Quite often, when it comes to marriage or the Christian life, we want a detailed, five-step plan for success. Something clean and precise. But life is rarely clean and precise. And marriage is not a formula; it is a dance. Now, dances do have steps to learn. True. You must practice some basics, but at …
Continue reading A Dance Between Two Armies | Song of Songs 6:4-8:4
We have been to the summit of the Song of Songs, the peak of the poem's chiastic structure. He saw her coming up from the wilderness and then delighted in her as with a garden paradise. She then invited him into her garden, and their friends rejoiced over them. That was the very center of …
Last week, we began the section of the Song of Songs that takes us today to the very center of the poem. It began in 3:6 with the question of who or what is coming up from the wilderness like a column of smoke? I made the argument that both of those translations are correct …
Even though the Song of Songs is a song, the Holy Spirit preserved no musical accompaniment for us; only the lyrics, which are God-breathed. So, as we read, we must be sensitive to the text's tonal shifts. We saw this in the previous section of the Song (2:8-3:5). While there are many repeated words and …
Continue reading Altogether Beautiful | Song of Songs 3:6-4:7
On my bed by nightI sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares;I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not.The watchmen found me as they went about in …
The voice of my beloved!Behold, he comes,leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.My beloved is like a gazelleor a young stag.Behold, there he standsbehind our wall,gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice.My beloved speaks and says to me:“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,and come away,for behold, the winter is past; the rain is …
Continue reading The Voice of My Beloved | Song of Songs 2:8-17
Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves.Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful.Our couch is green; the beams of our house are cedar; our rafters are pine.I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.As a lily among brambles, so is my love among …
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!For your love is better than wine;your anointing oils are fragrant;your name is oil poured out;therefore virgins love you.Draw me after you; let us run.The king has brought me into his chambers.We will exult and rejoice in you;we will extol your love more than wine;rightly do they love you. Song of Songs 1:2-4 ESV I sing of arms and a man. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Call me Ishmael. Marley was dead. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Great …
The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. Song of Songs 1:1 Song of Songs has a complicated place in church history. On one hand, God's people have treasured it as though it were a first among equals. Jewish Rabbi Akiva is famous for saying that all the ages are not worth the day that God …
Continue reading Rules for Reading the Greatest Song | Song of Songs 1:1
AUTHOR The superscription for the whole book is Song of Songs 1:1: "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." That is why the book is often called the Song of Solomon. Indeed, most evangelical commentators argue for Solomon as the author. A popular speculation throughout church history is that Solomon wrote Song of Songs in …
B. C. Newton 