The Story of God: Song of Songs

Listen along as Anthony leads us through the Song of Songs.

Notes/Quotes:

Text: Song Of Songs 
Title: Wonder, Wisdom, & Work
Reading 3:1-5 - Crystal

“Without the Song we would be left with only spare and often negative words about a reality that is crucial to the human experience: love and sex. God in his wisdom has spoken through the poet of the Song to both encourage and warn us about the unquenchable power of love and desire. The Song celebrates the joy of physical touch, the exhilaration of exotic scent, the sweet sound of a lover’s voice, and the taste of another’s lips. The Song is a divine affirmation of love and an acknowledgement of the pain that often accompanies it.” – Tremper Longman

“The woman speaks significantly more than the man does, and her words begin and end the Song. She also uses the pronoun ‘I’ and ‘myself’, along with the phrases ‘my soul’ and ‘my heart’, far more frequently than he does: he hardly talks about himself and engages in little of the self-reflection that she does.”
- Ian Duguid

(Ez. 16:1-22)
4 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. 5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.

6 “And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ 7 I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

8 “When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. 9 Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. 10 I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. 11 And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. 12 And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. 14 And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.

15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore[b] because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be.17 You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore. 18 And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. 19 Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing aroma; and so it was, declares the Lord God. 20 And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter 21 that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? 22 And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood.

(Ez. 16:30-34)
30 “How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, 31 building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square. Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment. 32 Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! 33 Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. 34 So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

"the couple are not called husband and wife, but the centrepiece of the book is a wedding scene that concludes with the consummation of their relationship (3:6 – 5:2). It is in this poem that the man calls the woman ‘bride’ (kallâ) for the first time. The word occurs no fewer than six times in this poem (4:8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 5:1) and nowhere else in the Song, emphatically connecting the sexual experience described here with the appropriate legal status that goes with it.”
- Ian Duguid

 “The direct echo of Genesis 3:16 reveals a redemptive reversal of desire through use of the rare Hebrew word “desire” (Heb. teshuˆ qaˆh). In Genesis, Eve’s desire for Adam indicates a tension and imbalance of power between the created beings, “your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). In the Song, this same word is used of the man toward the woman to communicate a profound mutuality and shared desire: “I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10). Mutuality in terms of male and female relationships was God’s intention all along.”
- Katlyn Richards

“To miss that connection between human and divine love, which allegorical interpretation makes instinctively, even if sometimes inappropriately, is to miss something profound and important. The awesome power and unique nature of human love within marriage is precisely what makes it such a perfect analogy for the relationship between the bride of Christ and her husband, or between the individual believer and God. The original human one-flesh intimacy in the garden was never simply about Adam and Eve enjoying each other’s company. It was intended to reflect an image of the nature of God himself in his intertrinitarian relations – two distinct and different people who become one flesh, conjoined forever. This same intimacy will ultimately be extended to the bride of Christ by her Saviour; as a result, application to the relationship of Christ and the church flows naturally from the Song of Songs, in a metaphor designed by God himself (Eph. 5:22–33). Of course, the metaphor of bride and bridegroom is an analogy, as are all metaphors. This frees the interpreter from trying to find forced spiritual significance in every poetic detail of the text. But the metaphor is a rich and profound mystery that will repay much pondering.” —Ian Duguid