All Scripture is Holy. All Jewish and Christian Scripture testifies of the Anointed One. Yet not all who embrace the Pentateuch agree on which books are included in the full canon of Scripture, neither do all agree that Jesus of Nazareth is the Anointed One. When it comes to a small collection of love poems called the “Song of Songs,” Jews as well as Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians all agree that the book belongs in the holy canon of Scripture. Moreover, this love poem has been called by the first and second century Jewish Rabbi Akiba, “the Holy of Holies” of the holy writings.^[1] The Christian Scripture, which includes twenty-seven New Testament books, testifies that human beings have access to the high-priestly Holy of Holies through Jesus Christ, who is the high priest in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:10). Christians then can boldly access the Song of Songs with the expectation of meeting the King of kings and Lord of lords in holiness, righteousness, and glory. Yet gazing on the Christ Song also introduces a wellspring of meaning to sex, marriage, and love, so enriching us in language that represents God’s design of love in its modesty, mystery, and danger.

Early Interpreters of the Song of Songs have typically favoured an allegorical interpretation of the book that likens the man and woman to the King and his people, to Yahweh and Israel, and/or to Christ and the church. Some more recent interpreters have favoured a natural/literal interpretation, asserting that the intention of the book is to celebrate marriage, sex and love between a man and a woman. Iain Duguid believes “that it is possible to steer a middle ground between the allegorical and literal extremes.”^[2] Since Duguid’s commentary on the Song actually explores both readings, these readings are only extremes if an allegorical reading is antithetical to a literal reading and vice versa. Mark Garcia says that the Song of Songs is “as theologically dense, rich, and powerful a witness to the meaning of everything as you will find in Scripture … if you will hear it as a portion of Christian Scripture.”^[3] In writing this introduction to the Song of Songs, I will favour and defend a Christian allegorical interpretation of the text, yet one that continues to multiply fruit as the book’s literal and natural features are unveiled. The Song can be seen as a centerpiece to the whole of God’s revelation, giving light to a systematic, biblical, and natural theology that is deep and ever flowing with richness through our magnifying of these short love poems in their fitness to be called the Holy of Holies of Christian Scripture.

Canonical Interpretation

The very definition of canon, as a distinct collection of holy writings held together as the “rule of faith,” gives us reason to characterize God the Ruler in each canonical book. The canonical writings are holy because God’s holiness is the dominant theme throughout the writings. Thomas Watson says of the Scripture in its canonicity that the “holiness of [Scripture] shows it to be of God;” and he relates the whole of Scripture to the interpretation of its parts: “the sun best discovers itself by its own beams; [likewise] the Scripture interprets itself to the understanding.”^[4] The Westminster Assembly agrees that the whole of Scripture is given for the interpretation of its parts:

The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture, (which is not manifold, but one,) it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.^[5]

~ The Westminster Confession of Faith I:IX

Since the closed canon is singular as God’s full and complete self-revelation (John 1:18), we should seek the magnificence of God’s character even in the places where Elohim, Yahweh or the persons of the Trinity are not explicitly named. “In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth,” says Genesis 1:1. So God’s spoken word revealed in his handiwork is written on the cosmos (Psalm 19:1). On the sixth day, Elohim said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Human beings are made in the image of God and are therefore types of God. The Greek word τύπος, most directly translated in English as type, originally refers to the image of a blow or imprint made by a striking object. The use of the word in philosophy expanded the word’s use to indicate a “sketch or outline” or the “preliminary disclosure of a thing.”^[6] Τύπος is no less than an imprinted form made from an object through an impressive action indicating the shape of the acting object, such as a wax stamp; but, according to the term, such an imprint is not necessarily an exact representation of that impressing object.^[7] In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is said to be the exact imprint (χαρακτὴρ) of God’s nature (Hebrews 1:3). So Christ is exclusive in that he is not made in God’s image as a mere man, he is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). However, there are human beings who are types of Christ in the Old Testament, so taking their shape from Christ. Paul says that Adam is a type (τύπος) of Christ, even though he was the first sinner (Romans 5:14). So, even though these types are not exact imprints, it is appropriate to say that many Old Testament figures, such as Melchizedek, Isaac, Moses, David and Solomon, are types of Christ insofar as there is resemblance between the type and the one typified. And we can perceive that there is the direct action of God’s creation and providence at work with each impression. So we can gather that these types are not merely persons, they are persons with localized stories, all of which give meaning to all things visible and invisible. The world as we receive and perceive it takes its shape from the eternal Christ.^[8] So much more do books such as the Song of Songs and Esther, though they do not explicitly identify God by name, reveal the very character of God in his covenant faithfulness; otherwise, the books are hard-pressed to be recognized in the holy canon.

