What the book is
The Song of Songs, “the greatest of songs” (1:1), is a series of love poems. A young woman and a man speak to each other and about each other, longing when they are apart and delighting when they are together, in images drawn from vineyards and gardens, gazelles and doves, spices, wine and the countryside of Israel in spring. A group of young women, the women of Jerusalem, sometimes answer. Three times the woman tells them not to rouse love before its time (2:7; 3:5; 8:4). Near the end comes the book’s great statement about love:
Set me as a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as death, its passion as relentless as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a mighty flame.
How it has been read
The Song never mentions God directly, except perhaps in one word in 8:6, and it speaks frankly of the body and of desire. For centuries Jewish readers have also read it as a picture of the love between God and Israel, and it is read at Passover. Christian readers, from Origen and Bernard of Clairvaux onward, have read it as a picture of Christ and the church, or of God and the soul. Most modern readers take it first as what it plainly is, love poetry between a man and a woman, a celebration of human love as God’s good gift, and many also keep the older readings alongside. The draft translates the poems as love poems and does not add the allegory to the text.
Who wrote it, and when
The title says the Song “is Solomon’s”, and Solomon is named in it several times (1:5; 3:7–11; 8:11–12). The Hebrew can mean that he wrote it, that it was written for him, or that it is about him, and the draft marks the decision uncertain. Some scholars date the poems to the time of the early kings; many think the collection took its final form much later, after the exile, because of its late Hebrew and some Persian and Greek loanwords.
How the book is laid out
The Song is not a story told in order, and readers divide it in different ways. One common outline:
- Longing and first meeting (1:1–2:7).
- Spring, and the search in the night (2:8–3:5).
- The royal procession, and the bride as a garden (3:6–5:1).
- The second search, and the lover described (5:2–6:3).
- The beauty of the beloved (6:4–8:4).
- Love as strong as death (8:5–14).
How Open Word Bible translates the Song of Songs
Lines of poetry. The text keeps each poem in its lines, at every level and in every language. See Hebrew poetry and parallelism.
Who is speaking. The Hebrew has no speaker’s names, but it often shows by its forms whether the words are spoken by or to a man or a woman. Where it is unclear who speaks, as in 1:4, a decision says so and the footnote gives the other reading.
Dark and lovely (1:5). The woman says she is “dark and lovely”. The Hebrew joining word can also mean “but”, as in the “black, but comely” of older Bibles; the draft marks the decision uncertain and footnotes “black but lovely”.
Do not stir up love (2:7). The refrain means “do not rouse love before it is ready”, not “do not disturb the lovers”, and the footnote gives the other reading.
A mighty flame (8:6). The last word of 8:6 ends in a short form of God’s name, so it may mean “a flame of the LORD”, the only place the Song may name God, or simply “a mighty flame”, as Hebrew can use the divine name to mean “very great”. The draft says “a mighty flame” and footnotes “a flame of the LORD”.