Song of Solomon a guided tour

c. 5th–3rd c. BCE · Hebrew Bible · Writings · Five Megillot · Love poetry

The most unlikely book in the Hebrew Bible: eight chapters of erotic love poetry, unembarrassed and unedited, preserved in the canon because the rabbis who argued over it decided the desire it described was holy.

The book in brief

Song of Solomon — also called Song of Songs (the Hebrew superlative: the song that surpasses all songs) and, in older English Bibles, Canticles — is a sequence of love poems in eight short chapters. The traditional attribution is to Solomon, the king named in the opening verse and in several places throughout the text. Modern scholarship places the composition considerably later, probably between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE, on the basis of vocabulary, Persian loanwords, and the literary character of the verse. The book has no narrative in the ordinary sense. It is a sequence of voices: the Beloved (a young woman who speaks first and speaks more than anyone), the Lover (a young man), and the daughters of Jerusalem (a chorus who frame and respond). They are speaking before, during, and after physical love, in a register that has no real parallel elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

The Song's place in the canon was contested in antiquity and settled in its favour for reasons that have shaped its reading ever since. Rabbi Akiva, at the Council of Jamnia in the late first century, declared the day the Song was given to Israel as holy as the day the Law was given on Sinai. The allegorical tradition — which reads the Beloved and Lover as Israel and God, or (in the Christian tradition) as the Church and Christ — enabled the book to remain in scripture and produced, over the centuries, some of the most ardent mystical literature in both traditions: Bernard of Clairvaux's eighty-six sermons on the first two chapters, John of the Cross's Spiritual Canticle, the love poetry of the Spanish Carmelites. In the modern period the literal reading has returned with force. Most contemporary scholars treat the book first as what it manifestly is — a sustained celebration of erotic love between two unmarried young people — and the allegorical traditions as one of the things later readers did with that material. Both readings are now standard, and the most thoughtful contemporary commentary holds them together.

Song of Solomon, chapter by chapter

Click through the 8 chapters like a tour. Each card picks up where the last left off — a quick way to read Song of Solomon in five minutes. Open any book in depth, or jump straight into the reader.

Song of Solomon 1 of 8

Song of Solomon 1

The Beloved speaks first

Chapter 1 is the Song's opening statement of desire. The Beloved speaks the first words — let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth — and immediately establishes herself as the book's dominant voice. She addresses the daughters of Jerusalem about her dark skin, sun-darkened from working her brothers' vineyards, and insists on her beauty without apology. The Lover responds with the first of his praise poems, comparing her to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots, to a cluster of henna blossoms. The chapter establishes the book's three voices — the Beloved, the Lover, the daughters of Jerusalem — and its two settings: the city, where the chorus watches, and the rural world of vineyards and pastures where the lovers would meet away from social supervision. The allegorical tradition reads the Beloved's dark beauty as Israel's condition — marked by history, beautiful to God — and the kisses she seeks as the kiss of the Torah given at Sinai. The literal reading hears a young woman describing herself to a chorus of city women who have asked about her complexion, and telling them that her lover finds her beautiful regardless. Both readings begin here.

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Song of Solomon 2

The gazelle and the lattice

Chapter 2 is the book's most famous sequence of natural imagery and contains the lines most associated with the Song in popular memory — I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. The chapter moves from the Beloved's self-comparison to a lily among thorns to the Lover's arrival — bounding over the mountains, leaping over the hills like a roe or a young hart — and his invitation to her through the lattice window: rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. The invitation is seasonal: winter is past, the rain is over, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle (turtledove) is heard in the land. The chapter closes with the threefold refrain — I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up nor awaken love until it please — one of the structural pillars of the book's form. The allegorical tradition reads the Lover's spring arrival as the coming of God to Israel after exile or of Christ to the soul in consolation. The literal reading hears the most accomplished nature poetry in the Hebrew Bible in the service of a simple invitation.

