The Song of Songs
We have known it was coming. As our Tuesday afternoon Ladies’ class has traveled through the Bible in chronological order for the last 14 years, we have known that the Song of Solomon was coming up. Last Tuesday was the day that I introduced the book, and we began a study of it on Tuesday of this week.
There have been comments made over the years about dreading to get to this book and how hard it will be to teach. We have even joked about feeling like illness was coming on the closer we got to the Song of Songs.
As I have devoted more time to study, I almost feel ashamed of how I dreaded teaching a portion of the Bible. It’s hard, and it takes lots of time and effort to understand what God wants us to know when we study this book.
May I share with you some of the thoughts I have had as I studied?
- Our world has and continues to present to us a skewed view of the beautiful relationship that God intended for us to have as man and woman. Part of the reason we dread reading and studying the Song of Solomon is because we have fallen under the influence of how our world views men and women. Often when the world thinks about a woman’s beauty, it only considers what she looks like on the outside and how much of that she can display to all who want to see it. Not much thought is given to what is on the inside – her thoughts and feelings.
- This book is contained in the Holy Bible and has a purpose. In Paul’s letter to the Romans he gives us the reason that the Song of Solomon is important for us to read and understand: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). Paul also wrote in his second letter to Timothy these words: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” (2 Tim. 3:16). While the book may be hard to understand, it has a purpose and God intended for it to be instruction for us today.
- That leads me to my final thought. There is an enormous need for those of us who are married and have children, to protect them from the world’s view of sexuality, and teach them the beauty of God’s intended plan for a man and a woman. There is no better textbook than the Song of Solomon.
Is the book difficult? Yes. Is it sometimes hard to understand? Yes. Is it sometimes embarrassing? Only if you fail to see the beauty of what God intended for a loving relationship to be between a man and a woman as they court one another and later marry.
How many marriages would last for a lifetime if this teaching had been hidden in the hearts of our young adults?
Take time to read this beautiful song.
AUTHOR: Donna Faughn