Wisdom & Poetry · Old Testament
Song of Solomon
c. 960 BC
- Section
- Wisdom & Poetry · Old Testament
- Events span
- c. 960 BC
- Written
- c. 960 BC
- Author
- Solomon
The Song of Solomon is a lyrical celebration of love between a bride and her beloved, poetry of longing, delight, and devotion. It has long been read also as a picture of the love between God and his people, or Christ and the church.
Historical setting: Set in Solomon's reign, the united monarchy at its cultural height.
Key themes
- Married love and desire
- Longing and devotion
- The beauty of covenant love
- Love as strong as death
- God's design for intimacy
The song's movement
- The bride longs for her beloved and delights in his love
- "My beloved is mine, and I am his" — the lovers express mutual devotion
- The bride dreams of seeking and finding her beloved in the night
- The beloved praises the bride's beauty as they come together in marriage
- The lovers seek, lose, and joyfully find one another again
- Love is declared "strong as death"; many waters cannot quench it
Key lessons
- Romantic and physical love between husband and wife is God’s good gift, celebrated in Scripture without shame. Song 4
- This love is exclusive and mutual, a covenant belonging (“my beloved is mine, and I am his”) rather than fleeting desire, and worth awaiting in its proper time. Song 2:7, 16
- The church has long read the Song as a picture of the love between God and his people, and Christ and his bride, lifting human love toward the greater love it mirrors. Song 8
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.”
Critical scholarship view
Where mainstream critical scholarship dates or attributes this book differently from the traditional view above.
- Written
- c. 5th–3rd century BC
- Author
- Anonymous; a later anthology of love poems