There are some books of the Bible that are rather popular. Christians often read from these books, and preachers often preach from these books. The Song of Solomon is not one of those books. Today, Christians often are confused — and, let us be honest, embarrassed — by the Song of Solomon, and so the book is ignored in our spiritual and devotional lives.

Things could not have been more different for our Reformed ancestors. During the Reformation and the generations immediately thereafter, the Song of Solomon was seen as one of the most devotional, cherished books in the Scriptures. In the twelfth century, a pious monk named Bernard of Clairvaux wrote 86 sermons on the opening chapters of the Song, and partly through those sermons, John Calvin and his theological descendants came to treasure the poignancy of Solomon’s writing.

What is Happening in the Song?⤒🔗

The Song of Solomon is actually a long poem, so its “storyline” can be difficult to ascertain. There are two primary characters in the Song — the king and a Shulamite woman (6:13), most likely a peasant woman from the small village of Shunem. At the start of the book, these two characters are very intensely in love with each other and they long to be married. Over the course of the book, they become married and, in the later chapters of the book, they continue to revel in the love and happiness of their marriage to each other.

While these basic events are simple enough, what do they mean? How are we to understand the Song of Solomon? In our own day, the Song of Solomon often is interpreted as being a song about human love and intimacy. Ultimately, it is seen as a biblical marriage guide and, when it is used, it is used to offer counsel on dating, marriage, and relationships. While the Song of Solomon certainly has much to teach about such things, early Reformed Christians saw it as meaning so much more.

For early Reformed Christians, the Song of Solomon most fundamentally was about the relationship between Jesus and His bride, the church, with the king in the Song representing Jesus and the Shulamite woman representing the church. In the Scriptures, God repeatedly describes His relationship with His people in terms of marriage. In places like Ezekiel 16 and Hosea 1-3, when Israel turns from the Living God, they are described as an unfaithful spouse. In Ephesians 5, after the Apostle Paul offers what appears to be his most detailed discussion of marriage, he says that in all of his discussion, he has been discussing the relationship between Christ and His church. In Revelation 19, the boundless glory that will come at the end of history, when God’s redeemed are finally gathered, body and soul, to Him, is described as the wedding feast of the Lamb — a feast shared by Christ and the people who are His “bride” (Rev. 19:7). When Reformed interpreters coupled this pervasive marriage imagery with the conviction that all of the Old Testament Scriptures spoke of Jesus (Luke 24:27), they came to the settled conclusion that the Song of Solomon was about the relationship between Jesus and His bride, the church. As James Durham, a seventeenth-century Scottish commentator on the Song expressed it: “The divine mystery intended, and set forth here, is the mutual love and spiritual union, and communion that is betwixt Christ and his church.”¹

A Responsible Understanding?←⤒🔗

Many modern commentators deride this sort of interpretation of the Song as “allegorical.” In an allegorical interpretation of Scripture, every detail in the biblical text is assumed to represent something else and thus elaborate meanings can be read into seemingly straightforward passages. The obvious problem with such interpretations is that it is easy for the reader to make a passage mean whatever he wants it to mean, turning elements of a scriptural passage into symbols representing things that they never were really intended to represent.

Anticipating precisely such a criticism, Durham made a distinction between “an allegoric interpretation of scripture, and an exposition of allegoric scripture.”[1]²In the first, a man takes Scripture that never was intended to be allegorical and he interprets it as an allegory. Such a man has abused the Scriptures. He has read his own ideas into God’s Word and sought to give those ideas the sanction of holy authority! Very different from this abuse is “an exposition of allegoric scripture.” Some Scripture was written allegorically and meant to be interpreted and understood allegorically. To offer an exposition of such passages necessarily involves allegorical interpretation, but this is precisely the interpretation that the passage in question was intended to elicit.

In the mind of Durham and other Reformed interpreters, the Song of Solomon was of this second variety. To them, the Song clearly was an allegory, containing material that was either absurd or even dissonant with the rest of Scripture if interpreted literally, and thus the book demanded to be interpreted allegorically. Given the pervasive biblical analogy between Jesus’ relationship with His people and marriage, that allegorical interpretation of the Song had to be an interpretation that saw the Song speaking about Christ and His church. Indeed, as Durham reasoned, only the love that is between Christ and His people could rise to the intensity and ultimate delight that are envisioned in the Song.

The Power of the Song←⤒🔗

Understood in this way, the Song of Solomon became a powerful and popular instrument for Reformed devotion. Particularly among the Puritans, there was an intentional desire to present biblical truth in such a way that it both ministered to the mind and penetrated into the heart, impacting not only the intellect, but the affections, as well. As Richard Sibbes judged, “religion is mainly in the affections,”³and so the Puritans wanted their doctrine to speak to men’s hearts and change their wills from the inside out.

The Song of Solomon did precisely that. Through its palpable love and tender imagery, the Song was uniquely able to speak to the hearts of God’s people and stir them up to warm love for their Savior. As a result, the Puritans wrote treatises on the Song, preached sermons from the Song, and suffused their conversation and writing with imagery drawn directly from the Song. In the Song of Solomon, the Holy Ghost had given the church a book that spoke directly to the affections, and the Puritans were determined to use that gift to nurture the warmth and the love of God’s people.

The Song Today←⤒🔗

Today, we should allow our Reformed ancestors to challenge our understanding and our use of the Song of Solomon. Undoubtedly, the Song has much to teach us about human love and marital intimacy and we should not neglect that very “practical” use of God’s Word. But we must also real­ize that if marriage is meant to reflect the love between Christ and His church (Eph. 5:32), and the Song of Solo­mon is discussing marriage, then the Song of Solomon is telling us, ultimately, about the love between Jesus and His blood-bought Bride. If we miss that meaning, we will have impoverished our own spiritual lives by emptying this book of its greatest theme. Under the imagery of a king and his beloved and loving Shulamite woman, God is painting in vivid colors the love between Jesus and His people.

Herein lies the power of envisioning Jesus’ relationship with His people as a marriage. The imagery reminds us that being a Christian is not, first and foremost, about believing a set list of truths. It is about loving, and being loved by, a Person. The Person of the Husband. As a person, you do not fall in love with doctrinal statements and systems, you fall in love with a person. Your heart gets wrapped up and your soul gets entwined with a person. Not a list of attributes, but a person who makes those attributes sing. That Person is Jesus. In the Song of Solomon, we are reminded that Jesus is radiant. We are reminded that our greatest duty dissolves into our greatest joy as we pursue after Him, and as we love Him.

How does your life stand up before the Song of Solomon today? Do you love Jesus? Not a confession, not a tradition ... but Jesus? I know a lot of facts about James Durham and Richard Sibbes. But I love my wife. Her heart beats in mine. There is no corner of my day that she does not inhabit. Which is more like your posture toward Jesus? Can you list facts about Him; or, having listed those facts, do you love Him? Is He “chiefest among ten thousand” (Song 5:10) to you?

As our Reformed ancestors remind us, in the Song of Solomon, God has given us a book that helps draw us out to love not only the Truth of God, but also the God of Truth. May God be pleased to fill all of us with love for Jesus.