Bible in a YearSample

Song of Songs is a book so erotic that Hebrew boys weren’t allowed to read it until they were in their 30s. Here’s why:

-The Song of Solomon is named the “Song of Songs” in the Hebrew scriptures as well as the Latin Vulgate; John Wycliffe added “Solomon” to the title of the book in his 14th-century translation.

-This book is canonically the last of the poetic books and the last of the “wisdom literature” of the Old Testament. Solomon unironically contributes three of these five wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon).

-Traditional interpretation is that the book is about the romantic, sexual love between a man and his wife. A different view that arrived in the 1st century makes the case that the book is an allegorical love story between God and Israel, or Christ and His church—this is a theological interpretation and does not come from the text itself.