Sunday – Poetry

Reading – Song of Solomon 3-4

Highlight Verse:

“Come out to see King Solomon, young women of Jerusalem. He wears the crown his mother gave him on his wedding day, his most joyous day.”
‭‭Song of Songs‬ ‭3‬:‭11‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Can we be honest? This was a tough reading to comment on.

Part of me wants to compare the love the young man and woman have for each other to the love we have for God.

Problem is, today’s reading borders on erotic. Awkward, but appropriate for a husband and wife.

And today’s highlight verse does bring the subject around to marriage for Solomon.

I admit that is a little bit confusing since Solomon had over 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Many, if not most theologians believe that Solomon had only one wife that he was truly in love with. She would be the subject of this romance.

The others were mostly political arrangements, though that didn’t stop him from having children with them.

That seems like a bizarre practice today but in that time and place, this was normal practice for a successful king.

Whether that was moral or not, the main point I see here is that God’s ideal is for marriage to be one man and one woman for life.

Solomon did not live the ideal and he ended up paying the consequences for that later in his life.

But when he wrote this it was clear that he was smitten by only one.

Many today have come short of the ideal of one spouse for life.

As my first wife left me for someone else, and I am now remarried, I cannot claim a high ground.

But I can claim a singularly devoted love for my wife now.

Though, for some reason, Solomon’s awesome lines about her hair being like a flock of sheep and cheeks like pomegranates didn’t have the desired effect on her.

Have you found the love of your life?
Are you fully devoted to her/him?