I recently finished reading a pre-release of Patrick Schreiner’s The Four Senses of Scripture. It was a wonderful book about recovering the four senses for our modern hermeneutic. That’s another topic for another time, though I would recommend the book when it is published in August. What it sparked me to write about was considering again how the Song of Songs might be read as Christian Scripture and how the spiritual senses might point us toward a better understanding of Christ’s love for the Church.
I think many of us shy away from reading the book in general or feel awkward trying to see any meaning in it beyond a celebration of the love between a man and a woman. Perhaps you see all allegorical readings as illegitimate. Wherever you are at in your relationship with the Song of Songs, I hope that you will be edified by reflecting on how Song of Songs might be read as Christian Scripture.
Preliminary Considerations: Possible Struggles
More than any other book, I think many of us in the modern era have struggled with what to do with the Song of Songs. Why is it in the canon? What is its actual purpose? Why does the Bible contain such an erotically charged book? In some sense, I believe our struggle with the book is twofold:
First, we may have adopted a de facto desupernaturalized reading of Scripture. Historically, the Christian interpretive tradition has read the Song of Songs as an allegory of Christ’s love for the Church. I have known many to scoff at this tradition, myself included; how could it ever be an allegory of Christ’s love for the church when it is completely separate from the New Testament? Or so the thinking may go.
Second, it may be that our sex-saturated culture has led us to consider anything sexually charged to be inappropriate in relation to God. It might be that we would be weirded out by the language and having it apply to Christ and the Church.
Now let me address these two struggles (which are really just a reflection of my own struggles with the book).
I have become convinced that reading the Song of Songs as only a celebration of marriage and the love between a man and a woman does not do justice to the text either canonically or as Christian Scripture. If the Song of Songs is God-breathed Scripture, that means that its ultimate author is divine; the words of the text may have reference beyond what the human author intended. It is irrelevant whether the human author had any vision of Christ and the Church; what is relevant is whether the Holy Spirit intended it to be read that way.
That we have warrant to read the Song of Songs in a spiritual sense as applying to the Church is found in the fact of the extensive use of marriage language throughout both the Old and New Testaments. There are the obvious negatives of using the language of Israel “whoring” after other gods or committing spiritual adultery (e.g., Ex. 34:15–16; Judg. 2:17; Jer. 3:1–10; Ez. 16:8–58; Ez. 23:1–49), yet there are many positive uses of marriage language. We read of God being as a husband to his people: Isaiah tells Israel that “your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name” (Is. 54:5), and he proclaims that “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Is. 62:5). The marriage of Hosea to unfaithful Gomer serves as an analogy of God’s love for unfaithful Israel; though Israel had been unfaithful, the Lord declares, “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (Hos. 2:19–20). John the Baptist describes Jesus “the bridegroom” (John 3:29)—a description Jesus also applies to himself (Mark 2:19–20)— and the Church is spoken of as the “Bride of Christ” (Eph. 5:25–32; Rev. 19:7). History is moving towards is telos at the marriage supper of the Lamb when Christ and his bride will be united forevermore (Rev. 19:9; 21:2–22:5). The language is too wide-ranging to ignore, and thus it gives us good warrant to use the Song of Songs to illuminate the reality of Christ’s relationship to his people. Who is the telos of Scripture? Christ is. Thus if Christ is the telos of Scripture, and if he is described as the bridegroom and the Church as the bride, then we have warrant to read the Song of Songs as canonical Scripture that points forward to a greater reality than even the human author ever intended.
As to finding the language of the Song of Songs inappropriate to apply to God, that is likely more of an “us” problem than anything else. It is more of our own personal discomfort with the erotic nature of the Song of Songs than with Scripture labelling it inappropriate in my own estimation. As pointed out above, God is perfectly fine with applying the language of marriage to his relationship to his people. And what is incredibly central to the marriage between a man and a woman? The sexual union. If a husband and wife’s sexual union were inappropriate in some analogous way to God’s relationship to his people, then I do not believe he would have employed marriage language so extensively. If we are to understand Christ’s relationship to his people as analogous to a husband to a wife, then that analogy must be allowed to stand in all its significance. Let us put aside a prudishness that Scripture does not share.
