Kaiser Jr. - Love by the Book: What the Song of Solomon Says about Sexuality, Romance, and the Beauty of Marriage

ITS ON SEXUALITY, ROMANTIC LOVE,
AND THE BEAUTY OF MARRIAGE

S ome today humorously say, Read or study the Song of Solomon? Im too young to do that! But that remark is as old as what some of the early church fathers such as Origen and Jerome intoned: a person should not read the Song of Solomon until reaching 30 years of age. At the close of the nineteenth century, Rev. E. P. Eddrupp, prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral, said that the Song of Solomon may not be fitted for public reading in a mixed congregation, or even for private reading by the impure in heart.

Meanwhile, in the twenty-first century the whole biblical concept of marriage and family is under massive attack. The Bible has been forgotten or deliberately dropped from our everyday usage as an authority on what a godly marriage is and what a properly functioning family unit looks like.

Mention in todays culture the word marriage to someone who is between 18 and 29 years of age and you might get a blank stare or a question in return: Why would a person want to get married in these times?

Even all too many married couples who attend evangelical churches have stopped being romantic to one another shortly after their weddings! The word romantic, many will add, is a secular word and nothing in Scripture calls for us to be affectionate. Thus, many believing couples have dropped arranging dates with each other. If the truth be told, all too many will confess that their marriages are dull, are boring, and involve a relationship where they just take each other for granted. There are few, if any, occasions where they set aside time to adore, admire, and appreciate parts of Gods creation as a fun portion of their vacation plans, much less adore, admire, or appreciate each other. Instead of a vibrant joy of sharing in the grace of life with each other, a repetitious tedium has set in over the years and nothing can convince either partner that God never intended their married days to be so unpleasant, redundant, and boring.

How did our culture go from the gross immorality of the 1960s, when Joseph Fletcher said if the situation presents itself, just do it, to a culture that substitutes same-sex love for love between spouses? Instead of the intimacy between devoted couples, the rule seems to be that one should do whatever feels good in order to fulfill ones sexual needs. Just dont get encumbered with a lifelong marriage is the word on the streets!

In addition, the June 28, 1969, Stonewall riots in New York became the catalyst for the organization of gay rights groups, which argue that it is a civil right for both men and women to have sex with someone of the same gender and with as many partners as they wish. One can observe the moral collapse of an ethically pure culture right before our very eyes. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah will have nothing that will shock us morally, or that our culture has not imitated and championed in our own day. How will a holy God be able to continue to restrain his hand of judgment, unless there comes a revival of his peopleone that lives out the teaching of Scripture regarding marriage and family? But our Lord has not left us to our own devices on this topic, for both by his presence at the marriage feast of Cana (John 2) and by his teaching in the book of Song of Solomon, he wants us to be well informed on what he expects in these areas.

HOW DOES THE SONG OF SONGS FIT IN THE BIBLE?

Part of our problem comes from the fact that when we approach the Bible, many of us expect it only has to do with our redemption and salvation in Christ. But the Song of Songs deals extensively with another topic apart from redemption in Christ. If this book had as its purpose to point to Christ, then it has to be interpreted allegorically and symbolically, which is what many have done. In the past, the Christian church sang, and some Christians still do, hymns such as Jesus, Rose of Sharon, and The Lily of the Valley, modeled after the metaphors in of the Song of Songs. Yet, did not the apostle Paul say in 2 Timothy 3:1617 that all Scripture is profitable for reproof, correction, and training in righteousness? Where, then, is Scriptures teaching on the purpose, purity, and pleasantness of the use of ones sexual desires and expressions?

The ultimate failure of using allegory to interpret this book of the Bible is the fact that the source of meaning comes from the interpreters imagination and not the Scripture text itself. The usual signals in the text that this book should be taken as allegorical are missing. Thus, as it all too often occurs in allegorical interpretation, the text becomes whatever the interpreter wants it to be. Furthermore, no two allegorists agree on the meanings that each other assigns to these Scriptures, so there is a wide disparity in interpretations of what most texts in this book mean. As a result, allegory does not illuminate the meaning of the text; instead, it tends to obscure it!

For example, the early church father Origen, who mainly introduced and championed the allegorical method, used it with regard to Israels exodus from Egypt. One of the midwives whom Pharaoh had ordered to kill all Hebrew infants was named Puah, which Origen assures us means modest, or blushing. Since the color of blushing is red, her name stands for the shed blood of Christ, which of course was red. Unfortunately, instead of Origen helping us get closer to Christ, he takes us further away from the text, so that in the end the text has nothing to do with its meaning. It was not until the Protestant Reformation that many of the reformers in general abandoned the allegorical interpretation. The efforts to resolve the tensions many saw between the texts literal sense and what was thought to be normative in other parts of Scripture were deemed a failure.