King.
      Something else that comes up before the end of our chapter one, and is seen when you compare different translations, nobody agrees on who says what, see the quote from a Mishna from the Babylonian Talmud, at the link below. And as the parts are not identified in the text, it leads to a lot of speculation and argument.

      Now, we need some sort of overall impression and conclusion for this essay, then, we'll
      What does the Desk... a "half-crippled, half-drunken, ex-sportswriter" ... think of it?

      We just mentioned the Babylonian exile. When Nebuchadnezzar carried everything off that was worth carrying off from Jerusalem, that included every scroll they could find, and the guys that could read, and copy, them. We know from the story of Daniel that there was an active Jewish community practicing their religion in exile, and we also know that even after they returned to their homeland, a significant population remained in Babylonia. Which would result in something called the Babylonian Talmud a few hundred years later.
      That almost impenetrable book of Jewish .... everything.... is linked below. But the part that interests us is the one of the last mentions of the Song in the over 3,000 pages of text (when translated into English). Even the Jewish scholars of the time had disagreements of who was saying what in the Song. In this case, who was talking about caressing who, see the discussion on page 2652 and on 2569 at the the PDF of the Babylonian Talmud linked below.

      So the Desk is in good company with having different ideas as to how the Song was originally presented.

So, what is that "different idea"?
      We're glad you asked.
      The idea occurred during the preparation for this study, while we were still looking at what others have said about the book, and then going into the text, sometimes in English, sometimes the Hebrew, and checking out what somebody said about something in particular.
      Part of what that revealed is that there are NO breaks in the text in between the various statements and the all too frequent somewhat lengthy, and flowery, poetic flourishes and compliments, which ARE in the original text, and in some places, as we will see in our own verse by verse study, are somewhat more elaborate, and suggestive, in the Hebrew than they are in the English, or Latin, or Greek, or whatever.

      In modern American English, we're not accustomed to using, or even hearing, somewhat long, extravagant, and even unrealistic, compliments, and dramatic romantic suggestions.
            Or are we?

      Below are links to one of the most popular romantic songs ever recorded. Written by John Denver (1943 - 1997), dedicated to his wife, and then recorded in 1973. Denver is on the record as saying the inspiration came to him on a ski lift. The first stanza is all about him comparing his love for his wife to various natural settings "You fill up my senses, like a night in a forest, like the mountains in springtime ...." Then the second verse is simply personal references, "... Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms...." (full lyrics and attribution, as well as a link to the official audio recording and a live version, below. Go play it, we'll sit here and wait.).
      If you read the descriptions used in the Song of Solomon, we're there. It's almost like Mr. Denver was reading the Song on that ski lift. Which, although he grew up an Air Force brat and had been a Presbyterian early in life, whether or not he ever read the Song of Songs is unknown. But, there's his love long, and we're all in awe of the talent that produced it, as well as the poetry of our current study. Remember Mr. Denver's song, we'll touch on it again after Solomon's... Which we'll now get back to.

      It makes more sense that these speeches are meant to be said, or sung, by actors on a stage, in front of a dinner party of notable, and perhaps even royal, guests, as a somewhat naughty entertainment. Perhaps hearkening back to a bygone era, the time of King Solomon, a name everybody in the room would recognize, and a level of royal excess that had scarcely been seen since, even if that dinner party was being held in Babylon and the actors are all displaced Jews doing something in a somewhat backhanded nod to their long lost homeland.
      Which means the poem was finally written down, in something like its present form, in about 600 BC, or so, several hundred years after the King in the story lived. Although it is in the "style" of something by Solomon, and he, and the entire royal family, was no longer in a position to object to the use of his name.
      Perhaps there were originally 'stage directions' in the script...
- WOMEN'S CHORUS enters from stage right and sings: 'Eat, friends, and drink; drink your fill of love.' then withdraw to upstage left and waits.
      And the stage directions never made it into the book that was accepted as canon.

      In the list of resources below are a set of links to modern productions of the Song, live on stage. One in New York, the other in London, both by professional theatrical companies, but with a different focus in the production.

