The Song of Songs is a love story that goes somewhere. Read straight through, the woman changes — from wanting him, to belonging to him, to resting in the fact that he wants her. These ten studies follow that change in order.
A study of the whole book by Arthur Baldwin · quoted throughout from the King James Version.
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She longs, and does not know where he is
“Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon.”
Song of Solomon 1:7
She has to ask. By the end of chapter 2 she makes her first claim on him — my beloved is mine, and I am his — and she puts herself first in it.
Let Him Kiss Me
She speaks first, and about him before she speaks to him. A bride who thinks she is too weathered to be wanted.
The Rose Of Sharon
His banner over her was love — and she calls herself a common wildflower. He keeps her word and answers it.
By Night On My Bed
She rises, walks out into a dark city, and when she finds him she takes hold and will not let go.
He accepts her — and then she loses him
“Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.”
Song of Solomon 4:16
He calls her a garden; she calls it his garden in the same breath. Then she hesitates at the door and finds it empty.
Thou Art All Fair
He calls her spotless before she has earned it, and she hands him the garden he had just called hers.
I Sleep, But My Heart Waketh
The knock, the excuses, the empty doorway — the Great Disappointment in miniature, and out of her worst hour, the book’s greatest description of him.
She stops claiming him, and rests on his desire
“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.”
Song of Solomon 7:10
The claim reverses in 6:3 and disappears in 7:10. What is left is his wanting her — which is where the whole book has been going.
Fair As The Moon
She no longer has to ask where he is, and the possessive turns around. Growth that came through losing him.
The Shulamite
She stops claiming him and rests on his wanting her, and then, for the first time in the book, she leads.
Set Me As A Seal
She stops describing love and defines it — strong as death, and it cannot be bought. Then she turns outward.
The wedding itself
The book is also being set to music. Song Of Solomon (The Oratorio) is the libretto — a first-person paraphrase written to be sung — and it sits with the rest of the music on Songs To Finish The Work.