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Song of Solomon 3

Night search and the royal procession

Chapter 3 contains two of the book's most structurally important passages: the first of the two dream sequences (3:1-5) and the description of Solomon's wedding litter (3:6-11). The dream sequence is compact and urgent — by night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him but I found him not — and moves rapidly: the Beloved rises, searches the city streets, meets the watchmen, passes them and finds the Lover, brings him to her mother's house. It closes with the first occurrence of the refrain about not awakening love. Then, with no narrative transition, the scene shifts to a public spectacle: who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense? It is Solomon's litter — a carriage of the wood of Lebanon, sixty warriors escorting it, each with a sword, against the terror of the night. The chapter ends with the daughters of Jerusalem summoned to watch the procession. The allegorical tradition has read the night search as the soul's search for God in spiritual aridity, and the wedding procession as the covenant or the Incarnation. The literal reading holds two separate poems in sequence.

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Song of Solomon 4

The Lover's first wasf

Chapter 4 is the first and most extended of the Lover's wasf praise poems — a form with close parallels in classical Arabic love poetry (wasf meaning 'description'), in which the body of the beloved is described part by part from head downward, using a sequence of metaphors from nature, architecture, and precious materials. He begins with her eyes (doves behind a veil), moves to her hair (a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead), her teeth (a flock of newly shorn sheep, each bearing twins), her lips (a thread of scarlet), her neck (the tower of David hung with a thousand shields). Then he calls her to come away from Lebanon, from the mountains of leopards and lions. The second half of the chapter introduces the garden — the locked garden, the sealed spring, a garden of pomegranates and spices and myrrh. He names her his sister, his bride (the formal kinship terms of ancient Near Eastern love poetry). The chapter closes with the Beloved's invitation: let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. The allegorical traditions have read the locked garden as Israel's covenant sanctity or the soul's virginity; the literal reading hears the garden as the Beloved's body, the Lover's praise as the form of his desire.

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Song of Solomon 5

The second search; the Beloved's wasf

Chapter 5 is the Song's most dramatically concentrated chapter and contains both the second dream sequence and the Beloved's own wasf — her description of the Lover's body. It opens with the Lover's statement that he has come into his garden — the consummation that chapter 4 invited — and closes that unit with a final call to drink abundantly. Then the second dream sequence begins, darker than the first. The Beloved is on her bed; the Lover knocks; she hesitates — I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them? — and by the time she rises to open, his hand has withdrawn from the latch and he is gone. She goes into the city, searches, and this time the watchmen find her and beat her and take away her veil. She charges the daughters of Jerusalem to find him and tell him she is sick with love. They ask what her beloved is like, and she answers with the book's most detailed wasf of the male body: his head like gold, his locks black as a raven, his eyes like doves by rivers of water, his cheeks like beds of spices, his lips like lilies dropping myrrh, his hands like rods of gold, his belly like bright ivory, his legs like pillars of marble set on bases of fine gold. The chapter closes with her declaration that this is my beloved and this is my friend.

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Song of Solomon 6

The Shulamite and the armies

Chapter 6 is the briefest of the book's concentrated central chapters and turns on a structural pivot: the daughters of Jerusalem, who have been the passive audience of the Beloved's declarations, now ask a genuine question — whither is thy beloved gone? — and receive an answer that clarifies the garden as both literal meeting-place and something closer to the Beloved's interior life: my beloved is gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. The Lover then speaks again in praise, returning to the imagery of the first wasf — fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners — and the mysterious appearance of the Shulamite: return, return, O Shulamite, return, return, that we may look upon thee. This is the only occurrence of the word in the book, and its meaning is disputed. The chapter ends with the beginning of the next wasf, which continues into chapter 7. The allegorical tradition reads the Lover's praise of the Shulamite as God's address to the exiled community, calling Israel back. The literal reading notices that the chapter is the book's quietest, a pause after the violence of chapter 5's watchmen.