      When you look at the text of The Song in that light, it makes more sense. The individuals aren't identified in the original poem because they didn't have to be. The Woman, who would be played by a man in most 'live on stage' presentations at that time, and the one that does most of the speaking, or singing, is self identified, besides the costume and perhaps theatrical mask. As is the lead male, sometimes called 'the king', who appears to be a significantly older man, which also plays into the descriptions of the shepherd who is 'leaping over the mountains' while the 'king reclines at his table'. Perhaps the Shepherd never actually speaks (there is some question about that), but only stands under a bit of fake scenery with a couple of sheep and looks wistfully at his beloved while she sings to him from afar. And then in our chapter three, when they are 'looking for each other', he is offstage, with his sheep.
      This even gives the players an opportunity for a bit of 'show and tell' theater with the wedding procession moving through the dining room.

      Which is why the poetry is so flowery and in a few cases, VERY suggestive of a pleasant, but somewhat improper diversion, which means it would have been a very popular, and perhaps, highly requested, performance. Even if ALL of the actors presenting the work were men, given that the palace / aristocratic / upper class audience would be male, with certain 'feminine escorts' allowed as the culture, and change-purse, allowed.

      Which makes some of the more ascetic interpretations of the Song almost laughable... no, change that, it makes some of them completely laughable.
      Luminaries like Augustine of Hippo knew that the ancients in the Bible had sex, there are many such encounters in the Old Testament, including a famous one in the linage of Christ with the Patriarch Judah who 'got it on' with his own daughter in law, and ended up producing a set of twins, one of whom is named in the line of Christ, see Genesis 38 (the twin was Perez, who is also named in Luke 3). Not to mention that incestuous rape in 2 Samuel 13 that shook the Royal House and began a downward spiral in it. And then one of the Minor Prophets who had a wife that ... strayed. Often.
      No. While sex happened, yes some was in a good situation, and some was otherwise, it happened. And happened enough to sustain the Human Race since we were thrown out of the Garden, most 'encounters' in the Old Testament resulted IMMEDIATELY in the next generation being produced. Such as King David's lapse with Bathsheba, and the aforementioned encounter between Judah and Tamar (the same female name used in 2 Samuel) from Genesis.

      And now we'll deal with how this book has had a coat of whitewash painted onto it because of the tradition of Jewish Asceticism that then turned into the Christian version of the same thing, that then became....

The Marian Doctrine

      It wasn't, and isn't, about sex. At all. Never has been.
      It was, and is, about the control of the private life of the people.

      While the Roman Catholic Church, and certain others, maintain that the mother of Christ, the young woman named Mary, remained a virgin for her entire life, the Scriptures say there were other children born into the family. One of the letters in the New Testament was written by the Brother of the Lord. Of course, Rome says that the word in Jude's letter doesn't mean what it says, and that in the gospels when the locals say "we know His brothers 'adelphos' and sisters 'adelphe'..." (see Matthew 13 and Mark 3) that doesn't mean what it says either.
      Oh, well.
      We will maintain that the Word overrules the politically motivated teachings of humans, especially when said teachings don't make any sense.
      The idea that Mary remained 'pure' comes from a pseudographic / pseudonymous book called the Infancy Gospel of James, written after 200 AD by an unknown author, and makes all sorts of claims about Mary. If you really want to read it, it is available at several outlets, we're not going to waste a bunch of perfectly good electrons posting a link to that nonsense. The result being that the Fifth Ecumenical Council declared the aeiparthenos (Greek) / semper virgo (Latin) of Mary in 553 AD, probably five hundred years after she died. And was, a hundred years later (things move slowly!) formally adopted as church dogma. See link below as a place to start.
      By holding Mary up as the Perpetual Virgin, and Joseph as her Most Chaste Spouse (see links below) the various denominations that promote the idea could reach into the bedrooms of their members. And once you control that, after children have been born into the marriage of course, you can begin to influence every other part of their life, which, when you come right down to it, is up to the adults in the household, and, most of the time, none of the minister / pastor / priest / denominational headquarters / etc's business, because it is in the realm of personal choice and private business, and NOT a "thus saith the Lord" from Scripture. And we will reference the exact opposite in good time here.
      And that is the reason all of those pundits that we've mentioned, from the various Jewish orders, then the Vatican, down to individual Protestant Sunday School Teachers, who have spent a lot of time since about 500 BC saying not to read the Song of Songs, and if you do, it is all mystical and allegorical. And that nobody is supposed to have sex with somebody they love just to enjoy pleasure with each other once they've bred the next bunch of kids for VBS. And that the nude human body is disgusting and dirty.....
      Yeah, well.... Tell that to the Woman and her Shepherd boyfriend, who seem to not only have seen each other in their 'natural state', they 'got busy', and they both enjoyed the experience.
      And tell that to Paul the Apostle when he said exactly the opposite in 1 Corinthians 7. But, again, Scripture takes a back seat to a lot of these ideas when the actual Gospel Message is simple and straightforward and the advice about listening to anything else is cut and dry in Galatians 1.

