Lesson 1: Solomon's Country Song

Why is Song of Solomon in the Bible at all? Always do the math.

Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) is the book of the Bible that’s always funny to talk about in church or small groups because of the sexual stuff that just doesn’t come up in “church talk” that often. There are always a lot of chuckles if anybody has to read aloud that “Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle grazing among the lilies.” Whoever draws the short straw on that one will usually turn some shade of red.

Now, one of the biggest things that always drove me nuts about Lifeway and most Sunday School lessons in general is that they typically focus on a small subset of text of each book of the Bible rather than covering it in a more complete fashion. The idea is to study smaller segments over a longer period of time, but sometimes it’s just not that helpful. Several of the other teachers at church expressed similar frustrations with the cutoff points and many of us would opt to just go off script and cover more.

For this lesson we were supposed to be covering chapters 5:2-8:14. Song of Solomon is broken into 3 sections that cover different periods of a relationship: engagement, wedding and marriage.

I didn’t want to teach a lesson about marriage based on a Song of Solomon…because Solomon is not a person who I think anyone should be modeling their relationships after.

Ever.

I did not like Solomon

Growing up in church, he was always referred to as “Solomon the Wise” due to his request for a discerning heart while God spoke to him in a dream from 1 Kings 3.

So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
- 1 Kings 3:9

The Lord was pleased.

So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”
- 1 Kings 3:11-14

Unquestionably, there is a noble lesson to asking for discernment, rather than power. The passage that follows discusses a wise ruling in a dispute between two women over a baby, reiterating this stance. Solomon would also go on to dramatically expand the profile of Israel, building great wealth for the kingdom and earning the admiration of many nations.

But later on in life, Solomon would turn from God by building many shrines and idols to other Gods for his many, many wives.

One of the biggest lessons from reading the Bible that people don’t talk about much…idolatry is among the biggest consistent themes across the entire Old Testament.

It’s also covered in the first commandment in Exodus 20.

You shall have no other gods before Me.

And the second…

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving devotion to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

Additionally Deuteronomy 17:14-18, Moses reviews the law and specifically the requirements for Israel’s eventual kings. Among those requirements is this.

He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray.
- Deuteronomy 17:17

Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And his heart will be led astray.

I have to wonder, why in the world would we use Solomon as a reference point for anything related to a healthy marriage? Why is Song of Solomon in the Bible at all?

One of the great things about Bible study is that you often discover you are not alone in your questions.

What type of lesson can we teach from this?

I use a Life Application Study Bible in all of my lesson prep and I really love it. The footnotes and commentary provide some excellent insight. Reading the preface that was included with Song of Songs, I found this nugget.

Much debate has raged over the meaning of this song.

This is honestly more interesting to me. It turns out that Solomon wrote 1,005 songs.

Hold on.

700 wive of royal birth and 300 concubines means 1,000 women.

There are 1,005 songs and this entire song is about one woman? Is that a coincidence? Did Solomon write a song for every woman? Why was this one particular song out of all of his songs selected for inclusion in the Bible? I have no idea what Solomon’s other songs were about (I did try to find out), but one thing I have learned in Bible study…always do the math.

Quick overview

• The author of this song is supposed to be Solomon, which is questionable on its own once we start reading

• It’s generally believed that Solomon wrote this as a young man, around 950 BC

• Solomon was king from 970-931 BC

• This song depicts the 2 year period of the engagement (1-3:5), wedding (3:6-5:1) and marriage (5:2-8:14) of King Solomon to a Shulammite girl who worked in a vineyard

Was Solomon the only author?

When the entire book is taken into account, the writing style clearly depicts a conversation.

• She talks to him or about him

• He talks to her or about her

• Her friends talk to her

Some of the verses where she talks about him, she’s describing how attractive he is to her. If she didn’t co-write this with them, then Solomon chose to write her describing him like this…

My beloved is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. His head is purest gold; his hair is wavy and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels. His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh. His arms are rods of gold set with topaz. His body is like polished ivory decorated with lapis lazuli. His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as its cedars. His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, this is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem.
- Song of Solomon 5:10-16

In case you’re wondering, Solomon used the cedars of Lebanon to build the Temple.

Would he write about himself that way?

I don’t have an answer, but I think it’s a worthy question to think about.

What about all those wives?

In 1 Kings 11:3 we learn about Solomon’s wives and concubines.

He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.

There’s a key part in that verse. 700 wives of royal birth.

The Shulammite woman in this song was not of royal birth. Solomon had a number of political marriages and his first was to Pharaoh’s daughter.

Why was this Shulammite woman the subject of the one song of Solomon included in the Bible? She was not royalty by birth, but worked in a vineyard.

Could she be Solomon’s true love among a lifetime of political marriages?

Reading further, we find in the song verses 6:8-9 there’s a hint that this might be true.

Sixty queens there may be, and eighty concubines, and virgins beyond number; but my dove, my perfect one, is unique, the only daughter of her mother, the favorite of the one who bore her.

Other theories

Let’s pause on this train of thought for a moment to consider some of the other theories of the meaning of Song of Solomon. Some people believe that this is “an allegory of God’s love for Israel or for the church…”

Seriously? This is about Israel?

Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of sheep coming up from the washing. 

Each has its twin, not one of them is missing.
- Song of Solomon 5:5-6

Israel…you have all of your teeth and they’re still white in a time before toothpaste.

How beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights!

Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.”

May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine.
- Song of Solomon 7:6-9

God is supposed to be saying this about Israel? Or the church…? Maybe there is more to support that interpretation but to me it seems like a stretch.