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Song of Solomon 7

The wasf ascending; the vineyard

Chapter 7 contains the fourth and most structurally unusual of the book's wasf passages — the only one that begins with the feet and moves upward, and the only one framed as a performance for an audience (return, return, O Shulamite, that we may look upon thee). The description moves from her feet in sandals through thighs, navel, belly, breasts, neck, and eyes to her head, and reaches a climax with the image of her hair as a purple garment and of the king held captive in its tresses. The Lover declares that he will go up to the palm tree and take hold of its branches, and the Beloved responds with the third and final form of the mutual-possession formula: I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me. The Beloved then invites the Lover to come into the countryside — the villages, the vineyards, the mandrakes — and to find whether the vines have blossomed. She promises him her love there. The mandrakes (associated with fertility and sexual potency in the ancient Near East) and the new and old fruits stored for him at her door complete the chapter's movement from description to invitation. The allegorical tradition reads the vineyard as Israel's land or the soul's readiness.

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Song of Solomon 8

Love strong as death

Chapter 8 is the Song's ending and contains its most famous lines and its most compressed theology of love. The Beloved opens with a social wish — would that you were like my brother who nursed at my mother's breast, so that I could kiss you in the street without being despised — which makes clear, as a passing detail, that the lovers are not brother and sister and are not married, and that the public world does not sanction what they feel. She will lead him to her mother's house and give him spiced wine. The threefold refrain appears for the last time. Then come the chapter's central lines: who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? And the Beloved speaks: 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, a most vehement flame. 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. The book ends, after a brief exchange about the Beloved's brothers and the vineyard at Baal-hamon, on her final voice: make haste, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices. The allegorical tradition reads the seal and the love-strong-as-death passage as the soul's permanent union with God. Both traditions close the book here.

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Key themes

5 threads that hold the book together. Full analysis →

Erotic Poetry in the Canon

The most striking fact about the Song of Solomon is that it is in the Bible at all. There is no other book like it in the Hebrew canon — no mention of God, no covenant, no prophet, no law. There is, instead, sustained and unembarrassed erotic poetry.

The Beloved as Active Voice

The most quietly radical feature of the Song is that the Beloved speaks more than the Lover, opens the book, closes the book, and is the more active partner throughout. She initiates. Her first word is an imperative.

The Garden, the City, and the Watchmen

The Song's symbolic geography is small and concentrated: a city with streets and watchmen, a wilderness, vineyards, and above all the garden — recurring more than any other image, the book's central landscape of desire.

Allegory: Israel and God, Christ and the Church

The allegorical reading of the Song is older than any surviving record of the literal reading. The Jewish tradition reads it as God and Israel; the Christian tradition as Christ and the Church or the soul. Both produced extraordinary literature.

Love as Strong as Death

Near the end of chapter 8 the Beloved makes the Song's only explicit theological claim: love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave; many waters cannot quench love. The lines have been quoted at weddings and funerals for two thousand years.

Key figures

The 3 who matter most. More in the full character guide.

The Beloved

The young woman who opens, dominates, and closes the Song

The Beloved speaks more than anyone else in the book. She initiates the lovers' meetings, describes herself and her Lover with precision and without embarrassment, searches for him in the streets of the city at night (twice), and gives the Song its most quoted lines near the end. She has been called the Shulamite (from 6:13) and identified allegorically with Israel, with the Church, with the soul. On the page she is a young woman who knows her own desire and her own body and the body of the man she loves, and is not afraid to put any of it into words. The Song closes on her voice, calling him to come away.

The Lover

The young man whose presence the Beloved seeks

The Beloved's male counterpart. He praises her body part by part in three extended wasf passages, calls her his sister and his bride (the kinship terms of formal love poetry, not literal blood), comes into the garden she has prepared for him, leaves and returns. He speaks less than she does; the book's structure puts the female voice at the centre and gives the male voice the answering role. He has been identified, on the surface narrative, with Solomon, and allegorically with God and with Christ in the mystical tradition.

The Daughters of Jerusalem

The chorus of city women who witness and frame

A group of young women of the city who speak as a collective voice. The Beloved addresses them repeatedly, asks them questions, charges them with oaths (do not stir up or awaken love — the famous threefold refrain of 2:7, 3:5, and 8:4), tells them about her search for the Lover. They serve the formal function of a Greek chorus — framing, witnessing, asking the questions the audience would ask — and they are also the social world of the city against which the lovers' more private exchanges in the garden are set.