A Love Song for the People of God

ABSTRACT: The Song of Solomon is not an easy book to preach. It demands careful study, interpretive wisdom, theological balance, and pastoral sensitivity. Yet it richly rewards the effort. The Song gives the church a vision of love that is deeply human and profoundly theological. In the present day — when sex is either idolized or trivialized — the church can benefit greatly from a God-inspired book that speaks so candidly and beautifully about embodied covenant love. Faithful, wise preaching of the Song requires following interpretive convictions and guidelines that recognize the genre and purpose of the book within the canonical scope of Holy Scripture.

Most seasoned pastors I know have preached through a Gospel (Matthew and John especially), a variety of Paul’s epistles (usually Romans, Ephesians, and Philippians), some of the psalms, the beginning of Genesis, and the end of Revelation. I know three men who even preached through all of Isaiah! But I know of only one pastor in my pastoral friend group (maybe I need more friends!) who has preached through every line of the Song of Solomon. Why the hesitation and avoidance? Two reasons come to mind.

First, it’s a tricky text. “Virtually every verse,” as Daniel Estes summarizes, “presents challenges in text, philology, image, grammar or structure.”¹ Christopher Mitchell describes it as “the most difficult book of sacred Scripture.”² And Marvin Pope observes that no book of “comparable size in world literature” has generated such a diversity of interpretation.³ The exegetical challenges are real. “How does one preach through a book,” as I have asked elsewhere, “in which every section raises structural questions, every phrase has philological complexities, and every verse contains metaphors that leap like seven young stags in seven different directions (metaphorically speaking, of course)? And how does one show the bones of a text (poetic structure, parallelisms, etc.), yet leave enough flesh for the text to remain warm and stay alive?”⁴

Second, it’s a touchy text. That is, the book unabashedly celebrates the senses of human sexuality (sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch). Should we preach on passionate kissing, a woman’s bare breasts, and the delights of the honeymoon night? And if so, how do we preach such sensual imagery on a Sunday morning in a worship service with a wide variety of people, including junior high boys and elderly widows?

Historically, the church has responded to those challenges by allegorizing every jot and tittle, transforming its characters and their words and actions into abstract spiritual symbols and bypassing the literal sense almost entirely.⁵ Yet that approach doesn’t do justice to the text. The Song is not an embarrassing appendix to the Bible. It is Scripture’s most concentrated reflection on love, desire, beauty, intimacy, longing, and delight. And in our days — when sex is either idolized or trivialized — the church cannot afford to neglect a God-inspired book that speaks so candidly and beautifully about embodied covenant love.⁶ What we need, then, is not avoidance or allegory but honest, accurate, and faithful preaching. We need preaching that honors the poetry, preserves the literal sense, understands the canonical context, and applies the book’s wisdom pastorally.

At the heart of such preaching, and what we will walk through in this article, are four interpretive convictions and guidelines, summarized in a simple sentence: (1) This is a song (2) about human love (3) found in the Bible (4) written to give us wisdom.⁷ Let’s begin our walk on the road from Jerusalem to Ethiopia.

Reading and Preaching the Song as a Song

In Acts 8, we meet an Ethiopian eunuch who is both eager to learn the Bible and confused about what he is reading. As he travels home, reading Isaiah 53 aloud, God intervenes. He sends Philip. Once Philip arrives at the chariot, he asks a question every preacher should ask every reader of the biblical text: “Do you understand what you are reading?” The eunuch answers honestly: “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:30–31).

That exchange captures the challenge many readers feel when approaching the Song. Christians often come to it curious yet uncertain. Is this about human love? Is it about God’s love? Why does it speak so openly about the human body and the physical pleasures of human sexuality? Why is this book in the Bible?

Pastors often feel the same uncertainty. Some skip the book altogether. Others preach it hesitantly or half-heartedly, softening the imagery, avoiding difficult sections, but mining select lines from the Song and turning the text into practical tips on dating, courtship, and marriage (or worse — a technique manual for the bedroom!). Still others spiritualize the text because that feels safer and more theological. But the problem is not the Song itself. The problem is that we have not learned how to read it. Philip did not tell the eunuch to skip Isaiah and move to an easier passage. Instead, beginning with that very text, he unraveled the mystery of Isaiah’s suffering servant.

“The Song is Scripture’s most concentrated reflection on love, desire, beauty, intimacy, longing, and delight.”

That is our task with the Song of Solomon: not to bypass it, not to tame it, not to explain it away, but to understand it carefully and then preach it faithfully. Therefore, to become a good guide for his congregation, the preacher must first become a good reader. Faithful preaching begins with faithful reading. We cannot rush to applications before wrestling carefully with the text itself. Nor can we rely merely on inherited interpretations. We must walk slowly through the difficult terrain of the Song so that we may lead others safely through it.

That means beginning with the most foundational element: The Song of Solomon is a song! Indeed, the title itself emphasizes this reality: “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s” (Song of Solomon 1:1). The Hebrew construction functions as a superlative. This is the greatest song. Perhaps it was the finest among Solomon’s 1,005 songs (1 Kings 4:32). This matters greatly for preaching. It is not a letter like Romans, nor a narrative like 1–2 Samuel, nor an apocalypse like Revelation. It is lyrical poetry. And poetry communicates through image, rhythm, repetition, emotion, sensory experience, and metaphor. It doesn’t merely inform the mind but awakens the imagination and stirs the affections.

For example, consider one of the most interesting and unique descriptions in the book: “Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead” (Song of Solomon 4:1). To our ears, the groom’s description of his bride sounds odd, even humorous. But the point is not a lesson in zoology. Rather, the pastoral image of the bride’s hair evokes vitality and movement — dark, flowing beauty cascading across a hillside. Her hair is thick, curly, and long. The metaphor helps us see the bounce of her hair as she turns her head and walks before her lover. With images like that, the Song repeatedly invites us into a world of sanctified imagination, which has direct implications for preaching. We must savor language and inhabit imagery. We must help our people see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the text:

• the smell of myrrh
• the taste of wine and apples
• the sight of gazelles leaping over mountains
• the sound of flowing streams
• the feel of hands, embraces, and flashes of fire

We must slow down and allow the poetry to breathe, for when we linger over the affection, delight, exclusivity, and joy of covenant love, the text will work on the congregation both intellectually and emotionally.

Affirming the Literal Sense: Human Love in Marriage

The second guidepost is equally important: The Song of Solomon is about human love. It celebrates, as Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it, “the splendid, radiant and terrifying glory of eros between man and woman.”⁸ More specifically, it is about covenant love between a husband and a wife. That may sound obvious (as the word “bride” appears six times),⁹ but historically, this guidepost has been pulled up and tossed aside. For centuries, many interpreters resisted the idea that the Bible could celebrate erotic marital love so openly. As a result, they turned the Song almost entirely into allegory. For example, undergirded by the sexuality of Stoicism, the hermeneutics of Hellenism, and the terminology and cosmology of Platonism, Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253) — in his early commentary on the Song — baptized Greek ethics, physics, and logic in the holy waters of Christian allegory.

Verse after verse, the earthly, material, and corruptible literalism of the Song was transformed into a new creation. The “breasts” and “wine” of 1:2b became “the ground of the heart” and “the ordinances and teachings . . . [of] the Law and Prophets.” The “ointment” of 1:3a became “the Incarnation of the Word of God.” The “blackness” and “beauty” of 1:5a became “each individual soul that turns to repentance after many sins.” The “gold” and “silver” of 1:11 became “the perceptive and incorporeal nature” and “the power of speech and reason.” The “sachet of a myrrh-drop” of 1:13 became “the contents of the divine teachings and the intricacy and complication of the propositions of theology.”¹⁰

Following Origen’s lead, which held that the Song of Songs “sings by the Spirit the song of the marriage whereby the Church is joined and allied to Christ the heavenly Bridegroom,”¹¹ nearly every Christian commentator from third-century Alexandria to seventeenth-century London employed the allegorical hermeneutic.¹² Many of these readings were edifying and Christ-centered. Yet they often bypassed the plain meaning of the text. And, at times, the results became exegetically absurd. One interpreter claimed that the phrase “while the king was on his couch” referred to “the gestation period of Christ in the womb of Mary,” and the “sachet of myrrh that lies between [the bride’s] breasts” (1:13) symbolizes “Christ in the soul of the believer, who lies between the great commands to love God and one’s neighbor.”¹³ Another viewed the bride’s “breasts” as the church’s “pious affections towards [Christ].”¹⁴

The reason for such interpretive efforts (exegetical gymnastics!) was that interpreters assumed that erotic human love was too earthy and physical for Scripture. But, thankfully, the Bible itself does not share that discomfort. If readers today encounter the Song without centuries of interpretive baggage, they will almost certainly conclude that this is erotic poetry celebrating human marital love. And the language of that love is unmistakably physical:

• “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (1:2).
• “His right hand embraces me” (2:6).
• “Your two breasts are like two fawns” (4:5).
• “Your rounded thighs are like jewels” (7:1).

