The Finale – Song of Songs 8:5-18

The Song of Solomon, Part 6

Every musical, concept album and song cycle needs a grand finale. This is it for the Song of Songs.

⁵ Who is that coming up from the wilderness,
    leaning on her beloved?
Under the apple tree I awakened you.
There your mother was in labour with you;
    there she who bore you was in labour.
⁶ Set me as a seal upon your heart,
    as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
    jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
    the very flame of the Lord.
⁷ Many waters cannot quench love,
    neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
    all the wealth of his house,
    he would be utterly despised.

Others

⁸ We have a little sister,
    and she has no breasts.
What shall we do for our sister
    on the day when she is spoken for?
⁹ If she is a wall,
    we will build on her a battlement of silver,
but if she is a door,
    we will enclose her with boards of cedar.

She

¹⁰ I was a wall,
    and my breasts were like towers;
then I was in his eyes
    as one who finds peace.
¹¹ Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon;
    he let out the vineyard to keepers;
    each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver.
¹² My vineyard, my very own, is before me;
    you, O Solomon, may have the thousand,
    and the keepers of the fruit two hundred.

He

¹³ O you who dwell in the gardens,
    with companions listening for your voice;
    let me hear it.

She

¹⁴ Make haste, my beloved,
    and be like a gazelle
or a young stag
    on the mountains of spices.

Song of Solomon 8:5-16

The Song of Solomon, also known as the Song of Songs, contains sensual songs in the Bible. It uses attraction and romance to symbolise the love of God.

Lessons in Love

The book begins with the lines, “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.” It’s called a single song, but it contains different songs, similar to a musical. However, the title Aspects of Love is already used by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Every musical needs a memorable, uplifting song at the end, and here we are at the finale, summarising all the lessons in love that have come before. Like “Lessons in Love” by Level 42, there were times when the couple longed to be together. The finale song features multiple voices that recap the journey so far.

Lean on me

The finale is still semi-erotic. Gone here is the explicitness of a couple admiring each other’s naked bodies, or descriptions of foreplay and lovemaking. Instead, we are introduced to the couple leaning on each other. “We all need somebody to lean on,” sang Bill Withers in Lean on Me. Here, the woman in the song is leaning on the beloved. There is a time for bodies to writhe together naked, but the finale is looking back less explicitly.

Consistent with other Wisdom books in the Bible, God has a feminine voice. Traditionally, in Christianity, it’s the man, the beloved, who represents Jesus, yet when the woman says of the man, the following, seeing him being born, it’s clear to me that the woman who represents God and/or Jesus in this book.

Under the apple tree I awakened you.
There your mother was in labour with you;
    there she who bore you was in labour,

Imagine Jesus cuddling you in love. That is what you are being invited to do here.

The Wall

The passage about the wall and the door in vv. 8 to 10 is one of the most difficult metaphors in the Bible to understand. The original meaning is long gone, so we only have people’s best guesses to go on. This is my guess:

The voice here changes. So far, the song is mostly sung by the woman, with answers from her beloved and short interjections by the women of Jerusalem. Now, for the first time, there is another voice, the brothers taking about how they protected their virgin sister.

Unlike Pink Floyd’s concept album, The Wall, the wall in the Song of Songs is seen positively. I speculate that if she wants to keep away unwanted suitors by being a wall, she should be celebrated. But if she is open like a door to anyone, they will protect her. She replies that she was a wall but has now chosen to be open to her beloved.

There’s an issue with this interpretation. We have a woman talking about witnessing the birth of someone dear, followed by a song about brothers wanting to protect their young sister. This makes it a challenging passage. The only way to make sense of these ideas is to abandon my previous hypothesis and see the brothers (others in the ESV) as trying to protect her unnecessarily, as the woman claims she doesn’t need protection. Jesus doesn’t need protection either. The Psalms describe God as a tower: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” God’s followers are not meant to shield Him from other beliefs. Let God be free.

The End

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” So sang The Beatles on the last song on their last recorded album. The Song of Songs ends rather abruptly, too. Joining together themes from earlier in the book. The song was dedicated to Solomon in the very first verse, and it ends with a mention of Solomon, although he’s not part of the story. Unlike Solomon’s tenants, the woman has a vineyard of her very own. The vineyard is used throughout the Old Testament as an allegory for the people of Israel and Judah. We are Christ’s alone, with no intermediaries needed.

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