If you’ve read behind Jim Hamilton much at all you already know that he reads the Bible with a close eye to the text. And its context. And the canonical context. His passion seems to be to learn what a given passage means by finding how it connects to all that goes before and after. Solomon’s Song presents a special case in point. The interpretation of this unique book has long been disputed, and sermons from it and books about it have ranged from a very explicitly practical Christian “sexology” to a rather fancifully illustrated ecclesiology. Enter Jim Hamilton, and we expect up front that whatever “allegorical” views he presents (as his subtitle alerts us!) will enjoy firm exegetical support. Very honestly, I think the first chapter – “The Song of Songs in Biblical Theology: How to Read the Most Sublime Song” – is worth the price of the book all by itself, and it sets us well on our way to reading Solomon’s famous love song with understanding.
Jim is a good friend of ours here at Books At a Glance, serving both on our Board of Reference and as our Review Editor for Biblical Theology. We appreciate his good ministry, and we’re glad to have him talk to us today about his newest book, Song of Songs: A Biblical-Theological, Allegorical, Christological Interpretation.
Book At a Glance (Fred Zaspel):
Hi! This is Fred Zaspel with Books at a Glance. We’re here today with Dr. Jim Hamilton of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and also pastor of preaching at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. We’re talking to him today about his new book, Song of Songs: A Biblical, Theological, Allegorical, Christological Interpretation. That’s a mouthful. For my money, the first chapter of the book is worth the price of the book all by itself. It is the Song of Songs in biblical theology. But Jim’s going to talk to us about his work today. Jim’s a good friend of ours here at Books at a Glance. He serves on our Board of Reference. He’s review editor for Biblical Theology. We’ve long appreciated his good ministry and his friendship, and we’re glad to have him with us today. Thanks for coming, Jim.
Jim Hamilton:
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Books At a Glance:
Okay, let’s get into this. First of all, just on the surface, what is Solomon’s Song all about? What’s the story?
Hamilton:
Well, there are different levels at which we can answer that question. At one level, I think it is the story of the whole Bible, which I once heard Douglas Wilson summarize as “kill the dragon, get the girl.” At another level, there’s a sense in which Solomon can be seen as depicting a relationship between a man and a woman, and the man happens to be the king. So those would be my two answers, and I don’t think those answers are mutually exclusive, and I don’t think they have to be read or understood in such a way that if you take it as a man and a woman, it can’t be about, say, Yahweh and Israel. Or it can’t be about the King of Israel and His bride, which naturally is going to be connected to Christ and the church.
Books At a Glance:
Right. We’ve often been made to think that we should choose between the two of those, that it can’t be both.
Hamilton:
Right. You know, one of the things that surprised me as I started looking into some secondary literature to write on this, was that so often, people will say it’s mainly a story of human love, and they’ll add a comment. They’ll say, “But it’s not only that.” But then the other that it may be is never really explored, and what they actually deal with is usually, at least in terms of the last hundred years or so of scholarship, what they deal with is usually, mainly, the human love aspect.
Books At a Glance:
Interesting. Well, let’s go a little further about your overall approach. What’s the significance of your mouthful subtitle, A Biblical, Theological, Allegorical, Christological Interpretation. What’s the contribution you’re hoping to make in all of that?
Hamilton:
Well, in a sense, I’m hoping to vindicate the historic Christian approach to the Song of Songs. If we exclude the last hundred / hundred and fifty years of academic writing, the predominant interpretation of the Song of Songs, both in Christian writing on the subject and in Jewish interpretation, has been that this equals the love either between Yahweh and Israel, or between Christ and the Church. I mean, that just overwhelmingly predominates in the history of the Church.
Books At a Glance:
Or both?
Hamilton:
Or both. Sure. What I’m saying is that if we allow the Song of Songs to stand in the Bible where it sits in the Bible, so if you take it in its canonical context, and if we limit the meaning of the word “allegory” to something like “author-intended allegory,” as in—I’m not doing some free association game here, and I’m not doing what Origen or Philo was doing. What I’m suggesting is that in the same way that Hosea intended his presentation of his relationship with his wife, Gomer, to be an allegory for the relationship between Yahweh and Israel, so also Solomon can be seen as presenting this—I think it’s an idealized depiction in poetry of a relationship between the king, whose name is Solomon, and his bride, in the Song of Songs. What I’m saying there is that I don’t think Solomon in the poetry is trying to present a kind of historical account of one of his relationships in poetic form. Many people will read the text in that way. They’ll see a kind of historical narrative that Solomon actually lived out with one of his wives, or maybe his first wife, or maybe his favorite wife, or something like that. I think that’s a mistaken approach. I think we should look at it as this is an idealized Solomon, who is son of David, King of Jerusalem, and an idealized bride. If you look up the word “allegory” on dictionary.com, or if you just look it up in any ordinary dictionary, it will tell you that this is when—an allegory is at work when you use something material to point beyond itself to something spiritual or metaphorical or figurative. In some ways, it’s kind of an extended metaphor. Paul is happy to use the word “allegory” in Galatians 4, and if Paul can do it, what I want to say is we can do it the way that he does it.