      So here we go. On to do what many of the writers we've discussed, with more mentioned below, didn't do. Find out what did the writer of the Song, whoever THEY were, as it is possible it was "written by a committee", what did they actually say in the thing?

      Our study of the Song.

PS: to any 'young man' attempting to woo a pretty woman.
      Sing John Denver's "Annie's Song" to her instead of comparing her to a herd of farm animals or comparing her to an armed fortress, OR, reminding her of a previous boyfriend's occupation, it might go over better.
      No, we're not kidding. It's in "the Song of...."

End of our opening to the study of "The Song of Songs which is Solomon's".

The Word by Word Study: Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3 and 4, Chapters 5 and 6, Chapters 7 and 8.

A review and analysis.

Selected Resources: all links will open in new tab/page.
All were working as of date of original posting:

The Hebrew / English Interlinear https://biblehub.com/interlinear/songs/1.htm

Images of the Song from the Dead Sea Scrolls https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/search#q='song%20of%20solomon'

What's seen in the scroll fragments from the caves: "Song of Solomon 1 from scroll 6Q6" https://dssenglishbible.com/song%201.htm

The English Standard Version https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song%20of%20Solomon%201&version=ESV

"The original 1611 KJV with archaic English spelling."
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611_Song-of-Solomon-Chapter-1/

While the original text was in Hebrew, the "Book of Seventy" was translated into Greek about 300 years before Christ under orders by Ptolemy II of Egypt, and now into English:
The Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/septuagint/

Jerome of Stridon's Latin Vulgate https://vulgate.org/ot/songofsolomon_1.htm

A quick look at a range of opinions:

"Allegorical Interpretation of the Song of Songs https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/allegorical-interpretation-song-songs

"Song of Solomon: Allegory, Love Poem, or Typology?" https://puritanboard.com/threads/song-of-solomon-allegory-love-poem-or-typology.44048/

Song of Songs: 4 Interpretive Approaches https://www.olivetree.com/blog/song-of-songs-4-interpretive-approaches/

"Martin Luther argued that the Hebrew Bible's Song of Songs was 'an encomium of the political order...'"
"Martin Luther's Political Interpretation of the Song of Songs" https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/martin-luthers-political-interpretation-of-the-song-of-songs/90D1B92EE4B9E441BEDCCBAC933D5FAB

Martin Luther's take on the Song is included with: "Luther's Exegesis: Ecclesiastes & Solomon" https://www.scribd.com/document/928707724/VOL-15-Notes-on-ECCLESIASTES-Lectures-on-the-Song-of-Solomon-Treatise-on-the-Last-Words-of-David

Saint Augustine of Hippo's de Civitate Dei "The City of God" https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120117.htm

"Mary in the Writings of St. Augustine" https://www.homeofthemother.org/en/resources/virgin-mary/fathers/8477-s-augustine

"Understanding Mary's Perpetual Virginity" https://stpaulcenter.com/posts/understanding-marys-perpetual-virginity

From New Yorker Magazine: "How St. Augustine Invented Sex" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/how-st-augustine-invented-sex

Free Download from the Internet Archive!
"Origen: The Song Of Songs Commentary And Homilies" https://archive.org/details/origen_202001/page/n25/mode/2up

From 1895: