Song of Songs – Solomon

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Short Summary
The discourse explores the Song of Solomon as an allegory for the love between Christ and the church, emphasizing its relevance to the present time and the deep, personal relationship believers should cultivate with the Lord. It highlights key symbolic images such as the bride’s eyes, vineyards, and military imagery to illustrate spiritual truths about faith, character development, vigilance against distractions, and the church’s perseverance through trials. The speaker stresses the importance of balanced growth in doctrine, character, and service, encouraging believers to hold fast to their love for Christ amid challenges and prophetic fulfillment.

Long Summary
Uniqueness and Allegorical Approach to Song of Solomon (Songs of Songs):
– Song of Solomon is unique as a love poem within the Bible.
– The discourse approaches it allegorically, emphasizing lessons applicable to the church, especially focusing on the love between Christ (the bridegroom) and the church (the bride).
– It is suggested that the book has a special relevance to the current period, notably the Lord’s return.
– Brother Russell rarely cited this book, but other authors, such as Brother Clayton Woodworth (Reprint 4232), have offered valuable insights.

Language and Imagery Challenges:
– The original Hebrew text is not accessible to most readers; the discourse relies on translations.
– Despite translation, rich imagery such as “dove’s eyes” persists and is central to understanding the allegory.
– The phrase “if thy eye be single” is also a recurring theme, connected to spiritual focus and the time of the Lord’s return.
– Some linguistic scholars suggest parts of the book may reflect a later period than Solomon’s time (~1000 BC), but this is explained as copyists updating language for clarity.

Key Symbolism in the Book:
Dove’s Eyes: Symbolize peaceful, beautiful eyes that reflect the soul’s depth and are precious to the bridegroom (Jesus).
Blackness of the Bride: Reflects the church’s experience of being “black” due to the sun’s (world’s) influence and opposition from others (mother’s children).
Vineyard and Grapes: Central image representing spiritual responsibility and growth:
– The “keeper of the vineyard” reflects stewardship of spiritual truth.
– Grapes, wine, sangria (wine mixed with pomegranate juice), and the wine goblet appear throughout, symbolizing spiritual fruits and blessings.
– “Little foxes” (small sins like impatience, careless words) can spoil the tender grapes, highlighting the danger of minor faults in spiritual life (Reprint 5886).
The Beloved as a Roe (young hart): Represents Christ actively working in the world’s “mountains” (kingdoms) and “hills” (lesser nations).
Lattice Window Imagery (Song 2:9): The beloved stands “behind our wall,” viewed through a lattice, symbolizing prophecy as the means by which the church sees Christ’s actions (“we see through a glass darkly” – 1 Corinthians 13:12 implied).

Spiritual Lessons and Relationships:
– The church is encouraged to develop a deep, personal love relationship with Christ, not just intellectual knowledge.
– Christ’s love is intense and passionate (“ravishes the heart”), demanding both love and sometimes correction (tough love).
– Two types of biblical love are emphasized: agape (selfless love) and filial (personal, affectionate love).
– Christ has a special filial love for the Laodicean church (Revelation 3), which includes loving rebuke.

Role of Watchmen and Different Church Groups:
– The “watchmen” are symbolic of church leaders or those overseeing doctrinal conformity.
– The church collectively “seeks the one whom my soul loves” but sometimes cannot find Him due to the watchmen’s partial understanding or restrictive control.
– The “Lazy Lover” and “Great Company” are other groups discussed allegorically, reflecting varied spiritual states and responses to Christ’s love and call.

Military and Protective Imagery:
– The beloved’s neck compared to the “Tower of David” (an armory) symbolizes strength and protection.
– Shields and swords represent spiritual defense and the power of God’s word (cf. Ephesians 6:16; Revelation 1:16).
– This imagery encourages believers to be spiritually strong and protected.

Beauty and Character Descriptions (Chapters 6-7):
– The beloved’s beauty is celebrated in symbolic terms: eyes, hair (temples with pomegranates), teeth (like a flock of clean sheep), and navel (a round goblet).
– The navel symbolizes balance, health, activity, and connectedness, not just physical beauty but spiritual vitality and connection to origin (mother).
– The “three-legged stool” metaphor—balance of service (activity), doctrine (feeding), and character development—is highlighted as essential to spiritual growth.

