BibleProject | One Story That Leads to JesusSample

Love is in the air. Gentle breezes carry the sweet fragrance of lilies. Herds of deer bounce across green fields. Birdsong echoes from trees, their branches heavy with the season’s ripened figs and other fruits. Lying under a cedar tree’s lofty branches, two lovers embrace on a bed of moss. Their passionate desire for one another might make you blush.

Fresh fruit, lush abundance, unashamed delight between a man and a woman: You’d almost think we are back in the garden of Eden. But what’s the caravan of King Solomon doing here? Are we in Eden? Israel? Someone’s private property?

Song of Songs invites us to consider what love could look like if untainted by sin, selfishness, and shame. On one level, Song of Songs delivers a steamy collection of Hebrew poetry, celebrating the joyful power of physical attraction and exploring the intense desire of lovers seeking deep, true intimacy.

Song of Songs also teems with hyperlinks that weave its love story into the larger story about God, humanity, and the quest to create human beings compelled by love for God and others. So, yes, this is about attraction, sexuality, and human fulfillment through intimate relationships. But by hyperlinking all of that to the larger biblical narrative, the authors suggest that this focused case study on love is also about God’s greater love that will replace humanity’s cold heart of stone with a heart of flesh, one able to love without fail.

We’re left wondering what the world might look like once everything in it transforms and all humanity is compelled solely by love for God and others.

Watch today’s video to learn more about this racy and riveting book, the Song of Songs.

Reflection Questions

• Look at the description of Solomon’s temple decorations in 1 Kings 6:18 and 7:18-19. Do you notice any echoes of this imagery in today’s reading? What do these hyperlinks to the garden-temple reveal about the theme of intimacy with Yahweh in Song of Songs?
• Compare the woman’s desire and search for her lover in Song of Songs to the son’s desire and search for Lady Wisdom in Proverbs 1-9. What similarities and differences do you notice?