Books At a Glance:
I think your illustration with Hosea is interesting, as well, in that connection. That’s obviously intended to be an allegory of some sort.
Hamilton:
Yes, and I think that there is language that can be found both in Isaiah and in Hosea that would indicate that these two prophets, who came after Solomon, are perhaps under the influence of Solomon’s Song of Songs. The one in Isaiah is in Isaiah 5, when he says, “Let me sing a love song for my beloved.” That term that Isaiah uses there, dodi, is found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, I think only in the Song of Solomon. I may be misremembering this, but—I can’t remember if it’s the only other place that it is used outside of Song of Songs, but definitely the reference to the Lord as the beloved matches the reference to the beloved in the Song of Songs using that Hebrew term.
Books At a Glance:
Interesting. That was my next question here then. You argue that Solomon intended his song to reflect something more than the immediate love story at hand. My question was going to be, how do we know that, and let’s pursue that. But also, I think that’s interesting with regards to what you said earlier, that so many interpreters have approached the Song as a historical narrative first, as you say, and then also intended to illustrate the other. Are you saying that that’s backwards?
Hamilton:
You know, when I was first approached about writing this book, which would entail me preaching through the book, I was terrified, because I didn’t know how to handle the difference between the Solomon that we see in the book of Kings, and what I would want to see portrayed in the Song of Songs, which would be a monogamous relationship. Quite frankly, the verse that scared me most was Song of Songs 6:8, where the Solomon in the song, the male figure, the idealized Solomon in the song, says to his beloved, “There are sixty queens and eighty concubines and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one of her mother pure to her who bore her. The young ones saw her and called her blessed, the queens and concubines also, and they praised her.” My difficulty with this is I would rather not see the Bible countenancing someone having a harem, or having multiple wives. So, the question is, what is going on there?
Andrew Steinmann, in his commentary, points out–and I’ve found this very helpful and I’ve adopted this view—he points that the male figure in the song (so we know from Kings of Solomon’s many wives and many concubines), but the male figure in the song doesn’t say, “I have sixty queens and I have eighty concubines.” He simply says, “There are sixty queens and eighty concubines.” And so I think we can envision a situation where the male figure, who is presented as the King of Israel, in which case he would have lots of interaction with other kings. He could be saying to his one wife, there are these other queens, and we know about these women who are concubines, but you’re the only one for me. That seems to me to be something that would be much more pleasing for a woman to hear, as in, “You are my only wife,” than “I have all these women, but you are my favorite.”
It could be objected that it is just because you don’t come from that culture. But it is interesting that people who come from cultures that practice polygamy–it is evident that they feel about these things, about other wives and concubines, the same way that many of us would probably feel about these things. A conversation I had with a man from Afghanistan who had become a Christian, and he was telling me about his siblings and his sisters, and he was from a large family. I said to him, did any of your sisters wind up becoming second, third, or first wives when there were other wives, also married? He said, oh no, my father would never allow that to happen. This is clearly anecdotal, but clearly he was communicating that they had the power to prevent one of his sisters from going into a polygamous situation, and since they had the power to prevent that, they chose to exercise that power. We’re getting a bit off topic here.
Books At a Glance:
That’s all right. Very good. So, how do we know that Solomon intended for this to be taken in an idealized sense?
Hamilton:
I think you can do this from a wide-angle perspective and from a detailed perspective. Let’s start with a detailed perspective and look at some of the hard data in the Song of Songs. When I say hard data, we are dealing with words that are in poetic form, and I think we should always bear in mind that this is not an engineering textbook. This is a document that is meant to evoke imagery. It is meant to connect up with other statements elsewhere. In Song of Songs 3, when the king is about to enter into Jerusalem for the wedding—and we know that because he says, or someone says, in 3:11, “Go out, oh daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon, with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, on the day of the gladness of his heart.” He is about to enter into Jerusalem for the wedding day, and earlier in that passage, in verse 6, the question is asked—perhaps by the female figure, or the bride—what, or who, is that coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke? If you turn on your biblical imagination and you think of columns of smoke in the wilderness, I think a pillar of fire and cloud is naturally going to appear on the horizon. As you continue through the passage, you hit all of these words that are used in passages that deal with the making of the anointing oil that they were to use to anoint the tabernacle, the myrrh and the frankincense.
