She stayed behind the wall and he went away. So she gets up in the dark, walks out into the city alone, and when she finds him she takes hold and does not let go. Then a wedding procession comes up out of the wilderness.
A study in Song of Solomon 3 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 10 min read
By Night On My Bed
“By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.”
Song of Solomon 3:1
Read that verse with the end of chapter 2 still in your ear, because the two are joined.
He had come over the mountains, stopped at the wall, and asked her twice to rise up and come away. The chapter ended with the day unbroken and the shadows still lying. She did not go.
And now she is looking for him on her bed — which is to say, in the exact place she was when she declined to move. That is the first thing worth noticing, and it is not a criticism so much as a diagnosis. There is a way of wanting God very sincerely from precisely where you already are, and this verse is what it produces: I sought him, but I found him not.
Twice in two verses that sentence is repeated. The book is not embarrassed to record a search that fails.
I Will Rise Now
“I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.”
Song of Solomon 3:2
There is the turn, and it is the whole chapter in three words. I will rise now.
He said rise up twice in chapter 2 and she stayed. Now she says it to herself, and gets up. The verb is the same one he used. She is finally doing what she was asked to do — late, and alone, and in the dark, but doing it.
And it costs her something the text does not spell out but every original reader would have felt. A woman going about a walled city at night, through the streets and the open squares, is doing something unsafe and unseemly. She is not being romantic. She is out of doors in the dark because the alternative — lying still and wanting him — has already been tried and did not work.
Note also where she looks: the streets and the broad ways. The public places. She has gone from hiding in the clefts of the rock, where nobody could see her, to walking down the middle of the widest road in town calling for him. That is a considerable distance to travel in one chapter, and it happened because he left.
The Watchmen Found Me
“The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?”
Song of Solomon 3:3
She was looking for him. She found the officials instead. Read it exactly: the watchmen… found me — she is the one discovered, and by the wrong party.
She asks them the only question she has. And the text records no answer. They do not say yes, they do not say no, they do not help. The verse simply moves on.
That is worth marking now, because these men come back. In chapter 5 she will be out searching again, and the same watchmen will find her again — and that time “they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me” (5:7). Here they are merely useless. There they are dangerous.
Whatever else the two scenes are doing, they say something plain about looking for God by asking the people whose job it is to know. Sometimes they have nothing for you. Sometimes they take something off you.
I Would Not Let Him Go
“It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.”
Song of Solomon 3:4
Two details, and both are worth having.
The first: it was but a little that I passed from them. She found him just past the watchmen. Not far past — a little. The thing she wanted was a short distance beyond the men who could not tell her where it was.
The second is the sentence that changes her. I held him, and would not let him go.
In chapter 2 she watched him arrive and stayed behind the wall. Here she gets hold of him with both hands. It is the first grip in the book, and there is only one other person in Scripture described this way:
“And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.”
Genesis 32:26
Jacob, at the ford, in the dark, holding on to someone stronger than himself and refusing to be shaken off. The Song has a woman doing the same thing in a city street, and Ellen White reads Jacob’s grip as the posture of God’s people in their hardest hour:
“They lay hold of the strength of God as Jacob laid hold of the Angel; and the language of their souls is: ‘I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.’”
Ellen G. White · The Great Controversy, p. 620
Notice too what she does with him once she has him. She does not keep him in the street. Until I had brought him into my mother’s house — she takes him home, to the room she was born in. Having been shown her own beginnings once, she wants him in them.
Then the refrain returns, for the second of its three appearances (3:5), and the movement closes.
Who Is This That Cometh Out Of The Wilderness
“Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?”
Song of Solomon 3:6
The scene changes completely. The private search is over and something public is coming up the road.
Pillars of smoke is not an accidental phrase for an Israelite. A column of smoke coming up out of the wilderness, leading a procession, is the image every reader carries from the exodus. And myrrh and frankincense are the two costly imports that turn up together in only one other famous place: “they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11).
But keep hold of the question itself, because the book asks it twice and the second time is the payoff. Here it is who is this? about a procession coming out of the wilderness. In the last chapter it will be asked again, and the answer will be different:
“Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?”
Song of Solomon 8:5
Same question, same wilderness, five chapters apart. In chapter 3 the answer is a king’s litter under guard. In chapter 8 the answer is her, on her feet, holding on to him. That is the distance this book travels, and it is measured by one repeated line.
Threescore Valiant Men
“Behold his bed, which is Solomon’s; threescore valiant men are about it, of the valiant of Israel. They all hold swords, being expert in war: every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night.”
Song of Solomon 3:7, 8
Sixty armed men around a wedding litter, hands on their weapons, and the reason given in four words: because of fear in the night.
That is a strange thing to put in a love poem, and it is exactly right. The book does not pretend the dark is empty. She has just spent half a chapter alone in it. The escort is there because the night is genuinely dangerous, and the point is not that there is nothing to fear — it is that she is being carried through it by people who are expert in war.
Then the litter itself, described from the outside in: cedar frame, silver pillars, gold base, purple covering — and then, when the description reaches the inside, it stops using materials.
“The midst thereof being paved with love” (3:10).
Silver, gold and purple are what the outside is made of. What the inside is made of is not a substance at all. Anyone who has been shown a magnificent building and then discovered what it is actually like to live in will understand the distinction the verse is drawing.
The Day Of The Gladness Of His Heart
“Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.”
Song of Solomon 3:11
One clarification and one very large point.
The clarification: this is not a coronation. A king was crowned by priests and prophets, not by his mother. What is described here is the garland a bridegroom wore on his wedding day — and it is his mother who puts it on him, which is a domestic detail rather than a political one. The verse is not about him becoming king. It is about him getting married.
And now the large point, which is the reason this verse belongs at the center of any study of this book.
The day of the gladness of his heart.
Whose gladness? His. Not hers. The whole book to this point has been about her wanting him — her longing, her searching, her holding on. Here, for the first time, we are told what the day is like from the other side, and the answer is that it is the gladdest day he has.
Ellen White, describing Christ’s own boyhood, uses the same phrase without comment: “Often He expressed the gladness of His heart by singing psalms and heavenly songs” (The Desire of Ages, p. 73). It is not a citation of this verse, but it is the same thing being said about the same person — that there is gladness on His side, and that it comes out in music.
Most people can believe that God will forgive them. Rather fewer can believe He is glad. This verse says the wedding day is the gladdest day the Bridegroom has, and it says it while the bride is still learning to get out of bed and come when she is called.
Where This Chapter Sits
Chapter 2 ended with an invitation she did not accept. Chapter 3 is what that costs and what it teaches, and three things move.
She gets up. I will rise now — his words, finally obeyed, on her own initiative. In chapter 1 she asked where he was and waited for directions. In chapter 2 she stayed behind a wall. Here she walks out into a dark city.
She stops letting go. This is the sharpest change. Chapter 2 closed with turn, my beloved and the shadows still lying. Chapter 3 has I held him, and would not let him go. She has learned, in the space of one night, what it costs to be casual about his presence.
And the relationship goes public. Everything until now has been private — a wall, a lattice, a hidden dove. This chapter ends with a procession, sixty guards, a crowd of onlookers being told to go forth… and behold, and a bridegroom in a wedding garland. What she wanted in secret is now happening in the street.
What has not moved is the possessive. My beloved is mine, and I am his still stands from 2:16, herself first, and it will stay that way for three more chapters.
And one shadow falls across the chapter, which is the honest thing to end on. She learned to hold on because she lost him first. The book is about to make that lesson very much harder: in chapter 5 he comes to the door, she hesitates, and this time when she goes out into the street the watchmen do not merely fail to help her.
