Day 206: Song of Songs 1, 2, 3 and 4

Promise me, O women of Jerusalem . . . not to awaken love until the time is right (NLT, Song of Songs 3:5).

This is a repeating charge in Song of Songs. [Don't] awaken love until the time is right. It can be found in chapters 2, 3 and 8. There has been a whole range of opinion regarding the love affair chronicled here. Is it a story of the relationship between God and Israel? Christ and the church? Two young lovers? A king and his bride? Over the years majority opinion has shifted between these options.

In the 1970s, Joseph Dillow wrote a great book called Solomon on Sex – The Biblical Guide to Married Love. He focuses on this repeating verse as the key to unlocking this work of Old Testament wisdom literature [10].

He reads Song of Songs from the perspective of a love story between Solomon the King of Israel and Shulamith, the daughter of a tenant farmer on one of Solomon’s many vineyards. She catches his eye, they fall in love, and their wedding night exploits are chronicled in beautiful poetic language.

Dillow’s objective is to illustrate that God intended sex to be enjoyed within the bonds of marriage. Solomon’s bride charges the women of Jerusalem with that very truth. Promise me, O women of Jerusalem . . . not to awaken love until the time is right. Nowhere is the sexual relationship as delightfully expounded as in this biblical text, and nowhere can that relationship be expressed as beautifully as within the freedom of marriage.

TODAY’S MEDITATION

Thank God for the beautiful gift of sexuality. It’s okay; it was his idea in the first place.