Then we read in verse 7 that, “Behold, it is the litter of Solomon!” A litter is a box with a tent over the top that is carried on the shoulders of men who are shouldering these poles that are connecting up with this box. It sounds like the Ark of the Covenant. As you keep reading, they describe how Solomon made this thing. He made it in verse 9, of the “wood of Lebanon.” This is the exact material that is used later for the construction of the Temple. So I think there that in poetic terms, Solomon is depicting the king of Israel, who ultimately descends from Adam, who is God’s image and likeness on Earth. He’s God’s vice regent. In some sense, in Luke 3:38, Genesis 5, he is the son of God, he bears the image of God. So it is presented as though the king of Israel is entering in the land of promise from the wilderness with this column of smoke, and it really sounds a lot like the Lord coming up through the wilderness to enter into the land of promise where He will dwell in a covenant relationship with His people. So at the level of details, I think all of that is very interesting.
Then, if you broaden it out to the wider story line, we’ve got a situation where as early as Mount Sinai, in Exodus 34, God is warning Israel through Moses not to go and whore after other gods. This implies that idolatry is spiritual adultery, which implies further that the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel is a marital covenant. You’ve got this broader marital backdrop in the Bible between Yahweh and Israel, and then you’ve got this sort of idealistic picture of this good husband, and what the figure of Solomon is doing in the song is he is overcoming all the barriers to intimacy and the sources of alienation that separate him from his wife, and what they’re doing as the song unfolds at various points is they seem to be standing across from each other, looking at each other, indulging in a nakedness in which there is no shame. You have this figure who is a king from the line of David who is overcoming the barriers to intimacy and renewing almost an Eden-like purity and innocence and enjoyment between himself and his beloved.
If you keep going into the New Testament from the Song of Songs, you have John the Baptist explaining that he is like the friend of the bridegroom. He is talking about Jesus as the bridegroom as though everybody understands where this is coming from, and then Jesus himself, they come and ask, “Why don’t your disciples fast?” He explains, “Why do you fast when the bridegroom is with you?” So I think a couple of things are at work there. One, there are these intimations that Jesus is the fulfillment of what is typified by the idealized figure of Solomon in the Song of Songs. At one point, he even says “one greater than Solomon is here.” Then, broader than that and connected with the wider biblical storyline, we have these statements like Jeremiah 31, where the Lord says that He’s going to make a new covenant, not like the covenant that He made with the fathers which they broke, and then the ESV renders it “though I was a husband to them.” So there seems to be this expectation of a new covenant that will be like the Sinai covenant, and that new covenant is going to be a marital covenant just like the Sinai covenant was. I think that Jesus is coming as the fulfillment of that expectation, and is the fulfillment of everything typified by the male figure in the Song of Songs.
Books At a Glance:
Excellent. Well, I think one of your trademarks in your work is you like to look at the text closely, and you look at it in context, and you look at it in its broader canonical context, and you try to connect it with what has gone before and after, and I think that that is an excellent example of it. You mentioned something about the historical connection of it. What is there about Solomon then that is historical? Is this only an idealized poem, or is it reflecting something of his own relationship also?
Hamilton:
Duane Garrett makes the point that for something like this to be written, it requires a certain level of education, a certain cultural luxury and place of refinement, and Garrett argues that the best candidate for the kind of setting in which a book like the Song of Songs could be written is the reign of King Solomon. Then, when we read about King Solomon’s reign, and we read about these three thousand songs that he wrote and all of these wise sayings that he collected, then I think when we come to this and we’re told that this is his Song of Songs, or his sublime song, or his best song, we can see how the court and the wealth and the acquaintance with the chariots of Pharaoh and the horses, all of this would naturally fit in Solomon’s court.
I think the difficult points are the many wives of Solomon, and the difficult relationships that Solomon had. Andrew Steinmann suggests that the Shulamite is perhaps to be identified with this young lady, Abishag the Shunammite, that was brought in to warm David when he got old and he couldn’t keep his body warm. He suggested there’s even evidence for “shunem” in some cases being referred to as “shulem,” and that “n-l” sound is often pronounced differently, gets written differently. I think that’s problematic. I think that just introduces difficulties. It is hard for me to imagine a situation where—I mean, maybe Solomon took this woman Abishag the Shunammite, who was sent into his father David’s bed, as his wife. That seems a little creepy to me, to be honest. The text doesn’t say that we have to believe that, so I would rather not posit that Abishag the Shunammite who warmed David in his old age is the Shulamite in the Song of Songs.