The Song of Songs ought then to be interpreted with God’s covenant in mind. Interpreters who prefer to focus their interpretation of the Songs as a celebration of the created world without celebrating the Creator and his continuing activity have missed the theme of Scripture. Many natural blessings, many festivals, and many non-canonical books celebrate the created world. There are manifold ways to celebrate God’s creation, but there is only one Scripture which gives full meaning to God’s creation. And that fullness, I will suggest, is God himself in the flesh (John 1:14-18). In Paul’s writing to the Ephesians, the apostle likens the one flesh union of husband and wife to Christ and the church, indeed naming the mystical union of God to his people as the foundation for how we understand the design of marriage (Ephesians 5:25-31).

Yet in modern times, there are some who would prefer an interpretation of the Songs that is somewhat limited to the literal and natural sense, which gazes squarely on human marriage, sex and love apart from magnifying God’s covenant. Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman says, “there is nothing in the Song of Songs itself that hints of a meaning different from the sexual meaning.”^[9] Daniel Akin calls the book “God’s instruction manual for sex and marriage.”^[10] I will later demonstrate that such assertions do have some importance in counterbalancing the history of the book’s interpretation, but an overall emphasis on the natural reading over and against the allegorical reading reduces the fullness of the Song’s speech.

We receive hints of a greater significance in the Song of Songs beyond a simple celebration of sex through observing language that compares to other parts of the Scripture. The physical features of the lovers’ bodies and the local love setting itself employs words that make echoes of Genesis, such as a garden abounding with flowers and fruit (Song 2:3, 2:12, 4:13), a promised land flowing milk and honey (4:11, 5:1); the text also describes springs and mountains (2:8, 4:12) which echo other parts of the Hebrew literature. The mention of scarlet, fragrances, and anointing oils (1:3, 1:12, 4:3) recall the tabernacle and the priesthood; the mention of cedar and palm trees (1:17, 7:7) recalls Solomon’s temple. Solomon as a king is obviously a key figure in the Song. Regardless of whether David’s son composed the verses with his own hand, the language portrays a wisdom that, through in at least paying homage to Solomon, spreads its poetic richness as living springs flowing into the Torah and the writings.

In observing the whole of the Christian Scripture, Solomon is seen to be a type of Christ. Origen acknowledges this type in observing “first that [Solomon] is called the Peaceable, and also because the queen of the south … came from the ends of the earth to hear [his wisdom].”^[11] The New Testament names Christ as very wisdom from God (1 Corinthians 1:30). What is attributed to Solomon is truer of Christ, who is the Holy One through whom the whole world receives wisdom.

The female vocalist is then, for Origen, likened to the queen of the south, for she is “the Church that is gathered from among the Gentiles.”^[12] The female also represents the land, the garden, and the city. Francis Landy describes the nature and meaning of the garden as “nature perfected by culture.”^[13] In Genesis, Adam was first created in the wilderness then was placed in Yahweh’s garden to work and keep it. Adam was however alone; as beautiful the garden would have been, it was void of common likeness to Adam’s flesh. The garden wasn’t what it was intended to be without human society. So after not a suitable helper was found among the animate creatures, God formed the woman who, in the likeness of Adam, glorified the flesh of Adam the same way the garden glorified the land of Eden. Moreover, the woman and her fruit of human society is the fullness of the cultivated garden extended to the ends of the earth. Adam named the woman “the mother of the living,” for through her fruit, nature is cultivated to become a society, a civilization, a city of eternal fruitfulness.

The man and the woman as lovers are the main vocalists of the Song of Songs, but there is also a chorus of voices that celebrate the love, yet they share especially in the woman’s joy and pain. When the woman is missing her beloved, the chorus feels her pain, singing, “where has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you?” (6:1). The chorus is thus an extension of the woman, and so the woman is figuratively connected to the vocal society.

