Joy and Sorrow
Even a cursory reader of the Song of Solomon will be aware that the joy and blessings presented in the picture of the bride and bridegroom are under laid with a theme of sorrow, and sometimes of evil. Woven tightly into the very fabric of the Song is a warp of darkness, of frustration and unsatisfied longing, and in one instance of violence. This dark thread is not clearly separated from the descriptions of love and joy which form the principle theme of the book, but appears intermittently and sometimes abruptly in the middle of a passage which seems to describe pleasant incidents which have already taken place. There is the sadder, introduction of the little foxes that spoil the vines (2:15); the incident containing the sinister watchmen, which follows immediately on the cry of the bridegroom, “I am come into my garden. .”(5: 2-7); the frequent seekings for the bridegroom, after the couple have apparently been together; the repeated idea, ‘until the day break…”, as if the lovers were waiting for the shadows to pass away before perfect happiness could be achieved. And, above, all, there is the curiously unsatisfactory ending. to the book, with the bridegroom fleeing to the spice-mountains (8:14 – see also ):6).
This mixture of joy and sorrow is not exclusive to the Song of Solomon. Another example can be found in the book of Isaiah. In ch.60 we read of the cry to the woman Zion, ”Arise and shine”. If you now read on through the succeeding chapters to the end of the book, you will probably be immediately struck with the likeness in character of these chapters to the Song of Solomon. Zion is presented as a bride rejoicing in the Lord, her husband, and the same kind of fruitful-land imagery as is used in the Song of Solomon describes her. Yet, woven into the picture of a bride rejoicing in her Redeemer, are passages like Is. 63:17-19.
I believe that these chapters in Isaiah about Zion present the same picture as the Song of Solomon, and are referring to the same things. Israel is the woman, the bride; God is her husband. And one day there will be a joyful marriage in which everything from the foundation of the world will find its consummation. But the picture which is so beautifully and terribly presented to us is not only one of the future; it is a composite portrayal of Zion . as God’s wife in past, present and future.
There is, however, no consecutive time-sequence set out in these chapters in Isaiah. “Go through, go through the gates…” is immediately followed by a picture of judgments, which in turn is followed by a lamentation about Israel in the days of Moses, and then by a plea to God to remember Israel in her trouble. The theme is always the same – the relations of Zion with her husband, God; but the past history, the present suffering, and the future glory are woven together with the threads running in and out as if time did not exist at all.
There is something here which is difficult for us to understand – and I believe that here, if we can only grasp it, is the clue to all typology, allegory, and second fulfilment of prophecy. Eternal in the heavens there is a pattern of future things, which in a time future to us now will be manifested in the earth – a pattern of a glorious marriage in which Zion’s king takes his earth-born bride in a perfect marriage, out of which righteousness and praise will spring up as plants in a fruitful garden. But before this time, God has shown the pattern of this marriage on the earth once, twice, maybe three times, so that men could see the pattern, understand, and conform themselves to the image. But these manifestations were imperfect, and could not stand as patterns without, as it were, the mistakes being seen, and shown to be crossed out.
And so God espoused Israel in love when He brought her out of Egypt; but the following marriage was not perfectly kept by Israel. God gave Israel a king, but he failed in his duty. And then the near-perfect David was chosen, and yet even he could not properly show the pattern, for had he not been a man of blood, and had once siezed a wife by force after murdering her husband? And so a new picture of the ideal marriage one day to be celebrated in the earth is shown in the accession of Solomon to the throne of Zion – but even so, he did not show himself to be the ideal bridegroom, and the unsatisfied longing of Zion – and, indeed, of God Himself, for the desired consummation remains right through both Isaiah’s prophetic poem, and the Song of Solomon.
So the Song, if it is to stand as a pattern for the benefit of all sons of God, must carry with it the pain and grief and longing as scars on its beautiful perfection. Zion is only revealed as the perfect bride through travail and violence, and carries the marks of the past into the glory of the future – just as the glorified Lord Jesus shows his scarred hands and feet as a pattern for us of the glory to come. The means and the end are inextricably linked together.
And so, when we look at the Song, we should expect to find in this picture of the marriage of God and His chosen people (symbolised as Solomon and the Shulamite) echoes of the past, the present of Solomon’s day, the future .concerning the Lord Jesus at his first appearance, besides the portrayal of perfect love which can only be manifested in the Kingdom. Yet we should remember that while the heavenly marriage has never been perfectly manifested on the earth, there have been good things seen. The past and present of the relations of God with His bride may not be perfect in this life, but there is part of the glory present, as there was in Solomon’s day. Our own relations with our Saviour are like those shown in the book – often happy and fruitful, sometimes evil and frightening, never fully satisfied.
Past, Present and Future
The Song, then, cannot be taken in a consecutive time-sequence. We are not to follow the bride and bridegroom from the chamber, to the bed, to. the banqueting house, out onto the hills – as the first two chapters might suggest, as if these were a sequence of events. What we have in the book is a picture of a marriage ceremony with its perfection interrupted by echoes of the past and future. At the same time the bride and bridegroom dwell in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, or in the valley-garden, or the vineyard. This is easy to understand when you grasp the idea that the bride is a kingdom rather than an individual.
In the marriage ceremony Solomon acts out the divine pattern in his own crowning as king in God’s kingdom. Thus the Shulamite says,
“Go forth, 0 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” (3:11).
There is part of the actual history of Solomon here. Solomon was first crowned during the lifetime of his father David, during the rebellion of Adonijah. David was an invalid; it seems reasonable to suppose that Bath-sheba, who played so prominent a part in the incident, should herself have put David’s crown on Solomon’s head before he rode out to present himself to the people as their king. In the Song there is a second presentation of Solomon to the people, recalling the earlier incident when the crown was first placed on his head.
In the Song we have this presentation of Solomon to Zion as its king for the second time, riding his palanquin up the road from the east in all his glory, and entering the city – and in so doing, recalling a still earlier incident, that of Israel entering the Promised Land, led by the pillar of smoke:
“Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincence, with all powders of the merchant?”(3:6).
We saw in Isaiah’s picture of Zion’s redemption the echo of the journey through the wilderness (Is.63:9-13); now this second portrayal of the marriage-pattern shows Solomon guiding his people as the Angel of the Presence had once guided Israel – and bringing to mind the future journey of the glory of the God of Israel into Ezekiel’s temple of the future.
To summarise the principles so far expressed – the Song of Solomon is an example of a divine pattern of an event which is to be revealed in its perfection when the Lord Jesus rides into Jerusalem as Yahweh on the chariot of the Cherubim, to take his bride (immortal Zion) as his wife, and to rule the Kingdom of God for his Father. There were other examples of the same pattern seen in the history of God’s people, one being the journey of Israel through the wilderness to enter the Promised Land from the east, led by the Angel of the Presence in the cloudy pillar; another is of the Lord Jesus riding into Jerusalem before the Passover. However, all these patterns, including the events of Solomon’s day recorded in the Song, were imperfect, and therefore carry an underlying theme of darkness. In the Song are echoes of this darkness, recalling not only the events in Solomon’s own day, but similar events concerning Israel both before and future to his day.
The Watchmen on the ‘Walls
The clearest picture of the dark theme underlying the book comes in the dream of the watchmen. There are two dreams, one in which the bride seeks her beloved at night, asks the watchmen where he is, and immediately finds him. The second incident, also enacted at night, tells of the bridegroom knocking, and the bride refusing to open. Then she changes her mind, and rises from her bed; but the bridegroom has gone. She runs after him in the darkness, and meets the watchmen in the streets. They beat her and strip her, and wound her. But there the dream seems to fade, and the old theme of joy returns.
There is a picture here of a night of fear – a night in which, because of the unfaithfulness of the bride, the bridegroom departs from his beloved. Then the repensent bride is ill-treated, and maybe raped, by those who should have cared for her – who have been appointed for the very purpose of watching over the peace of the city. The incident recalls Jesus! parable of the stewards appointed by their master to watch in the night, but some begin to ill-use the household of God, to beat their fellow-servants, and to be drunken.
