Chapter Three

1–5. Shulammite in the night anxiously seeks her Beloved and finally finds him. 6–11. The triumphal procession of King Solomon and the celebration of his marriage.

Song of Songs 3:1. Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not. Song of Songs 3:2. I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not. Song of Songs 3:3. The watchmen who go about the city found me; I asked them, “Have you seen him whom my soul loves? Song of Songs 3:4. Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother’s house and into the chamber of her that conceived me. Song of Songs 3:5. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the does of the field: do not stir up or awaken love, until it pleases. All that is recounted here takes place in the deep night (v. 1) and pertains more to the dreams and visions of Shulammite than to reality, in which, according to biblical-Hebrew understanding, it would be improper for a bride to seek her bridegroom at night through the streets of the city (probably Jerusalem); cf. Prov 7:11. A much more satisfactory meaning is given to the allegorical explanation of this chapter. “The Beloved ones (sun and earth) parted with mutual longing and sorrow. Especially the earth cannot find peace, she is troubled, she cannot rest upon her bed. Verses 1–2 of the third chapter—a beautiful poetic depiction of that hidden struggle felt in Palestinian nature at night, of that trembling which stands in the very air and makes everything around seem to quiver. The earth seeks the sun—and will soon find it (the spring night is not long). The section ends, as did the preceding one, with an adjuration addressed to the inhabitants of Palestine—not to mar the harmony and love that reign in the Palestinian nature flowing with honey and milk” (Olesnitsky, p. 370–371). The Midrash interprets this section concerning the religious and civil life of Israel during the nights (i.e., captivities) of Egypt, Babylon, Media, Greece, and Rome (s. 82).

Song of Songs 3:6. Who is this coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the merchant’s finest powders? Song of Songs 3:7. Behold, it is the couch of Solomon; sixty mighty men are around it, of the mighty men of Israel. Song of Songs 3:8. All of them are armed with swords, trained for war; each has his sword upon his thigh, for fear of the night. Song of Songs 3:9. King Solomon made a palanquin for himself from the wood of Lebanon. Song of Songs 3:10. Its posts he made of silver, its back of gold; its seat is purple; the inside is inlaid with love by the daughters of Jerusalem. Song of Songs 3:11. Go forth, O daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his marriage, on the day of the gladness of his heart. The magnificence of the scene depicted here prompts the sacred writer to introduce a new group of characters—namely, a chorus of the Bride’s companions, who express their feelings of admiration and wonder at the magnificent spectacle opening before them with the exclamation of v. 6. The general meaning of the scene depicted here is usually understood as follows: here is depicted the marriage of King Solomon with the chosen Bride of the Song of Songs, with verse 6 presenting the bridal procession of the Bride, verses 7–10 depicting the counter procession of King Solomon the Bridegroom, and verse 11 speaking of their marriage as already an accomplished fact. The question or exclamation of v. 6 naturally refers to the Bride and her movement, as may be confirmed by the parallels Song 6:10 and Song 8:5. As for verses 6–10, the description here of the litter (Hebrew mitta) or palanquin (Greek ψορειον) and the entire setting of the royal procession and all the courtly magnificence of King Solomon are fully confirmed by all that is known of Solomon from 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. But it should be mentioned here that Professor A. A. Olesnitsky gives an explanation of the passage in question Song 3:6-11 from the standpoint of his theory, already known to us, concerning the origin, meaning, and significance of the Song of Songs. “The essence of this strophe,” he says, “is a poetic depiction of the sunrise, by which, as we saw in the preceding strophe, the earth languished during the night… The description of the sixth verse cannot have any relation to a human form; comparison of a human being to columns of smoke would be inelegant and unnatural. But the Palestinian sun, rising precisely from the wilderness (the so-called mountainous region of Judea to the east of Jerusalem) amid the blue vapor eternally rising over the Moabite mountains, for one observing from the Jerusalem hills appears precisely in columns of smoke, which the poet calls fragrant smoke of myrrh and frankincense, that is, similar to the smoke which rose upon the altar of the temple (the rising of the sun was met by the offering of sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple)” (p. 371). An objection to this is the feminine gender of the pronoun in the question: “who is this…” (Hebrew mizot) and the noted parallelism of v. 6 to two other passages (Song 6:10), in which it is undoubtedly the bride who is meant. The first objection is easily removed in Professor Olesnitsky’s explanation by pointing out that the Hebrew shemesh (sun) in ancient Hebrew is of the feminine gender, which is confirmed by the frequent feminine construction with its verb, e.g., Gen 15:17, 19 Ktib, Nah 3:17 (p. 359). But a certain unexpectedness in the appearance in the sacred poet’s speech of the implied shemesh remains. However, an intermediate concept is the thought of the king of Israel, and then, as the summit of all, there is the thought of the Messiah. “The rising of the ‘promised’ (Isa 30:26) sun,” says Professor Olesnitsky in this sense, “can signify only the moment of appearance of the awaited executor of God’s judgments upon His land and people. And behold, this executor appears in the rays of the material sun and is none other than King Solomon, the political sun of the land (Solomon from Persian sol, sun). In Song 3:7-11 it is spoken precisely of Solomon’s ascent to the throne and of his triumphal appearance before the people. The extraordinary palanquins depicted here, like the chariots in Song 6:12, serve both as the king’s throne and as an attribute of the sun (2 Sam 23:11)… The marriage spoken of here is the covenant concluded between the king and the people when the king ascends the throne, and at the same time the poetic covenant of the sun and the earth, which poets of all times and nations have found in the spring relation of the sun to the earth. But that is not all. The union of the two images of the rising sun and the ascent to the throne of a great king was to bring to consciousness a new, higher image of the Messiah King, whose name is Sunrise, and the Sun of Righteousness. According to the Midrash’s explanation (Midr. III, 11, s. 99), the king mentioned in 3:11 is understood as the king—the Messiah, since only he can bring into harmony the manifestations of heat and cold, the actions of the Angel of Winter Michael and the Angel of Spring Gabriel” (p. 372–373). “Fear of the night” (v. 8)—fear of ghosts and such—existed among the Hebrews from the earliest times (Job 4:14; Ruth 3:8; Prov 3:23-25; Ps 90:5) to later times (Matt 14:26).