Likewise, the figure of Solomon is connected to the man. Even though some have interpreted Solomon to be the male vocalist’s rival,^[14] Solomon is never painted to be someone that the woman disdains. Toward the end of the Song, the woman is called a “Shulammite,” which is the name of a female Solomon,^[15] a name that is attributed to her both by the chorus and the male vocalist himself (6:13). She glorifies King Solomon and is celebrated as such. The only characters in the Song who are antagonists are the mother’s sons who subject the young woman to sun-stroked labour (1:6) and the little foxes that spoil the vineyard (2:15). Both problems however serve as contributors to the lovers’ admiration for one another.

As the woman represents the people and the man represents the king, some interpreters have been led toward an allegory that is first seen in a political state. Martin Luther calls the Song “an encomium of the political order, which in Solomon’s day flourished in sublime peace.” He then names this peace to be analogous to the eternal peace Christ shares with his people.^[16] So, besides the private matters of love alluded to in the text, the Song can also be interpreted by extension to the political sphere.

Allegory and the Avoidance of Flesh

While the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs does fit to multiple layers of spiritual and political life, the original theme of the text as a love shared between a man and a woman shows no attempts toward desexualisation. Some interpreters have, however, favoured the allegorical interpretation to a degree that acknowledges the theme of sex only for its utility so that we can say something about spiritual and political matters. Of the Song’s opening reference to lovers’ kisses, Luther says, “this means that God honours this people with his word,” only acknowledging the intimate reference as God speaking “according to the custom of the people of that day.”^[17] Origen, who predominantly names the male vocalist to be “the Word of God,” admonishes the reader to rid themselves of “outward” carnality so that the “inner” spiritual meaning of the Song would take shape. Origen not only aims to desexualise the Song, but also dematerialize it, interpreting the theme of a banquet feast as a partaking of words rather than food.^[18] Thus, to gain a spiritual understanding, these interpretations have discouraged the reader to fully receive the carnal features of the text.

However, since these are Christian interpretations, the Scripture testifies that the Logos (the Word) has become flesh (John 1:14). Indeed, when John introduces Christ as the Logos, he no longer names Christ as the Logos after the text reveals that the Logos has become flesh. Jesus remains the eternal Logos, for John’s gospel continues to magnify his deity, but it was important for John to make flesh and bones of Jesus’s ministry. The Son of God was a man who grew hungry and thirsty, yet he miraculously fed the multitudes, telling his disciples, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35); likewise, he wept at the sight of his friend Lazarus in the tomb before raising him from the dead (John 11:28-44). At his final Passover, Jesus distributes the bread and wine as representing his very body and blood. In distributing the bread at the last supper, he does not say, “this is an image of my body,” but rather “this is my body” (Mark 14:22). The carnal features of holy feasting thus give direct meaning to the Word.

Jesus, the Son of God, came as fully human. The woman sings, “My beloved is white and ruddy” (5:10, KJV). Of this verse, John Owen says of Christ that “he is white in the glory of his Deity, and ruddy in the preciousness of his humanity.”^[19] Since Jesus is true in both his deity and his humanity, the natural theme of human love needs not to be emptied when favouring the spiritual fullness of the Song. Indeed, the spiritual meaning is fully enriched through considering the carnal features as they are given. Yet we don’t need to exhaust the carnal features as if we live by bread alone. A fleshly exhaustion, for instance, of suffering such as what is portrayed in Mel Gibson’s motion picture “The Passion of the Christ” is not a mandatory passageway for our understanding. It is important in holy worship to physically consume bread that is rendered to our bellies, yet not for the purpose of filling our bellies, but rather of filling our understanding. “Love is as strong as death,” says the songwriter; and so Jesus, by his death, puts the wisdom of the lover’s verse to the test. Since Jesus’s love for his beloved remains true to the point of death, his love is verified, but only that his death is imagined and believed to be a fleshly occurrence. Jesus died according to the flesh so that all our visible experiences of death would be imagined also of the Bridegroom. What comfort can those who are dying draw from the Saviour if the Beloved Saviour had not faced the same agony? It is of Christ’s love that he died in the flesh so that our bodily death, when it is given, would raise our hope toward a resurrected-in-the-flesh holy communion with the Beloved.