End-Time and Final Chapters:
– The church coming out of the wilderness (Song 8:5) symbolizes the end of the 1260 days of tribulation (Revelation 12:6).
– Love is described as “strong as death,” “jealousy as cruel as the grave,” with “many waters [that] cannot quench love” (Song 8:6-7), illustrating the unquenchable and powerful nature of Christ’s love despite opposition (e.g., flood from the dragon).
– The beloved’s call to open the door and the need for the church to respond promptly is stressed (Song 5:2, 5).
– The experience of rejection, abuse, and loss of the veil (symbol of purity) is a warning against ignoring the call.

Summary and Encouragement:
– The Song of Solomon offers rich allegorical lessons for the church’s current experience.
– Emphasis on personal, loving relationship with Christ, spiritual vigilance, balanced growth, and deep connectedness.
– Encouragement to meditate on the poetic images, savor their spiritual meaning, and apply them to develop a mature and loving walk with the Lord.
– The discourse closes with gratitude and a desire for the audience to reflect deeply on these truths.

Selected Bible Verses Referenced or Alluded To:

– 1 Corinthians 13:12 (implied by “we see through a glass darkly”)
– Revelation 3 (Laodicea church and Christ’s filial love and rebuke)
– Song of Solomon Chapters 1-8 (numerous verses including Song 2:9, 3:1-4, 4:1-9, 5:2-5, 6:4-8, 8:5-7)
– Revelation 12:6 (end of 1260 days, wilderness refuge)

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This detailed survey highlights the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon as a profound expression of Christ’s love for the church, emphasizing spiritual growth, vigilance, and the intimate relationship believers are to cultivate with their Lord especially in the context of end-time events.

Transcript

The Songs of Solomon is really unique in the Bible. It’s a love poem, but we’re going to take it allegorically and look at the lessons in there, because there are lessons that not only apply to the church, but there seems to be a special focus on the love of Christ and the church in our very period of time, and I’ll try to make that case as we go through. Brother Russell is not frequently citing the Song of Solomon. He does on occasion, but there are reprint articles on the subject from other authors, and one that’s especially helpful and reprint 4232 by Brother Clayton Woodworth is a blessing that I’d like to share.

Normally, what I’d like to do at this point is take and read the poetry through so that there’s several things we need to watch in the language, and of course, all of us are reading it in translation, because I don’t think any of the online attendees are able to read the original Hebrew. I cannot read the original Hebrew, so I’m reading it in a translation. But as you go through, the images come across from language to language, and some of these images, for instance, we’ll see the image of the dove’s eyes, and tying it in with if thy eye be single gets repeated, and it’s focusing on the time of the Lord’s return.

As you go through the language. There’s been some suggestions that it actually is looking allegorically at the whole gospel age, and there’s things to follow up on that that are of interest. But when we go to the Song of Solomon, we find that our first focus and the verse 17 says, you have dove’s eyes, and what beautiful eyes, what peaceful eyes those doves exhibit. This is something that is a blessing in the sight of our bridegroom.

We’re the bride, he is the bridegroom, and the depth of soul is shown in the eye. It’s really sometimes called a mirror to the soul. So we’re told right away that this was a Song of Solomon. There’s been some scholarly debate on that, because some of the language in the Song of Solomon, linguistically would come from a much later period than approximately 1000 BC. But we can explain that, you know, in some of the scriptural citations, when the language became too archaic, it was necessary to simply add in terms that people could understand at a later time.

And so the copyists made some of those changes in the text, and so the scholarship that dismisses this going back to Solomon himself is not something that we need to take seriously. But what we do need to take seriously are the images in here, and this one of the eyes of the beloved is actually going to emerge at least four times. As we go through the book, we’re told to recognize that in the sight of the world, we’re black.

Because the sun has looked upon me and because the mother’s children were angry with me. What did they do? Well, they said, you need to be the keeper of the vineyards. But my own vineyard, have I not kept? I.

