The Winter is Over: A Reading of Song of Solomon

There are certain places in the Hebrew Scriptures where it sort of feels like you’re brushing up against something that none of us has ever seen, and yet it’s deeply familiar, almost archetypal nonetheless: a glimpse of the world not as it is, but as it could, or should, or might someday be.  Isaiah 2:4 is such a place, with its oracle about the nations streaming to the mountain of the Lord, learning his ways and beating their swords into plowshares; Isaiah 11:6 is another such place, with its description of the lion laying down with the fattened calf and the little child leading them; so too is Psalm 46 and its vision of a river “whose streams make glad the city of God.”

The Hebrew word for this “glimpse of the world not as it is but as it should be” is shalom.  The word shalom simply means “peace,” but when it’s used in this particular, lion-lie-down-with-the-lamb sense of the term, it means more than just the laying down of arms or the end of conflict.  Shalom is a deeply-rooted, broadly-spreading vision of perfect Peace, where everything in the Creation is in its right place in relation to the Creator, and everything is in life-giving harmony with everything else, because it’s in the place, and functioning in the way, that the Creator intended. 

Theologian Conrelius Plantigna describes it in this way:  “In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes in the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.”

Besides stirring the imagination generally, this theologically rich concept of Shalom also provides us a helpful way into one of the more difficult books of the Bible, that collection of vivid Hebrew love poems known as the Song of Solomon, with its entwined lovers whispering sensual odes to one another’s beauty and grace and charm.

Because if we’re listening for them, we won’t get very far into this song of songs before we start to hear echoes of shalom—pictures, that is to say, of the creation flourishing with wholeness and delight.  This is actually part of the artistry of the Song: the sensual joy which the lovers find in one another’s arms is matched by descriptions of the creation itself, joyfully and sensually flowering all around them.  The winter is past and blossoms burst open across the earth (2:11-12); the air is trembling with dove-song and dripping with flower-fragrance (2:13).  And this will carry on to the end: the vines have blossomed early (8:12) and the mandrakes lace the air with their heady perfume (8:13).  

There are even deeper layers to this, of course; because as they describe each other with enraptured similes and impassioned metaphors, the lovers begin to embody in themselves the flourishing of the creation that is happening all around them.  The Lover is, by turns, a fragrant cluster of henna blossoms (1:14), a fruit-laden apple-tree (2:3), a graceful stag on the high places (2:17), the dawn, the moon, and sun in stately procession (6:10).  The Beloved, for her part, is a dove in the cleft of the rocks (2:14), a spring of clear water (4:12), a verdant garden bursting with the choicest fruit and the rarest spice (4:13-14).  If we can resist the modern temptation to titter at such imagery (or to Freudianize it) we’ll hear the Song of Songs saying this: listen! shalom is obtaining, here, in the joyful, wholesome, unabashed union of this man and this woman, as they come together according to the Creator’s design.

The Shalom theology pulsing at the heart of this ancient love song is actually implicit in the names of the lovers themselves.  The Lover, on the one hand, is an idealized portrait of King Solomon, the most-wise king from whom the Song of Solomon takes its name (1:1, 3:7).  In Hebrew literature, of course, names are never accidental, and this is especially the case here: the name Solomon (in Hebrew sh^elômôh) is a derivative of the word shalom itself. Solomon is quite literally the King of Shalom.  The Beloved, on the other hand, is simply called “the Shulamite” (6:13); but this is especially curious to me, because the name “Shulamite” (in Hebrew, shûlammı̂yth) is a feminine derivation of “Solomon.”  The Shulamite is “Solomon’s girl,” that is to say, Princess Shalom.  In other words, what we are seeing in the rapturous union of these two lovers is the marriage of Mr. and Ms. Shalom.  Little wonder, then, that as they consummate their love we see creation bursting with shalom-ordered vibrancy all around them: their coming together not only fits into the puzzle-picture of God’s Shalom, but, like a final missing piece, it actually completes it. 

And here is where the ancient text begins to speak into the modern world.  Because the point of Song of Songs is that sexuality, when it is experienced and enjoyed according the Creator’s design, actually promotes and contributes to shalom in the world.  There is an “ought to/ought not to” when it comes to sex, and its underlying goal is the flourishing of the Creation itself.    

This is hard to wrap our heads around practically, how the Creator’s intention for sex is to promote creation shalom; but it gets easier when we come at it from the other direction, and consider how quickly sex can vandalize shalom, when it happens outside of the Creator’s intention.  The strong sexually exploiting the weak is not shalom.  The trauma of sexual abuse is not shalom.  The loss and betray of a marital affair, the tears that a sexual scandal rips in the social fabric, the relational pain and confusion caused by pornography, the psychological scars that the 'hook-up' culture leaves on the heart—none of these things are shalom.

I don’t mention any of these things flippantly, or naively, or judgmentally; and reading Song of Songs as a Christian I want to say that in Jesus—our true Prince of Peace—there is real healing and restoration and redemption available for even the deepest sexual wounds we may have suffered.  But that, I think, is part of the point.  Because in Christ, the Song of Songs is inviting us to consider how our sexuality—even our sexuality—can, and could, and does fit into the Creator’s plan to make a world where things are the way they ought to be.