That the Song celebrates desire, attraction, delight, exclusivity, and consummation within the ethical boundaries of covenant marriage should not surprise us. Genesis 1–2 already established the goodness of embodied human existence. God created humanity male and female. Marriage is declared good. Husband and wife “become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). It is all very good. The Song echoes Eden. In fact, the imagery of gardens, fruit, fragrance, and delight repeatedly recalls the goodness of creation before sin distorted human desire. The Song, therefore, provides what we might call an Edenic vision of eroticism.

This is theologically important because Christianity does not despise the body. However, as demonstrated above by Origen and others, throughout church history some interpreters imported Neoplatonic and Gnostic suspicions toward physicality. For example, Theodoret of Cyrus warned against “corporeal interpretation.”¹⁵ Strangest of all, Matthew Henry suggested that readers of the Song must “forget that we have bodies.”¹⁶ What! How would we do that? Why would we do that? Scripture never separates our holiness from embodied existence. The incarnation itself refutes such dualism. “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). The resurrection likewise affirms the future of redeemed humanity as gloriously embodied.

“Scripture never separates our holiness from embodied existence.”

The Song reminds us that our bodies are not inherently ungodly and that sexual intimacy within marriage is not a concession to sin but part of God’s good design. “The Song guides us to see with scriptural sensibilities that the earth is ‘crammed with heaven’ (Elizabeth Browning, ‘Aurora Leigh,’ line 61), the way of a man with a woman is ‘too wonderful’ (Proverbs 30:18–19), and marriage is not simply a concession to the necessity of procreation but an affirmation of the beauty, chastity, and sacredness of human love.”¹⁷ Therefore, pastors should preach positively about marital intimacy. In a world saturated with distortions of sexuality, the church needs more than prohibitions (“Do not look” and “Do not touch”). It needs a beautiful vision of rightly ordered love. The Song provides that vision.

All this means we preach the Song unapologetically as a love song about the covenant love between a husband and a wife. And as Scripture does not blush at the word “breasts” (physical beauty) or the foreplay and sex acts described (physical pleasure) throughout the Song, neither should the preacher. Of course, wise preachers communicate with discretion and modesty and avoid sensationalism (sermons that dwell on imagery in ways that titillate rather than edify). But we must preach the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. So help us, God!

Reading Canonically: From Human Love to Christ

This brings us to the third guidepost: This ancient love song is found in the Bible. The Song genuinely celebrates human covenant love. But because marriage itself belongs within God’s redemptive design, the Song also participates in larger biblical themes. Scripture repeatedly uses marriage imagery to describe God’s relationship with his people. Yahweh is Israel’s husband (Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 2:2; Hosea 2:16–20). Jesus identifies himself as the bridegroom (Matthew 9:15; John 3:29). Paul describes Jesus as the church’s “one husband” (2 Corinthians 11:2) and marriage as a “mystery” that ultimately refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). Revelation culminates with the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7–9; 21:2). This means human marriage is not ultimate but illustrative. The best marriages point beyond themselves to the gospel and “the king in his beauty” (Isaiah 33:17).

Therefore, we preach Christ from the Song not by bypassing the literal sense but by following the Bible’s own canonical trajectories. We begin with human marriage. Then we move outward to the larger reality that marriage reflects. Genesis introduces marriage. The Song celebrates marriage. Ephesians interprets marriage. Revelation consummates marriage. Thus, when we preach the exclusivity, delight, faithfulness, longing, and intimacy of marital love in the Song, we may also show how those realities echo the greater love of Christ for his people. Of course, we do not force Jesus into every metaphor. But neither do we isolate the Song from the gospel. The Ethiopian eunuch needed guidance from Isaiah to Christ. Likewise, faithful preaching of the Song ultimately leads listeners toward the greater Bridegroom.

Preaching Wisdom: The Song’s Moral Vision

This brings us to the fourth guidepost: The Song is wisdom literature. Alongside Proverbs, the “wisdom” psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Job, the Song seeks to make God’s people wise. It paints a picture of rightly ordered love. Two refrains help structure the book’s moral vision. The first is a warning: “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem . . . [do] not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (Song of Solomon 2:7; 3:5; 8:4). The target audience is the “daughters of Jerusalem” (1:5), who are unmarried “virgins” (1:3). They are commanded by the newlywed bride (“I adjure you”) to stay virgins until their wedding day. Desire itself is not sinful.¹⁸ Longing is not shameful. But love must be awakened at the right time (one’s wedding day) and with the right person (one’s spouse). Patience before passion. Purity before pleasure. Delayed gratification before marital consummation. Wisdom admonishes us to wait!