With those preliminary notes out of the way, allow us to consider some ways that the marriage imagery of Scripture in general and the text of the Song of Songs in particular might help us better understand God’s love for his people.
The Union of Man and Woman in the Song of Songs
We as Christians know that God loves his people. After all, the most famous verse of the Bible (at least in our American culture) is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” We are familiar with the phrase that “God is love” (1 John 4:16). But speaking from experience, it can be hard to fully grasp what it means that Christ loves his people. We might be inclined to view it as the significant love of a man who lays down his life for his people or his friends (cf. John 15:13); that is love in no small degree, but it does not necessarily need to be a warm love. I think it is the full warmth of God’s love for his people that we struggle most to grasp. And that is why I believe God uses the analogy of marriage to help us grasp that warmth.
Obviously, marriage is far more than the sexual union of a man and a woman, but it is certainly not less than it. Because the longing for the beloved and desire for the sexual union are the main themes of the Song of Songs, I give it primary focus here.
The Song is full of longing; the lovers await the proper time when they might consummate their love. That they await the proper time is seen in the refrain “stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (Song 2:7; 3:5; 8:4), yet there is longing and desire for the day of consummation: “A sound! My beloved is knocking” (5:2); “I sought him, but I could not find him” (5:6); “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am sick with love” (5:8); “Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit” (7:8); “Let us go out early to the vineyards… there I will give you my love” (7:12); “If I found you outside, I would kiss you, and none would despise me” (8:1). Lovers longing to be united is a good thing; the Song of Songs lets us celebrate the longing that a husband and wife have for one another.
No (healthy) engaged couple only looks forward to the wedding ceremony or wedding dinner. Those are only preludes to what is truly anticipated: the wedding night. “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me” (7:10). They look forward to the time when they together might be naked and unashamed, fully exposed, fully knowing and fully known, enjoying the pleasures of their new one-flesh union. In the arms of their beloved they ultimately wish to be. “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” (5:1).
When a man looks with desire at his wife, that is a good thing. When a woman entices her husband, that is pure and lovely. When husband and wife express their love for one another through their sexual union, that is holy and right. But the sexual union does not terminate on itself; it points toward something greater. It is a shadow of things to come; in Christ we find the substance of full joy.
The Union of Christ and the Church in the Song of Songs
Those of us who are married understand experientially the yearning, the anticipation, the excitement, and the joy described in the Song of Songs. That experiential knowledge is what I believe makes a spiritual reading of the Song of Songs valuable; it provides us a point of reference to better grasp the significance of the union of Christ with his Church.
Husbands, how did you rejoice over your wife on your wedding day? Wives, how did your husband rejoice over you? Singles, how have you seen brides and bridegrooms rejoice over each other? Scripture tells us that in that same way, God rejoices over his people: “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Is. 62:5). The beaming face of the bridegroom as he beholds his beautiful bride is analogous to the way God loves and rejoices over his people whom he has redeemed. What a thought!
In the same way, the Song of Songs points toward the tender and passionate love that Christ has for his bride, the Church. Already, Christ has “[given] himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25–27). He has beautified her and prepared her for their yet future wedding. Does he not also love and desire his bride? “Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!” (Song 1:15). The love Jesus has for his Church is not cold, but warm and tender. It is no stale and grumbling form of sacrificial love; it is one that truly delights in his people (Is. 62:4). A husband desires and delights in his wife; in some sort of analogous way, Christ also desires and delights in his Church.
In some way, the Church can say now, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song 6:3). We have been bought at great price and given the Holy Spirit as a seal and guarantee of our inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13–14). But we live in the already and the not yet. As Paul says, “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). There is the joy of the now, but the joy is as of the betrothed; it is incomplete. It is like the lovers who yearn for their full union.
