Song of Songs 3

Chapter 3 provides a significant contrast to chapters 1 and 2, and the contrast of the changing scene is so sudden that one almost has the sensation of stumbling through a portal that takes them from springtime rapture directly into a terror of the night. That this scene is a dream is not directly stated in the text, however the Hebrew phrasing of 3:2-4 cf. 5:2-8; Dan. 2:28-29 suggests that this is a very strong likelihood. In any case, there is a division within the chapter between vv. 1-4 and 6 ff. that adds to the dreamlike quality of this passage.

The scene opens in a woman’s bedroom, “She” is the one speaking. “She” has sought her beloved all night long while in bed, but he isn’t there. Note the almost frantic quality of her desire to find him; she decides to venture out into the city and wander the streets alone in the middle of the night in search of him, but finds him not. The night watchmen find her (notice the implication that she is lost) and she asks them where her beloved is… and there he is!

She grabs hold of him and takes him to her mother’s bedroom…

At this point, I must pause to ask the women reading this a question:

Imagine yourself young and hopelessly in love. You lie in your bed all night dreaming about your love, you get up and search for him all over town, and then you find him. Do you grab him and march him off to your mother’s bedroom? I’ll wait to see if anybody offers an answer to that one, but I’m doubting it…

OK, so what is really being pictured here? It seems to me, that this dreamy scene is associating the way “She” feels in her man’s arms with the security and safety she once felt under the protection of her mother. Notice the frantic need for him to be with her through the night; this strikes me as more than attraction and desire… almost a feeling of being alone and incomplete without him at her side.

Then in verse 5 we see the same remark “She” made in the last chapter to the “daughters of Jerusalem” that they should not awaken love until the time is right, it is so powerful a force that it can almost be terrifying in its impact.

Beginning at verse 6, we have what is perhaps the strangest shift yet: “She” stops talking about “He” and starts describing a royal procession through the streets…

These are some of the strangest verses in the Old Testament, because the grammar in the Hebrew is not only vague, but it doesn’t quite work to present a clear picture, and for that reason, the scholarship on it is all over the place, without any particular consensus. Since I’m not attempting to write a commentary, and I don’t have to deal with a publisher and an editor who are telling me take my best guess and state it as a fact, like everyone else has to do, I am free to be honest and tell you that I’m not quite sure what the author is getting at here. Here’s what I mean:

That carriage in verse 9 for example; see it? See the definite article there “the” carriage? It’s not in the Hebrew. All of the description of the construction of the carriage… mirrors the Hebrew found in 1 Kings describing the building of a palace, not a carriage. Even “Solomon” uses language that is far from clearly indicating “King Solomon”.

What I can take from this is that in this vague cloudiness of a dream, there is something that follows “She” taking “He” to her mother’s bedroom, that ends up with a reference to Solomon’s coronation by his mother on his wedding day. Note the mention of Solomon’s mother… while ostensibly “She” is in her mother’s bedroom with “He”.

The conclusion that I draw from this chapter is that the author is describing this desperate need of “She” to be joined together with her love in the darkness of a lonely night alone, and that she seeks to be with “He” because apart from him, “She” is incomplete, and thus you see the comforting images of holding him, her mother’s bedroom (where she would have gone in the night after waking up from bad dreams) and then the power and majesty of the beloved king, and finally a marriage blessed by parental acceptance.

If I am right about the metaphorical aspect of this book, then what do we get when we replace “She” with God’s people, and “He” with God?

The short answer to that question is that we would have a picture of something wonderful.