So why is this really here?

To be clear, this is my theory and mine alone. It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong…but I think this song is about Solomon’s true love. She’s the one that got away.

Keep in mind, we don’t know what happened in each of Solomon’s relationships, including this one. Did all 700 wives live with him? Did they have their own room or house? Would it even be possible to maintain that many relationships? How did the previous wives feel everytime a new wife arrived?

All of these questions make me believe that it would be nearly impossible for Solomon to maintain a relationship with his true love among such circumstances. People become jealous, resentful, distracted and hurt very naturally. The more one reads the Bible the more it becomes apparent that human nature has not changed in thousands of years.

What we do know is that toward the end of his life he built shrines to foreign gods for his other wives.

For when Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the LORD his God, as his father David had been. Solomon followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD; unlike his father David, he did not follow the LORD completely.

At that time on a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
- 1 Kings 11:4-8

For the king of Israel, this is about as far off the deep end as one can go. What could make a man of such high regard fall so far?

Always do the math

Let’s support this theory with some numbers based on what we know.

• Solomon ruled from 970-931 BC, 39 years total

• This was written around 950 BC, 20 years in

• The song itself references 60 queens at this point

So that means that over a period of 20 years, Solomon had 60 wives meaning a rate of 3 wives per year or 1 every 17 weeks.

• He had 700 wives, leaving 640 more after this one

640 wives over the remaining 19 years means a rate of 33.7 wives per year over the last half of his rule! That’s 1 new wife every 1.5 weeks!

Hopefully this is the only “Wives per Year” chart you’ll see today.

That is a dramatic change in the rate of marriages.

Have you ever known people to make bad relationship decisions after a hard breakup?

Those numbers certainly reflect it.

How would you expect your true love to react to more and more brides in your life, even if it was accepted during that time period? Would anyone expect her not to be resentful? You could almost understand wives from political marriages accept something like that more easily than a girl from a farm who was not born into the expectations of royalty.

I think this was Solomon’s true love and when he lost her he stopped caring. He accepted any political marriages that were offered, grew the alliances of Israel and allowed these wives to have shrines and idols built to appease them. Consider the type of witness he would have been to them in a state of lament and sadness.

Whatever. Do what you want…

The sudden dramatic change in behavior, losing your will to obey God’s commands and disregard to the point of building shrines to others…it reads like depression and even anger towards God.

Such a reaction could be understood if Solomon lost his true love and believed it was due to his duty as king.

Like father like son?

There’s a verse that I accidentally stumbled on while researching this story on Biblehub. I was looking for 1st Kings 11:3 but accidentally typed 1st Kings 1:3 instead when this caught my attention.

Now King David was old and well along in years, and though they covered him with blankets, he could not keep warm. So his servants said to him, “Let us search for a young virgin for our lord the king, to attend to him and care for him and lie by his side to keep him warm.”

Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful girl, and they found Abishag the Shunammite and brought her to the king. The girl was unsurpassed in beauty; she cared for the king and served him, but he had no relations with her.
- 1 Kings 1:3

There are some scholars who speculate that Shunammite and Shulammite are synonymous, while others debate whether the later represents a specific area of Jerusalem or even the feminine form of Solomon used only after marriage. If they were synonmous we can wonder whether Abishag is the same girl. We are never told her age, only that she was young.

Solomon’s brother Adonijah even tried to claim Abishag as his wife, because it would give him a claim to the throne. For this request, Adonijah was put to death in 1 Kings 2:21-23. If she was the same girl, that’s a lot of history between them.

Now, I don’t believe that Abishag is the Shulammite girl from Song of Songs. From the reading I have done, Solomon would have been about 20 years old when King David passed away and Solomon is about 40 years old during the time of the song.

But could the memory of a beautiful Shulammite girl who cared for his father on his death bed stick with a 20 year old young man? Could it create a fondness that eventually lead him to his one true love?

We can only speculate of course

When I started preparing to teach this lesson, I adamantly disliked Solomon. Hearing for your entire life of someone celebrated as “Solomon the Wise” and then learning about exactly how far he turned from God…it honestly made me resent him.

No one in the Bible is perfect except for Jesus. Every person has their flaws. Solomon’s flaws appeared to me at first to be the extreme.

After researching this lesson though, my view changed. I pity Solomon. The story humanized him for me in a way that I did not expect. If not for the information provided in this song, we would not have any indication of the dramatic rate change in his marriages that could open our eyes to the potential cause of the change in his behavior.

Imagine finding your true love in a life in which it seems you have everything, but then to lose her because she simply doesn’t fit in the royal existence you have to lead. He’s the king, but you can’t force someone to be happy in a life where they aren’t any more than you can force them to believe things they don’t want to believe.

After all, towards the end of the song she laments…

Then, if I found you outside,
I would kiss you,
and no one would despise me.
- SOS 8:1

What if Solomon’s song is a country song?

What if it’s included in the Bible to give us perspective to help us understand why the life of one of the greatest kings of Israel took such a turn for the worse?

It changed my perspective on Solomon. I hope this theory might encourage you to dig deeper into the story yourself!

In Ecclesiates, Solomon shares a great deal of regret about the way that he has lived his life including why “pleasures are meaningless”, until he brings it to his ultimate conclusion.

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.
- Ecclesiastes 12:13

If you’re curious about other theories and interpretations, I recommend reading the very detailed and well cited History of Interpretation of the Song of Songs. It goes in depth on many different perspectives.

You cannot be misled if you’ve read!

UPDATE: My pastor send me an interesting read about why Jews read Song of Songs during Passover.