Books At a Glance:
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about the, maybe, mishandlings of the Song of Solomon. Let me give you an example. I think it was one of the Puritans I read years ago on Song of Solomon 7:2 which reads, “Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat encircled with lilies.” He took that then as illustrative of the Lord’s Supper. How do you get there from there, and let’s talk about some mistakes in handling Solomon’s song, how some maybe have gone a little too far. How do we know what is too far?
Hamilton:
Right. So I think the way he got there is from the reference to the bowl and the wine and then the wheat. So he probably is thinking in terms of, “Okay, I’ve got bread and I’ve got wine, I’ve got the Lord’s Supper.” That’s how he got there, it seems to me, but the problem with that is I don’t see any indication in the text that beyond that surface level connection between bread and wine. There isn’t any reference here to what the Lord’s Supper signifies or to what the Lord’s Supper fulfills.
So my view of the Lord’s Supper is that Jesus is consciously taking up the implements of the Passover meal, so he takes the unleavened bread–and he doesn’t say all of this, but I think this is what he means—this formerly stood for a hasty departure from Egypt, but it is not about that anymore. This bread that formerly commemorated your exodus from Egypt will now commemorate my body that is broken for you when I die on the cross tomorrow. So I think what Jesus is doing is He’s taking up this symbol of the Passover, the exodus from Egypt, and He’s transforming it and redirecting it to its fulfillment in His death on the cross.
I would see no such connection between these concepts and the male figure in the song, starting with his beloved’s feet in 7:1 and working up her body to where he eventually gets to her head there in 7:5. So I argue that what we’ve got here is really, in verse 4 he’s going to start talking about how her nose is like a tower of Lebanon which looks toward Damascus, her head crowns her like Carmel, and the king is held captive in the tresses. I think that all of this imagery points to the land of promise, the land that was promised to Israel, and the abundant fertility of that land, a fertility that is being realized because God is blessing that land. I think the point of comparison is not to say, “When I look at your navel, I see something that looks like a rounded bowl,” but these symbols of God’s blessings on the land correspond to what I see when I look at you, so you’re like a sign of God’s blessing to me. I think that’s the kind of comparison that’s going on.
Books At a Glance:
All right. Well, does the Song have anything to say to us about marriage?
Hamilton:
Certainly. I think there is a lot we can glean from the Christlikeness of the idealized figure in the Song of Songs. In particular, we can pay attention to what this man in the Song of Songs does and what he says, and how the author—I take it Solomon—shows this man speaking and doing things that at bottom are Christlike, that is, self-sacrificial, other-centered, and genuinely seeking the good of his beloved and seeking his joy in her joy. You can boil it down to him saying that he lays his life down for his bride. So I think there is a strong correspondence between the way that the male figure conducts himself in the Song, and the way that Paul calls husbands to conduct themselves in Ephesians 5.
Books At a Glance:
What does it have to say about the Church? You make that point. Also, what does it say about the blessed hope?
Hamilton:
The Church is, of course, the bride of Christ, and in the Song of Songs—when you think about marriage, it is such a wondrous mystery that these two people can become one flesh, that we can be biologically joined together and our bodies can do something together that they couldn’t do alone in the production of children. It is not just a biological, physical unity—there is this deep-level, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, comprehensive relationship that constitutes this one-flesh union. There’s really nothing else. What else is like marriage in the world? It is so marvelous, and so for that relationship to be used to describe the connection between the Savior and His people, it takes up the most intimate and the most glorious of human relationships and says “this is what it’s like to be joined to Christ.” So there’s more than I can put into paltry prose sentences communicated. The imagery and the poetry is working on us in these visceral ways that go deeper than I think propositions can achieve. That’s some of what we can say about what this says about the relationship between Christ and the Church. Then the glorious hope—you know, there are only three places in the whole Bible where this word that’s translated “desire” in Song of Songs 7:10 appears. It occurs in Genesis 3:16 when God tells the woman that her desire will be for her husband, but he will rule over her. Then it occurs in Genesis 4:7 when God tells Cain that sin’s desire is for him, but he must rule over it. Then it occurs here in Song of Songs 7:10. The short story is, I think, the kind of desire that the woman is going to feel for a man as the result of sin and as a result of God’s words of judgment, the kind of desire in view is the desire to take over, the desire to dictate what he does and control his actions, the desire to usurp his authority and all those things. So that’s introduced at the beginning, after sin, as part of the judgment that is spoken in Genesis 3:16. That’s reversed in Song of Songs 7:10 when the bride says, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” So rather than be passive or abusive, she’s saying that the thing that was disordered at the Fall and the thing that God’s word of judgment stated would be messed up, is now being set right. I’m not desiring him—his desire is for me, and that’s the way that it ought to be. So I think that it is pointing to a new and better Garden of Eden-like state of purity and innocence and glorious communion.
