Title: 13
Author: Joe G
Last saved by: Auth User
Company: GDC

© 2005 Joe Griffin		05-07-31-A.CC02-479 /

Song of Solomon: Introduction: A Poem Celebrating Marital Sex of Right Man-Right Woman; Act I: Shulammite Desires Her Shepherd Lover’s Kiss, 1:2a

D.	The Song of Solomon: Introduction:
1.	There are several ways that theologians have interpreted this book.  One of them is to assume Solomon is the right-man for the Shulammite woman.  Solomon is interpreted as representing the Lord and the Shulammite as the nation Israel.
2.	We will approach it from another perspective.  We will discover that the love poem is better viewed as Solomon’s confession of being a cad.  He used women and had no regard for them as individuals, as citizens of Israel, or as members of God’s Chosen People.
3.	We have done enough study in Ecclesiastes to know that Solomon spent quite a long time in reversionism, so much that once he recovered he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write of his failures during that period.
4.	A part of those failures involved his exploits in sexual lust where he took extreme advantage of so many women.  This book displays Solomon’s return to reality.  He has constantly longed for the perfect woman to complement him but during all of his intraharem affairs none of them brought him happiness.
5.	He documents how he was riveted by the very appearance of the Shulammite woman and sought desperately to bring her into his royal bedroom.
6.	The Shulammite is able to mentally separate herself from Solomon until her Shepherd Lover can arrive and spirit her away to safety through physical separation.
7.	 This story is also typological.  We are able to not only see the relationship of the Lord to the nation Israel but also to His church.
8.	This latter application was a mystery to the Old Testament’s Jewish theologians.  They accurately saw the image of divine love for the people of Israel but were not allowed to discern that Solomon’s poem had another and more powerful illustration that would be hidden until the Church Age.
9.	The Song of Solomon is a Hebrew poem written as a five-act opera:
			Act I:		SOS 1:2 – 3:5	
			Act II:	SOS 3:6 – 3:11
			Act III:	SOS 4:1 – 7:9
			Act IV:	SOS 7:10 – 8:4
			Act V:	SOS 8:5 – 8:14
10.	The first verse of the book contains its official title and its composer:
Song of Solomon 1:1 -		The Song of Songs which belongs to Solomon.
11.	We are using the title that appears in many English Bibles although the NIV and NET Bibles use Song of Songs.  The latter expresses the idea that of all the poetry written this is the ultimate composition among them.
12.	Before we move into a verse-by-verse, act-by-act analysis of The Song of Songs, some introductory information about the subject of this book will prepare us for what’s ahead:
Radmacher, Earl D.  (gen. ed.).  Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary.  (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), 793‑94:
The Song of Solomon celebrates the beauty and intimacy of married love in a narrative poem.  It teaches that lasting marriage requires dedication, commitment, and strong loyalty between husband and wife.  The Song also presents an idealized picture of how human love can be expressed under God’s blessing.  This is a very important issue.  Some critics have claimed that Christianity’s standards for marriage ignore or undervalue sexual relationships.  But the Song of Solomon refutes this.  It reiterates the biblical admonition against sex outside of marriage, but it also affirms that God not only approves of, but also encourages, sexual pleasure within marriage.  (p. 793)
The genre or literary form of the Song of Solomon is unique in the Bible.  It is a lyric idyll [Lyric: a fairly short poem expressing the personal mood, feeling, meditation of a single speaker.  Idyll: a short poem describing an incident of country life in terms of idealized innocence and contentment.  (Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, 125, 106)], a type of love song.
The Song of Solomon provides an example of how God created male and female to live in happiness and fulfillment.  People are created as sexual beings.  It would be wrong to suggest that the full experience of our humanity is impossible apart from sexual union in marriage, since this would disqualify the widowed, divorced, and celibate.  At the same time, God ordained marriage from the beginning of creation: man and woman were to become one flesh (Genesis 2:25).
Because of this emphasis on human love, this book presents an extraordinary variety of expressions of love, perhaps the richest selection in all Hebrew Scripture.  But within this celebration of love, the book condemns unchaste relations outside of marriage—and in particular, sexual experimentation before marriage.  Indeed, this book may contain the Bible’s strongest argument for chastity before marriage.  We cannot ignore the sexual content of the book, but we can appreciate the context in which it is placed—marriage.  The Song of Solomon is necessary not only for the married but also for young people who want to understand God’s design for marriage.  (p. 794)
13.	It will be our purpose to examine the literal application of this book in order to identify principles by which any unmarried young person can identify his or her right person.
14.	In addition, we will systematically note how the book reveals through the relationship of the Shulammite woman with her Shepherd Lover the church’s relationship to Jesus Christ.
	E.	The Song of Solomon: Act I (1:2 – 3:5) 
		Scene: The North of Israel
shulammite woman [SW], daughters of jerusalem [DJ], king solomon [KS]
Solomon’s virgins, the Daughters of Jerusalem, are sent to recruit the Shulammite into the king’s harem.
Song of Solomon [SOS] 1:2a -	[SW]  “May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!”
1.	We will learn early that the Shulammite has a tremendous inventory of principles in her stream of consciousness.  Part of this inventory contains norms and standards that define her as a person.  She is a single virgin who is devoted to the Lord.
2.	She subscribes to the standards of a chaste life which His Word demands but at the same time she has amorous desires for the Shepherd Lover who her soul has identified as her right man.
3.	Her loyalty to the Shepherd Lover while being recruited by the Daughters of Jerusalem portrays the ideal relationship that the mature believer has to Jesus Christ while being challenged by the agents provocateurs of the sinful nature.
4.	It is by means of doctrine plus an unfailing love and devotion to the Shepherd Lover that enables the Shulammite to continuously repulse the duplicitous advances of the Daughters of Jerusalem and later by King Solomon himself who represents her sinful nature.
5.	You will note that the means by which her body is protected from the solicitations of Solomon is doctrine in her soul where also resides her fragrance of memories of her Shepherd Lover.
6.	Even though he is absent he is present in her soul and as a result she is protected physically by him. 
7.	It is because of these thoughts that she is able to maintain a relaxed mental attitude.  She is under control at all times.  She never insults the king or speaks in a way that shows disrespect to the leader of the nation.
8.	However, with great savoir faire she is able to reject his advances as well as those of his coterie of virgins who have been dispatched to bewitch her into joining his harem.

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