The second refrain, a more subtle one, is a covenant affirmation between the couple: “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (2:16; cf. 6:3; 7:10). While the warning refrain teaches patience to the unmarried (love should not be manipulated, rushed, or prematurely awakened), the covenant refrain celebrates love’s fulfillment (sexual intimacy finds its proper home within faithful covenant commitment). It is “God’s wise witness to the ripeness and rightness of erotic marital love.” It also serves as “an invitation to intimacy, designed to sustain loving marriages and to renew loveless ones.”¹⁹ Marriage is not merely contractual coexistence; it is covenantal delight. The Song invites husbands and wives to pursue one another, speak affectionately, cultivate intimacy, and delight in one another joyfully. Indeed, one practical question the Song presses upon married couples is this: Is your wedding bed dead or alive? That may be an uncomfortable question, but it is a biblical one. The Song insists that covenant faithfulness and passionate affection belong together.

Thus, the Song offers wisdom to both the unmarried and the married. Preachers must faithfully proclaim such wisdom.

The Need for Prudence and Joy

Let me offer two final words of advice.

First, preaching the Song requires not only exegetical clarity and hermeneutical discernment but pastoral sensitivity. Every congregation contains a wide range of experiences. There are newlyweds and exhausted parents. There are happy marriages and marriages on the brink of divorce. There are singles longing for marriage and singles content in celibacy. There are widows and widowers. There are divorced believers carrying grief. There are those wounded by betrayal, abuse, pornography, shame, or sexual confusion. The preacher must remember this.

Philip did not speak to an abstract audience. He guided a real person with a real story. Likewise, faithful preaching of the Song speaks into real human experiences. This means we should neither flatten the text nor weaponize it. The Song celebrates marital intimacy without making marriage ultimate. It dignifies desire while also chastening it. It calls for purity without promoting shame. It acknowledges longing while channeling it wisely. For some listeners, the Song will function primarily as instruction. For others, as correction. For others, as comfort. For still others, as healing. The preacher must therefore handle the text candidly but modestly. The Song itself provides the model. It is honest without being crude. It is sensual without becoming vulgar. It is joyful without becoming flippant. And because the Song is Scripture, we preach it believing that God intends it for the good of his people.

“The Song insists that covenant faithfulness and passionate affection belong together.”

Second, preaching the Song requires preaching with joy! The Song is fundamentally a celebration of love. Certainly, there are moments of longing and searching. There are scenes of absence and delay. But the dominant tone and tenor is joy. The lovers rejoice in one another. They express desire openly and unabashedly. They celebrate each other’s beautiful bodies. They delight in each other’s presence. They enjoy tender touches. Too often, sermons on the Song feel awkward, unnatural, and strained. But the text itself is not that way. It is alive with gladness. Holiness and happiness are not enemies here. Indeed, the Song reminds us that holiness is the soil in which true joy grows. Faithful preaching will reflect that reality.

After Philip explained the Scriptures, the Ethiopian eunuch “went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). Understanding led to joy. The same should happen when the church hears the Song preached. The goal is not merely that people understand the metaphors. The goal is for them to experience the goodness of God more fully. The Song reveals a Creator in whose “presence there is fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). It reveals a God who designed covenant love. It reveals a wisdom that protects intimacy rather than suppresses it. And ultimately, it points toward the greater joy of communion with Christ himself.

Preach the Song

The Song of Solomon is not an easy book to preach. It demands careful study, interpretive wisdom, theological balance, and pastoral sensitivity. Yet it richly rewards the effort. The Song gives the church a vision of love that is deeply human and profoundly theological. It teaches us the beauty of rightly ordered desire. It teaches us patience, fidelity, delight, restraint, longing, and joy.

To preach the Song faithfully is to honor its poetry without reducing it to propositions. It is to affirm the literal beauty of marital love without severing that love from the larger biblical story. It is to preach Christ canonically rather than allegorically. And it is to do all of this with a tone that reflects the gladness of the text itself. Ultimately, the preacher’s task is not merely to explain the Song but to help the congregation inhabit its world — to see what it sees, to feel what it feels, and to be shaped by its wisdom. When that happens, the Song ceases to feel strange or embarrassing. It becomes what it has always been: a God-given song about covenant love, beautiful in its lyrics, joyful in its vision, and able to make us wise unto salvation in Christ.