Why You Shouldn’t Feel Weird About Reading the Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs changed my life—and I believe it can change yours as well.
For many years I couldn’t get past what felt like significant barriers to my understanding and appreciation of the Song of Songs. My thoughts reflected that struggle: Does Jesus really want to know us the way a groom knows his bride? This feels uncomfortable to me, especially as a man. How can I see this theme as something healthy instead of something weird?
Does the rest of the Bible affirm this kind of intimate relationship with Jesus, or is this message isolated to the Song of Songs? In other words, how seriously should I take this perspective? And how do I apply a seemingly allegorical love poem between a man and a woman to my everyday walk with Yeshua (Jesus)? What, if anything, does the Song have to do with my life today?
Serious questions and reservations stood between me and the Song, and I’m sure this is why it has been one of the most neglected books in the Bible throughout history and in our own day.
My view of the Song changed rather suddenly, however, when the Lord knitted my heart to this book in a way I never expected. In December some years back, I asked the Lord what I should focus on in His written Word in the coming new year. I was looking to Him for the next level of revelation He wanted to bring into my life. At that time I sensed the Lord beckoning me to give myself entirely to the study of the Song of Songs. I felt He was going to open up a new mystery to me. So I studied the book every day for fifty-two whole weeks.
Through the Song I have come to understand Jesus’ love for me in a way I didn’t truly see before. The Song of Songs opened up new vistas and shined a great deal of light on the kind of relationship God created for me—and you—to have with Him. I am confident the Holy Spirit will use the Song of Songs to unlock your own journey into divine love, providing personal breakthrough for you as He did for me.
On its face, the Song is simply a love letter or love poem Solomon wrote to the woman he was about to marry, called the Shulamite bride. This was one of more than a thousand songs he wrote as perhaps the most prolific songwriter of his age. The Song of Songs presents three main characters: Solomon, the Shulamite bride, and the daughters of Jerusalem.
My belief, and the belief of many others, is that the Holy Spirit gave the Song of Songs to the church to help us understand Jesus’ love for us. It uses the marriage relationship as a paradigm for the relationship we have entered into with Him both corporately and individually. The Song is a picture, then, of Christ and the church.
Peter affirmed that all Scripture is written by the Holy Spirit. The primary role of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Messiah Jesus and disclose the deep things of Yeshua to us. So it is inconceivable that the Holy Spirit would have given us a book in the Bible that was only about King Solomon’s natural relationship with his wife. Rather, everything in Scripture speaks of Jesus. Men were “moved by the Holy Spirit,” and they spoke and wrote about God.
The entire Word of God finds its ultimate purpose in Yeshua. He is the center focus of the whole Bible. So the Song of Songs must be about Messiah Jesus or it would not be in the Bible. Yes, it is different from other types of books in Scripture. Some biblical books are meant primarily to convey history, some to lay a foundation for doctrine, some to impart wisdom, and still others to teach us how to have proper relationships with one another. But the Song of Songs reveals to us the heart and emotions of God more fully than any other book in the Bible.
To read more from Rabbi Schneider’s ‘A Journey Into Divine Love,’ visit MyCharismaShop.com