Bible Experiment Song of Solomon
As a review, I’ve been going through every single book of the Bible and reading each and every word, and then writing about the book… the good, the bad, the indifferent. It’s been an enlightening experience all in all. Harder than I thought, and yet a really fascinating exercise overall. When one reads, and writes about a topic it really helps you internalize it and grapple with it.
The Song of Solomon
I’m going to be really really honest here. I’ve read the Bible before from beginning to end – but with the Song of Solomon (or the Song of Songs, whatever you take to calling it) it sort of gives me the heebs. If you remember back to The Psalms, I have never really been comfortable with that book, and talked about that discomfort in detail when I covered it. But its mainly because it gets pretty touchy feely so fast. Well, The Song of Solomon is way way worse. Maybe you get into the poetry of it, and the love language of it, but I have never really enjoyed it. Let’s jump into an example really fast from chapter 1, so you can see what I’m talking about here:
“He – How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes are doves.She – How handsome you are, my beloved!
Oh, how charming!
And our bed is verdant.”
Our bed is VERDANT? Seriously? Wow. And the whole book is just like this. Like literally, beginning to end. I just reread the book to be certain I didn’t miss something somewhere where King Solomon landed the plane somewhere along the line. But no.
But if I find a tank of oxygen, and slow down a quick second… we might just make sense of this book after all. We can do this. I promise.
Song of Solomon Poetry
I adore Shakespearian Sonnets – as do Hallmark card authors the world over. You love them too, you probably just don’t know it. This Song of Solomon book can’t be that much different than that, right? “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” or “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments”. Can verdant beds be that far off?
I would even go so far as to say that Shakespeare and anyone that has ever written a sonnet pays homage to Solomon and his book of Songs. Right? Love poems are a body of literature in and of themselves. They are legitimate for so many reasons, but mainly they are legit here because the validate the single greatest God given institution… which is marriage.
The Institution of Marriage
In our current culture we have all holistically walked away from the importance of marriage. Everyone of us have. We see it as a convenience from a tax standpoint, and from a legal institution. But otherwise, marriage is all about a courthouse document that could arbitrarily changed tomorrow afternoon on a whim. Why is that? Because our society today is more about convenience than about obligations caused by promises we have made, oaths that we have sworn.
Above, I have included the graphic detailing out the divorce rates of the world. Europe, the U.S., and Canada… all have abandoned the institution of marriage completely. When upwards of 60% of a culture divorces at least once, you know that marriage as an institution is quite dead. I know that marriage is hard. I have had anything but the perfect marriage. And yet, my wife and I have sworn to stand by each other through sickness, and health… to stand by each other through stupidity and lameness… to stand by each other no matter what life throws at us.
The Song of Solomon is a reminder of the importance of the institution of marriage. We see a couple go from dating, and the butterflies of first meeting, through marriage, and on throughout the rest of their lives. And it is their perspective of adoration for their spouse that we should all take away from this book. A perspective of love, respect, and even adulation. When was the last time you had ANYONE, let alone your spouse, thought this about you:
Turn your eyes away from me,
For they have confused me;
Your hair is like a flock of goats
That have descended from Gilead.
Goats descending from Gilead!? Come on, you have got to try that on your girlfriend or spouse tonight. Babe, you are so amazing, your hair is phenomenal… its like goats descending from Gilead I tell you. Goats from Gilead. I’m sure it’ll land. Guarantee it. But you get my point, when was the last time that held you in such high esteem? What with pornography so easily available to us all. With affairs just a Craig’s List away? Why would we hold someone in such high esteem when we could move on to something else in a heartbeat?
And yet, is pornography filling that void in your soul? Nope. What about that last affair you had? Satisfying? No… no no no. Definitely not. But to esteem another? Can you imagine what that could be like? Ok, so I’m getting convicted personally about esteeming my own wife. I do an ok job, but I fail in the small things. And I need to let her know that she’s important regardless of the circumstance or the stress of the day.
The Larger Love Story
From day one of our walk from beginning of the Bible to now I have stated that the Bible is simple really to understand. The Bible is the love story between our creator and ourselves. He crafted and formed us, and we spat in His face and sinned. We walked away. And the rest of the story is all about His work to reconcile us to Himself. Nothing that you have done will reconcile you to Him, except to believe that He loves you and is reconciling you to Himself through Christ’s death on the cross. He has done it all, and this Bible is all about His story in our lives. There are books in this Bible about you and me. We haven’t gotten to them yet. But they are there. Promise. And in those books He tells of how the future times will come together and the story will be completed, and we will be restored to Him.
But in this specific book – in the Song of Solomon – we are not only seeing a picture of what it is like to see a good marriage… but also a picture of what a real relationship looks like with God. Do you see intimacy as having any sort of place in your relationship with our Creator? If not, maybe you should rethink. Because I know that really, that is all God is striving for in His relationship with you. Do you just go to Him with things you need? Is that a sign of a good relationship? Do you have a “friend” that only calls you up when he needs something? That gets old really fast, right? What would it look like if your relationship with God was perpetually connecting throughout the day? If you were talking about everything? What if you gave him praise like the people in these verses esteem each other? I’m thinking that that is what God is looking for in a relationship with you, and nothing else.