So the kisses of the lovers don’t fall short of being fleshly kisses (1:2). Kisses are also not less than an exchange of words; they are rather more than words and flesh. Mouths speak words, they also eat and drink, but mouths also breathe. The communal experience of a shared meal accompanied by words that are breathed forth gives the Song of Songs, and particularly its kisses, a meaning that is amplified in the worship of God. The worship of the Holy King is the exchanging of holy words, the singing of holy songs, the breaking of holy bread, the drinking of holy wine; and breath is given to a faith, hope and love that fills and transcends both the sacraments and the words to a third-heavenly reality.^[20] The heavenly reality does not posit words against food, but rather gives a full and transcendent meaning to both. Wise words speak of the head, and food nourishes the body; Christ fills both. He also transcends both, as he is the giver of breath—the Holy Spirit, for the kiss represents the most intimate and transcendent elation of Christ’s communion with his bride.

Unseen Mystery

The mystery of sexual desire is then typological to the mystery of communion with God. The words of the Song of Songs preserve the mystery of sex because the text does not exhaust the carnal features of human intimacy. Origen warned those who are spiritually immature to steer clear of the Songs until they are mature enough to not be egged on by the text toward fleshly lust.^[21] The caution that Origen expresses toward these matters is in one sense prudent; the Song itself warns of a premature awakening of love; and so both sexual desire and communion with God should be treated with care. Yet since the text is not explicitly sexual in its fleshly depiction, it seems that the hiddenness of the text is sufficient to guard the immature mind from excessive consumption. Moreover, the immature mind may be brought to maturity through a careful reading of the text; and where else can we receive its warnings of danger? In Origen’s day, a person was vulnerable toward carnal lust through the enticements of the public theatre. Over time, developments in technology have provided many more mediums and resources that would exhaust the carnal features of human intimacy in words and images. By exhausting the carnal features, the meaning of love, sex and marriage are robbed of the hiddenness that is intended of these natural delights. The Holy Song can then be a means of restoring the true meaning of sex, a meaning that ripens one to the knowledge of Christ’s gospel, a gospel that is most hidden when it is most revealed.

Many eyewitnesses saw the death of Christ, and many more saw his resurrected body. No one, however, was inside the tomb to witness the dead body come to life; neither did they see his exodus from the tomb. When Mary Magdalene peered into the tomb, she saw two angels at the head and feet of where Jesus had once lain, which is a vision that resembles the tabernacle’s Holy of Holies. Jesus then appeared to Mary as a gardener outside the tomb. And although his resurrection was believed by Mary, Jesus told the woman not to cling to him, for he was to ascend on high to be invisibly seated so that many who don’t see him would believe (John 20:11-18). This woman, like the woman of the Song, experiences multiple absences of her Beloved (3:1-5, 5:2-8), yet the woman, like the church, in her tumult over the Beloved’s absence, doesn’t give up her belief, a belief that is witnessed in the city. So just as Christ’s resurrection in the tomb was hidden, so belief in Christ is a hidden marvel amongst the saints. Jesus had once told Nicodemus that a person must be born again to see the Kingdom of God, and that this spiritual birth is likened to the wind that “blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8). Thus the Kingdom of God is most seen as it is most hidden; such is the mystery and marvel of belief.

So the Scripture sings:

Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind!
Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow.
Let my beloved come to his garden,
and eat its choicest fruits.

I came to my garden, my sister, my bride,
I gathered my myrrh with my spice,
I ate my honeycomb with my honey,
I drank my wine with my milk.

Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!

~ The Song of Songs 4:16-5:1

Christ came to his garden as one conceived of the Holy Spirit. He ate and drank at gatherings to the point that was called a glutton and a drunkard. The people received his ministry as one that resembled a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet his garden was found to be a wild vineyard of death (Isaiah 5:1-2). Christ finally administers and partakes of the bread and wine that signifies his death in private communion. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the final cup awaited him. Jesus sweats as if already pouring out blood; he denies himself when tempted so he would die for his bride. The Eternal Christ held his liquor in drinking the cup of God’s wrath, remaining true to his mission, for he was rather drunk in his intimate acquaintance with his beloved. Noah’s vineyard, representing the post-flood Garden of Eden, made Noah drunk with wine so that his nakedness was prematurely exposed (Genesis 9: 18-28). Jesus was bloodied and naked on the cross, revealing the sins of the world cleansed by baptism, so that the dead wilderness would be resurrected as a garden flowing with springs of living water. The arousal of the wind in 4:16 comes at the time of ripe maturity. The word “awake” or “arouse” is the same word the woman uses in other places to warn the daughters of Jerusalem against a premature arousal of love (2:7, 3:5, 8:4).^[22] When Christ drinks of the cup of maturity, the cup of staggering becomes a cup of delight, a cup for resurrected lovers who are no longer ashamed in their nakedness, for they are clothed by their delight for one another!