How might the longing of the lovers for their union reflect Christ and the Church? In that the Church longs for her consummation at the wedding supper of the Lamb! We await the Lord’s coming with the same anticipation of the bride in the Song of Songs who is awaiting union with her lover. We long for and await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:7). The Bride in Revelation calls, “Come!” (Rev. 22:17) just as bride in the Song calls, “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices” (Song 8:14). The Church yearns for the day when “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God,” when we “will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thes. 4:16–17). On that day, the Church may cry like the bride:
The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away” (Song 2:8–13).
A Historical Interpretation
Now if my own words have not stirred you in any way, perhaps the words of the great twelfth-century monk Bernard of Clairvaux might have some effect. The text that first made me seriously rethink how I read the Song of Songs was Bernard’s On Loving God. Consider this excerpt and note how warmly he may speak of the love of Christ for his Church and the love that the Church ought to have for Christ:
The faithful know how much need they have of Jesus and Him crucified; but though they wonder and rejoice at the ineffable love made manifest in Him, they are not daunted at having no more than their own poor souls to give in return for such great and condescending charity. They love all the more, because they know themselves to be loved so exceedingly; but to whom little is given the same loves little (Luke 7.47). Neither Jew nor pagan feels the pangs of love as does the Church, which says, ‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love’ (Cant. 2.5). She beholds King Solomon, with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals; she sees the Only-begotten of the Father bearing the heavy burden of His Cross; she sees the Lord of all power and might bruised and spat upon, the Author of life and glory transfixed with nails, smitten by the lance, overwhelmed with mockery, and at last laying down His precious life for His friends. Contemplating this the sword of love pierces through her own soul also and she cried aloud, ‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.’ The fruits which the Spouse gathers from the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden of her Beloved, are pomegranates (Cant. 4.13), borrowing their taste from the Bread of heaven, and their color from the Blood of Christ. She sees death dying and its author overthrown: she beholds captivity led captive from hell to earth, from earth to heaven, so ‘that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth’ (Phil. 2.10). The earth under the ancient curse brought forth thorns and thistles; but now the Church beholds it laughing with flowers and restored by the grace of a new benediction. Mindful of the verse, ‘My heart dances for joy, and in my song will I praise Him,’ she refreshes herself with the fruits of His Passion which she gathers from the Tree of the Cross, and with the flowers of His Resurrection whose fragrance invites the frequent visits of her Spouse.
Then it is that He exclaims, ‘Behold you are fair, My beloved, yea pleasant: also our bed is green’ (Cant. 1.16). She shows her desire for His coming and whence she hopes to obtain it; not because of her own merits but because of the flowers of that field which God hath blessed. Christ who willed to be conceived and brought up in Nazareth, that is, the town of branches, delights in such blossoms. Pleased by such heavenly fragrance the bridegroom rejoices to revisit the heart’s chamber when He finds it adorned with fruits and decked with flowers—that is, meditating on the mystery of His Passion or on the glory of His Resurrection.
The tokens of the Passion we recognize as the fruitage of the ages of the past, appearing in the fullness of time during the reign of sin and death (Gal. 4.4). But it is the glory of the Resurrection, in the new springtime of regenerating grace, that the fresh flowers of the later age come forth, whose fruit shall be given without measure at the general resurrection, when time shall be no more. And so it is written, ‘The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth’ (Cant. 2.11 f); signifying that summer has come back with Him who dissolves icy death into the spring of a new life and says, ‘Behold, I make all things new’ (Rev. 21.5). His Body sown in the grave has blossomed in the Resurrection (I Cor. 15.42); and in like manner our valleys and fields which were barren or frozen, as if dead, glow with reviving life and warmth.
The Father of Christ who makes all things new, is well pleased with the freshness of those flowers and fruits, and the beauty of the field which breathes forth such heavenly fragrance; and He says in benediction, ‘See, the smell of My Son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed’ (Gen. 27.27). Blessed to overflowing, indeed, since of His fullness have all we received (John 1.16). But the Bride may come when she pleases and gather flowers and fruits therewith to adorn the inmost recesses of her conscience; that the Bridegroom when He comes may find the chamber of her heart redolent with perfume.