Where do we take this image?

And I think when we go through the poetry, we always want to pause on the rich image and ask, explain it all to me. So in this particular case, Brother Russell adds some helpful comments. I have two reprints or citations from the reprints as well as some of his other writings. We notice that both the Ethiopian eunuch to whom Philip was sent was black and, and the Queen of Sheba that’s getting celebrated in this poem is presumed to have been black as well.

But that doesn’t help us with this question. On keeping the vineyards. What happens when you would be not in a present truth? You know, we’ve got the blessing now of being in the harvest where we’ve been able to gather out from Babylon and come together. But what if you have the truth and you’re in Babylon?

Well, the interest in spiritual things is recognized, and so you would be brought in and encouraged to be a leader in one of the classes that they would have that were conducted by those who weren’t trained in the ministry. They weren’t the professional ones or a Sunday school teacher, and that certainly was true in the 19th century. It’s true up through the present time.

But we need to develop this personal relationship with the Lord. When we get to chapter four, it’s like, I held him and I wouldn’t let him go. Okay, we need to develop the vineyard and throughout our own vineyard. Throughout this poem, we’re going to see the references to the grapes, to the attacks on the grapes, to the wine made with the grapes, to the sangria, the mixture of the wine and the pomegranate juice, and even to the goblet of the wine. So this image, in various ways, keeps playing throughout the Songs of Solomon.

And that’s one of the things that keeps bringing me back to this beautiful, beautiful love allegory and reading it time and time again.

My beloved is like a roe or a young heart, and is that not exactly the way our Lord operates in this world? We find that our Lord comes leaping upon the mountains. What are the mountains the kingdoms of this world, the hills, those are the lesser nations of this world, and he is working in the affairs of our world right now, not only in Christendom, although that’s a special focus because judgment begins with the house of God, but throughout the world that is not even Christian.

Things are. He’s skipping and doing things in China, he doing things in India.

And we can hear his voice. It’s a voice that calls for justice for the people.

How do we see him, though? Verse nine of chapter two says, behold, he stands behind our wall. He’s not directly in our view. He looketh forth at the window, showing himself through the lattice, and.

And if you go into the resources, there was a beautiful talk by brother John Megason on the lattice work of prophecy. How do we see our Lord’s actions in this world? Like this leaping heart. We see it based on the faith we have in the prophecy. That’s how our beloved shows himself.

And I wanted to put up this graphic showing what one of the windows that you would find in Israel, and this design would have been old at the time of the writing of the Song of Songs, Canticles. But here’s one of those latticeworks windows. Of course, you can open portions of it, but basically we don’t have the completely clear view. As the apostle Paul says, we see through a glass darkly.

And it is through this lattice work of prophecy that we can observe our beloved’s actions in this world, and there’s danger that we get warned about. Oh, yeah, there’s something that are called little foxes, Little foxes that can spoil our vines and the tender grapes. So here we have the heart desire to grow in grace, to grow in knowledge, and to actually take this grape and see that, convert it into wine. But it can be spoiled by these little distractions in life that seem harmless and yet they’re not harmless.

And I think I’m going to go back to that, to that previous slide. Let’s see if I can do that easily. Okay, I’m going to go back to that slide. King Solomon seems to be picturing the depravities of our fallen nature, and that’s reprint 5886.

We’re going to be careful with the big sins, okay? That’s not what is likely to be a snare, if you will, or something spoiling the vines for those that have come into a relationship with Christ. But it’s the little things, the little foxes careless, thoughtless, impatient words, careless and thoughtless actions, and it’s actually spoiling the grapes. If we don’t curb those things.

Additionally, we have this special relationship at our time. While it’s true our Lord said, I’ll be with you always, even to the end of the age, we find at this time I held him and I would not let him go. This is the kind of love that we want to have with our Savior.

Of course we want to have the intellectual knowledge.