Conclusion

Biblical interpretation might be comparable to an onion. While systematic theology guards against stripping God of his transcendent deity through naming his being and attributes and his relationship to created things in providential works of redemption for the glorification of Christ; biblical theology explores the depth of layers to the Bible’s many literal features, showing the vastness of special revelation that emanates the many colours and varieties of which the created world speaks of the Creator. The Song of Songs speaks to all the layers of Scripture, shedding light on the Word as a whole, showing how the Christ of Scripture encompasses, indwells, and puts his stamp on the goodness of the created world. Christ speaks into nature and nature speaks of Christ. Therefore sex is to be enjoyed where it is lawfully given since it speaks of the covenantal goodness of God’s creation and providence to the end of glorification. The volume of spiritual allegory in the reading of the Songs is turned up when all the layers of natural life are enjoyed as revelation from God. From this introduction to the Song of Songs as the Holy of Holies of Scripture, I aim to continue to explore the fullness of Christ’s Scripture in a way that gives meaning to all the layers of spiritual and natural life. The Song of Songs acts as Scripture’s centerpiece because it speaks to the heart of life that gives light to an ever-fruitful eternal glory shared in communion with Christ!

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^[1] Rabbi Akiba, quoted in Francis Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs, ed. David B. Gunn (Sheffield: The Almond Press, 1983), 13-14.

^[2] Iain M. Duguid, Song of Songs, eds. R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & I. M. Duguid (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2016), xviii.

^[3] Mark A. Garcia, “The Unveiled Woman at Table: The Zealous Love of the Song of Songs,” The Order of Reality: Sacred Vocation, 2021. Greystone Theological Institute. https://www.greystoneconnect.org/library/the-order-of-reality-sacred-vocation63773/188194/path/step/158805982/.

^[4] Thomas Watson, The Scriptures. https://www.monergism.com/scriptures-thomas-watson.

^[5] Westminster Assembly, The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition (Philadelphia: William S. Young, 1851), 20.

^[6] Richard M. Davidson, Typology in Scripture (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1981). 118-119.

^[7] Ibid., 116-135.

^[8] Mark A. Garcia, “The Intersection of Tuesday with Eternity,” The Order of Reality: Sacred Vocation, 2021. Greystone Theological Institute. https://www.greystoneconnect.org/library/the-order-of-reality-sacred-vocation-63773/188194/path/step/159289768/.

^[9] Tremper Longman III, Song of Songs (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 36.

^[10] Daniel Akin, God on Sex: The Creator’s Ideas About Love, Intimacy, and Marriage (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2003), 5.

^[11] Origen, The Song of Songs Commentary and Homilies, trans. R.P. Lawson (New York: Newman Press, 1956), 51.

^[12] Origen, The Song of Songs Commentary, 99.

^[13] Landy, Paradoxes of Paradise, 190.

^[14] BibleProject, “Overview: Song of Songs,” 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KC7xE4fgOw.

^[15] Peter Leithart, Alastair Roberts, “Episode 202: Sexuality and Liturgy (Song of Songs),” The Theopolis Podcast, 2019. Theopolis Institute. https://theopolisinstitute.com/podcast/episode-202-sexuality-and-liturgy-song-of-songs/.

^[16] Martin Luther, Works: Vol. 15: Notes on Ecclesiastes, Lectures on the Song of Solomon, Treatise on the Last Words of David, Eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Hilton C. Oswald (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing, 1972), 195.

^[17] Ibid., 196-197.

^[18] Origen, The Song of Songs Commentary, 24.

^[19] John Owen, The works of John Owen, Vol. 2, ed. W. H. Goold (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), 49.

^[20] Garcia, “The Unveiled Woman at the Table.”

^[21] Origen, The Song of Songs Commentary, 22.

^[22] Duguid, Song of Songs, 87.