Jesus’ parable seems to refer to the future (to his day) when he would leave his household, and a night of fear would follow, in which those who ought to guard over his church would prove apostate, and become arrogant lords, ill-using the flock, and in time would violently assault those who ‘rose up’ faithfully out of the mass of erring Christianity, trying to follow their Lord. However, this is not the only example of the same theme. Exactly the same kind of thing happened in Israel, when the Lord God left the city because of its wickedness in Ezekiel’s day, while its rulers persecuted the faithful few like Jeremiah who were left in the city.
I believe, however, that the original incident to which the Song refers directly is still earlier, and recalls God’s king, David, leaving the city Jerusalem during the rebellion of Absalom. David left the city because Absalom had stolen the hearts of the people of Israel – he had, as it were, corrupted David’s bride, so that she was no longer ready to rise and obey her king. Only after David had left the city, and withdrawn himself, did love for her lost king move Israel to gather a mighty army together to seek David in the wilderness, to beg him to return to his city. Then David crossed the Jordan, and was escorted back into the city – coming again, as always, into the city from the east.
Then David followed the route of the Israelites of old, from the mountains of the east, where spice was grown, over the Jordan, entering into the land from the east. Then he ascended the hill of Zion. But, for him, the pattern was not perfect, for at this point the men of Israel quarrelled and left him to be escorted by Judah only.
David, therefore, came to his city twice – once, when he captured the city; and again, after he had withdrawn himself, and defeated Absalom. And Solomon also had a similar double presentation to his bride, once, when Adonijah rebelled, and was immediately ousted through David’s action; and a second time, also during David’s lifetime, when a ceremony was held. The unity of the Davidic inheritance is stressed by the fact that on both these occasions David and his son acted as one. The two presentations of the Davidic king to Zion have their typical counterparts, as we hope to show; but here we look at the two incidents in Solomon’s life as depicted in the Song of Solomon. I believe the first ‘watchman’ incident refers to the rebellion of Adonijah, when Zion sought and quickly found her king in a night of trouble; and the second refers to the rape of Zion earlier by Absalom, when the rulers of the city (like Ahithophel) and Absalom seized power and brutally asserted their authority over the city. In the Song these incidents are only a bad dream; but the path to joy is trodden through abuse and wounding.
The Mountains of Spice
Three times in the Song (apart from the watchman incidents) the bridegroom is spoken of as fleeing away – to mountains, variously called ‘mountains of Bether (2:17), ‘mountain of myrrh, and the hill of frankincense’ (4:6), and ‘mountains of spices’ (8:14). The two first occasions refer to the bridegroom fleeing to the mountains ‘until the day break, and the shadows flee away’. Here is again a withdrawal of the bridegroom during a night, a time of shadow; and surely it refers to the same night as the night when the watchmen went about the city – that is, to the incidents of Absalom and. Adonijah; in particular, to that of Absalom, when the city sought her king, who had fled to the mountains of the east, to the land from whence the merchants used to bring sweet spices into Israel. ‘Bether’ is stated by Young to be east of Jordan also, now called ‘Bether’, in the land of Gilead where David pitched after he had fled from the city.
Thus, although the Song speaks of Solomon entering Jerusalem, and of the bride coming up with him from the wilderness, woven into that picture is the idea of a bride still waiting for her beloved, who has withdrawn to the mountains of the east; and the Song ends on this unsatisfied note. The message is there; Solomon did indeed take the bride Zion for God; but because of his faults, and hers, the true fulfilment of the marriage of Yahweh with Zion is still future. The past of David’s day remains as a pattern of the present in which we live, waiting for the Lord from the east, while those who were left to watch over the heritage persecute those who rise up to follow their Lord. And so we echo the cry of the bride, “Make haste, my beloved!”
(to be continued)
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One