So it behoves us, if we would have Christ for a frequent guest, to fill our hearts with faithful meditations on the mercy He showed in dying for us, and on His mighty power in rising again from the dead. To this David testified when he sang, ‘God spoke once, and twice I have also heard the same; that power belongs unto God; and that You, Lord, are merciful (Ps. 62.11f). And surely there is proof enough and to spare in that Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification, and ascended into heaven that He might protect us from on high, and sent the Holy Spirit for our comfort. Hereafter He will come again for the consummation of our bliss. In His Death He displayed His mercy, in His Resurrection His power; both combine to manifest His glory.
The Bride desires to be stayed with flagons and comforted with apples, because she knows how easily the warmth of love can languish and grow cold; but such helps are only until she has entered into the bride chamber. There she will receive His long-desired caresses even as she sighs, ‘His left hand is under my head and His right hand embraces me’ (Cant. 2.6). Then she will perceive how far the embrace of the right hand excels all sweetness, and that the left hand with which He at first caressed her cannot be compared to it. She will understand what she has heard: ‘It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing’ (John 6.63). She will prove what she has read: ‘My memorial is sweeter than honey, and my inheritance than the honey-comb’ (Ecclus. 24.20). What is written elsewhere, ‘The memorial of Your abundant kindness shall be shown’ (Ps. 145.7), refers doubtless to those of whom the Psalmist had said just before: ‘One generation shall praise Your works unto another and declare Your power’ (Ps. 145.4). Among us on the earth there is His memory; but in the Kingdom of heaven His very Presence. That Presence is the joy of those who have already attained to beatitude; the memory is the comfort of us who are still wayfarers, journeying towards the Fatherland.1
Conclusion
If you have been in the habit of reading the Song of Songs as merely a celebration of a man and woman’s love, I would urge you to consider how it might inform your understanding of Christ’s relation to his Church. If you are weirded out by the language of the Song of Songs, I would exhort you to consider the prevalence of marriage imagery in the Bible and to ask whether your aversion is based on Scripture or personal tastes. If you don’t believe it is valid to read the Song of Songs spiritually, ponder how the book might be read canonically in light of Christ and whether it is reasonable to assume that the divine author might not have intended significance beyond what the human author intended.
Ever since I first read Bernard of Clairvaux, I have become more convinced over time that we should read the Song of Songs as Christian Scripture and allow it to inform our understanding of God’s love for us. Marriage imagery is significant, and it in many ways points toward the warmest, tenderest, and most affectionate kind of love that we know as humans. If you’re married, you remember the joy of young love, of longing to always be in your beloved’s presence, of the anticipation and excitement of the wedding night, and of the joy that comes in the embrace of the beloved. Depending on how long you have been married, you may also know of the mature love of marriage, of the sacrifice, self-giving, and commitment required when initial infatuation fades, and also the joys of the bonds of love and intimacy that bind you together. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” That is a marvelous truth. The mature love is there, yes, but there is a way in which God’s love is analogous to those early and exciting days. I think that aspect is what I needed the Song of Songs to help me grasp.
And more than that, it helps point toward the greater reality that the sexual union of man and woman is a shadow of: the eternal union of Christ with his Church. The Song of Songs shows that those days of longing look forward to an ultimate fulfillment at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Of course, marriage imagery does not exhaust the pictures of God’s love for us, nor does the Song of Songs exhaust the marriage imagery. Yet it illuminates that imagery, giving a tangible way of understanding the tender, warm, and passionate love of Christ for his Church while also giving us clear parallels to how we as the Church live in eager anticipation of the bridegroom’s return. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” I pray this has been an edifying read for you. It was an edifying write for me.
- Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God 3. I have lightly updated the language in the translation from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. ↩︎