We want to have that as a guide because, you know, there’s sometimes a thought, I’m just going to open the Bible and let the Holy Spirit lead. That is going to get us not very far, I’m afraid, and I think it can be said with great sincerity. But the results aren’t as helpful to us as actually knowing what the voice of the Beloved said by looking into the revealed scriptures and understanding his plans and purposes, and then developing our character in accordance. But at the same time, this is the kind of relationship we want with our Lord.

One that is personal. One that is a deep love relationship, and the Lord has two words for love in the Bible, and I’ve heard if there’s less than four score talks on that, I will be surprised. But that’s probably low.

Just many, many, many talks about the two kinds of love. The love that is the agape love, and then the love that is the very personal love, the filial love, and you know, the Lord says once in Revelations that He has a church that he has a filial love for. I think he had a filial love for all seven of the churches. But the one church he says he has a filial love for is Laodicea, our very seventh church.

He says, as many as I filial, I rebuke. Okay, so, you know, this is what is called in the psychology community, tough love.

But he both loves us, and when we need correction, we need correction. So let’s just. I want to just read some sections of chapter three by night on my bed. So this is talking about the experience, I would say collectively, of the church before his return. I sought him whom my soul loves.

I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now and go about the city and the streets and the broad ways and seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but I found him not.

There are this class that is not the beloved class, but they are the ones who are watching over the city. They’ve taken control, and there’s a whole prophetic set of images on that. If we examine the first chapter of the prophecy of Zechariah, I don’t think These are people that have a complete understanding of the truth, even though they have some understanding, and they believe they are the ones that the Lord has set to establish order and establish doctrinal conformity.

And seeing that they’re the leadership, you know, the church goes and asks, did you see the one whom my soul loves?

It was a little while, and they couldn’t help. I found him whom my soul loves, and I held him and would not let him go. But these watchmen don’t go away. They actually come back a little later in the Songs of Solomon, and that’s why it’s so important in the study to do what we’ve learned as brethren, to do, which is topically, examine and savor each of these images as though we were enjoying this with our beloved in the garden.

You know, we’d be savoring the sweet things.

I’m surveying the whole book here, and this is just a survey, but as we get to the fourth chapter, he speaks. I’m just going to focus. He says, your neck is like the Tower of David, and your fair, my love. Behold your fair.

You have dove’s eyes. Okay, so here’s another reference back to the beauty of the eyes that is attractive to Jesus in our lifetime or our life experience, and here he says that this Tower of David is actually billed as an armory, even though Solomon was a man of peace. We don’t have a record of battles or anything like that. There’s quite a bit of military imagery that shows up, beginning with chapter one, where he says, you know, you’re so beautiful.

You’re. You’re. You’re like so hard to describe. You’re like a company of Pharaoh’s chariot horses. It’s.

It was one of those images that worked, you know, 1000 BC. But if there’s any young man, young men listening, telling your lover that she resembles a company of chariot horses is something that doesn’t work today. But anyway, it did at the time Solomon wrote that, and so we have a description of the church, the Beloved, as an armory, and there are shields of a thousand mighty men protecting the head, protecting our thinking, and that’s an encouragement.

That’s an encouragement to us. We’re shown this image in Revelation. That again, is one that is a military image of a sword proceeding out of his mouth. Okay, we have shields guarding the neck and a sword out of the mouth. But in case we’re having problems with the image of the poetry, we’re told, this is the word of God.

This is the word of God, and this is something that totally ravishes the heart of Jesus. That’s the kind, you know, he doesn’t have a dispassionate love for us. This is a very intense love, and just one, even though there’s two eyes and he wants two eyes, just even one of those eyes is a enough to ravish his heart.

And when we would think about Jerusalem as it appeared in the time of Solomon, we find out that this tower would have been visible. It would have been in Zion. So remember, there’s two mountains in Jerusalem. You have the temple on the one mountain, but you have the civil or side of the capitol, you know, in Zion, which is on the south end of the city, and of course that mountain is now totally covered over by that platform Herod built, which I think will get unbuilt at some point.

But that’s speculative.

You could see, you could see this tower throughout the city, and it glistened in the light because we find out that the Shields, at least 300 of them, were of solid gold, and so those were something that would pick up and reflect the sunlight and could be seen as a sign of not only the prosperity of Solomon’s kingdom, but the prosperity and security.

Pastor Russell, again commenting on this, says, this is possessing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, Faith and love that makes us lovely in the sight of our beloved.

My head is filled with dew, an image that focuses us on the breaking of the morning. Even before, as the sun starts to rise, you know, the heat from the sun starts to affect the dew, and you will have a dew arising and a fog, and there’s a time element I’m going to suggest in this. My head is filled with dew.

I sleep, but my heart is awake. It’s the voice of my beloved, and what is he doing? Well, behold, I stand at the door and knock. He knocks, saying, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled.

That’s what we want to do. For my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of night. Ah, yes, the night’s over, the day is dawning.

This is not the reaction that the beloved, faithful members of the church have. But we see what’s going to happen to those that we would have to consider the great company a virgin class. Yes, but not one that is faithful in their full devotion and love, and they said, well, I’ve put off my coat. How should I put it on?

I’ve washed my feet. You want me to get them dirty again? These are two really bad excuses. Okay.

And the thing is, Jesus doesn’t give up on even the Great Company at this point. He tries to get his hand in by the hole in the door, and finally the Great Company says, you know, I really have to get up out of bed and get presentable and come to him, and so the rising up takes place, the opening to the beloved in five. Five hands dripping with myrrh.

There’s a lot of symbolism with the myrrh and the different fragrances that we find in the tabernacle. We’re not going to amplify on those here, but this even gets onto the fingers and the handles of the lock, and I opened, but he’d withdrawn. When that knock comes, we have to get that door open. We have to get that door open, dear ones.

My soul failed when he spake. I sought him. I couldn’t find him. I called for him and he gave me no answer. We’re back to the watchmen now.

The watchmen that went about the city found me and they abused. They just took this lady wandering as a prostitute on her way back from her night’s work. They smote me, they wounded me, and they took away the veil. It’s like I, you know, a veil is for a virgin. You don’t get a veil.

All of these things are part of the experience we don’t want to have. We want to open when that knock comes.

If we go to chapter six, he says, you’re as awesome, you’re as terrible. Obviously, this is one of those cases where the wording could be changed into modern English. Terrible means something different to us today. But terrible is an army with banners.

Again in chapter six, verse four. You’re beautiful, my love. As tisra, as comely as Jerusalem, and as terrible as an army with banners, or as awe inspiring. Turn away your eyes. Maybe not dove’s eyes here, but yet one more reference to the eyes, for they have overcome me.

Okay, so you want to make. You almost want to make a side study on eyes, brethren, and you could see how important the eyes of the church are in the sight of our bridegroom. It ravishes him and the hair, and again, things change over time, culturally wise.

If you’re a young man, telling your beloved that her hair is as a flock of goats probably would not work as effectively as it did when Solomon did it. But we would. Again, going back to the picture of Shulamite, the Queen of Sheba, she would have her dark skin and she would have hair that would be curly and not straightened. So he celebrates that and her teeth, you know, the wicked get their teeth broken. That’s one of the images that Solomon’s father David used in several of the Psalms.

But here, the teeth of the beloved of the church are like a flock of sheep that go up from the washing. So they’re all clean and white, and everyone bears a twin. So there’s a top tooth and there’s one to match it underneath, and there’s not a missing one amongst them.

And then this reference to the pomegranate, which is of course going to be shared with the wine later. Within the temples of thy hair, within the temples of thy lock, There are three score queens and fourscore concubines and virgins without number. But my dove, my own defiled is but one, and of course, I think chapter six, verse eight. Nobody but Solomon could possibly have made that claim.

And we won’t amplify further on that because we’re looking at the allegorical lessons here. My undefiled is but one. She’s the only one of her mother. She’s the choice of her that bear her. The daughters saw her.

So this is a different group. Okay, we’ve got our Lord the bridegroom. We’ve got the beloved at church. We have the Lazy Lover. There’s a discourse by brother Carl Hagenseck that is, I think, the legacy of the Lazy Lover.

But, you know, he has such clever titles, and then we have the Watchmen. Here’s a group that seems to be the members of the household of Faith, and they’re dealt with in various ways. But the daughter saw her and blessed her, yea, queens and concubines.

Everybody praises not only the beauty, but the character of the beloved. Okay, the seventh chapter talks about ideal feminine beauty in detail, and I thought, I’ve never heard a discourse on navels. But I like to say that because when I say I’ve never heard a discourse, somebody says, oh, yeah, I found a discourse. So if you know of a discourse on navels, please share that with me.

But thy navel here, we’re told it’s like a round goblet, and I think it’s important. I’m going to go to this picture and then go back if I can. But you know what? I’ll just stay on this photo. But this is a victory celebration, not in Israel, but it’s a bas relief from Assyria, from Shalman Asser, after he was victorious over the Elamites and one of the wars that they held.

And this is the Queen Mother there. She’s facing across from him with a wine goblet. Okay, so don’t think of a glass stem goblet. The Egyptians were working with glass, but glass stem goblets aren’t going to show up for another 600 years after this, and here you have this round goblet that is being held and I can’t remember the Queen Mother’s name right now.

Nefiti, I believe, and of course, a celebration with the lotus in the left hand, the wine in the right hand, and she’s getting fanned in the background there.

What lesson are we to take from this? Well, you know, there are supermodels and if you see those supermodels in what is considered the current standard for beauty, they’re usually needing an extra meal or two or three. They’re way too thin and their navel is tight in terms of being elongated.

That’s what too little feeding and too much activity does for you. Is it bad to have too much activity? No, what this is focusing on is the importance of balance. The activity is important because if you go the other direction and just feed and don’t have the activity, well, the stretching out is in the other direction, which is more typical of the condition that we have in our society today. But here it’s not only a balance, but it’s one that has depth to it.

And there was a beautiful image used for a number of years that would ask brethren to reflect on the three legged stool that you used for milking cows. One of them being service, in other words, exercise and activity. One leg being a doctrine and one leg being the development of character, the depth, and I like, I think that is an image that we can take across into this ideal of feminine beauty that we find over here. So I had to show this.

This was an Aboriginal painting from Australia. You have a father figure or a male figure showing the younger figure there how to, you know, break into a beehive and recover the honey, probably without getting stung too much. What’s interesting, the reason I, you know, I interested in cultural anthropology, it’s very, very interesting to me because we’re going to have to deal with a lot of different cultures in the kingdom. But you notice the one thing they show, the eyes. Okay, well that’s nice because that shows up in the Song of Songs.

But they show the navel here. That is really not typical. What is it indicating? You know, we talked about character, we talked about activity, we talked about growth in feeding on doctrine. But what the navel also talks about and exhibits is connectedness.

This is something that connected us to our mother.

And then going back all the way to Eve. Okay, mother to mother. Going back however many generations, and I guess we could count it out, but I won’t to show that we also. There’s a focus on this, and the wine gets mentioned in this.

And there’s a connectedness that should be part of our character.

Then we come to our closing chapter. Who’s this that comes from the wilderness, leaning upon my beloved. When did the church come from the wilderness? The end of the 1260 days, and as the book closes, it talks about that.

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thy arm. For love is strong as death, the opposite the antithesis. Jealousy is as cruel as the grave. The coals thereof are coals of fire, which has the most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love.

Remember what happened in Revelation at the end of the 1260 days? There was an attempt to drown the beloved by the dragon casting out a flood. Well, here we have the coming in from the wilderness. The end of the 1260 days, I would say prophetically, and floods that are attempting to drown the beloved. It doesn’t work.

Not when we have this beautiful relationship with our Lord. Not when we’re holding on to him, not when we’re growing in our understanding of doctrine, when we’re growing in our development of character, when we’re growing in our service to the Lord and growing in our connectedness to each other. You can’t buy it. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be condemned.

Well, brethren, sharing these thoughts has been a blessing to me. As I say, I would like to read the poem and put the emphasis on the word. I will leave that for your consideration, and thank you for sharing this time together with me.

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