Books At a Glance:
Great. All right, just quickly then, a couple more last questions. One, you’ve preached through this yourself, so maybe some advice you have for preachers who are thinking to do the same. And with that, in your preaching through the book, where did you begin? Did you begin on the historical human level in dealing with marriage and relationship and then from there go to the symbolism of it all? Or how did you approach it?
Hamilton:
I’ll take the latter question first. I approached it with the biblical theological overview. So that first chapter in the book was the first sermon that I preached on the Song of Songs, and the reason I went at it that way was because I wanted to try to help people listen for the right things as we moved into the music of the Song. So in the way that if you come to a piece of classical music, and before somebody hits play on a particular piece they might say “This is what you’re going to hear, and this is what I want you to listen for.” Then as the thing unfolds, if they’ve told you, for instance, that this piece by Beethoven is going to take this musical phrase that goes short, short, short, long, and it is going to present that as the main theme and then vary that theme, and then there’s going to be at a certain point a trumpet blast that is going to mark a shift in the movement—now if you listen to it, you’re listen to it in a way that is more aware of what is going on.
Books At a Glance:
You’re keyed in.
Hamilton:
Yes, exactly. So that’s the way that I went after that, and why I did it that way. Then, as we went through, I tried to pay attention to both the detail and the broader picture in a sort of mutually interpretive way. My main advice to those who would like to preach the Song is to pay more attention to the text itself than to the interpreters. The reason I say that is because, in my own experience of both preaching and writing, if I come to the text first, I’m more open to the interpretations that the text itself is going to suggest, and maybe even to wider, biblical, theological connections. Whereas, if I first go read interpreters, and then I go to the text, what I find is that I notice what they pointed out, and part of my time is spent either trying to argue against or for what I’ve seen the interpreters point out.
With the Song of Songs—it is a precarious and difficult book, and someone has said and, maybe this is particularly true, I think, of the Song of Songs, is that there are as many interpretations of Song of Songs as there are interpreters. All of that is easy to get lost in, and so I think that people should go to the text, and if possible, if they have Hebrew, they should make their best effort at it in Hebrew. If you don’t have Hebrew, I would say get as literal a translation as you can get and make your way through that. What’s going to happen is if you go to more interpretive translations, the translation is going to be choosing and making interpretive choices for you. So those can be helpful the farther you get down the line, but the more literal rendering will give you more of the interpretive possibilities.
Books At a Glance:
Right. Great. All right—one last question: What other writing projects do you have in the works right now? Do you have any other books coming out soon to watch for?
Hamilton:
Well, I’m hard at work finishing a commentary on the Gospel of John, and I’ve basically written the whole of the text and I’m to the editing phase. I’ve edited through Chapter 17 on that project, and I hope to have the whole, finished [project] sometime this fall semester, fall of 2015, so I’m putting finishing touches on that.
Books At a Glance:
Who will publish that?
Hamilton:
That will be in a new series from Crossway called the ESV Bible Expository Commentary. It is a twelve-volume commentary on the whole Bible. It is in some ways modeled after the Expositor’s Bible Dictionary on the one hand, and the New Interpreter’s Bible on the other hand. Both of those are sets that cover the whole Bible. The Expositor’s is a twelve-volume set. So I’m writing John, and my understanding is that my contribution on John will be paired in the same volume with the contribution from Brian Vickers on Acts. I’m not sure where he is in his writing process, but mine won’t appear until his is ready to go, also.
Books At a Glance:
Very good. Any others?
Hamilton:
I’m preaching through the Book of Psalms, and as I preach on Psalms I’m writing a commentary on Psalms, and that will, Lord willing, appear in the Biblical Theology for Christian Proclamation series from Broadman and Holman, and thus far the only volume in that series to appear is Tom Schreiner’s book on Hebrews.
Books At a Glance:
Okay. Great. Well, we’ll look for those and try to feature them when they come out. We’ll probably give you a holler for an interview then.
Hamilton:
I sure appreciate it.
Books At a Glance:
Great. Well, thank you, Jim. It’s been great. I appreciate you taking the time for us.
Hamilton:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Buy the books
SONG OF SONGS: A BIBLICAL-THEOLOGICAL, ALLEGORICAL, CHRISTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION