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Lips that drip liquid myrrh, cheeks like beds of spices. . . What on earth is happening here? This week, we’re making sense of the metaphors in Song of Songs. Find out how this bizarre (to us) love poetry shows us that God is wholeheartedly, enthusiastically, and unequivocally in favor of out-of-this-world sexual pleasure in marriage.
Juli (00:02.126)
Hey, friend, welcome to Java with Juli. I am so glad that you joined me for this episode. And this podcast is a production of Authentic Intimacy, which is a ministry helping people make sense of God and sexuality. Well, I feel like this conversation, we’re going to be going right back to the very beginning of when I started this ministry 13 years ago. This ministry was really spurred on by some conversations that I had with a mentor of mine, Linda Dillow, some of you are very familiar with her, who actually co-founded this ministry.
I was a clinical psychologist in the marriage and family space with about 16 years of marriage under my belt. And I had already written a book about sex and marriage, but I had never really studied the book of Song of Solomon. And to be honest, I didn’t really appreciate this book. I didn’t get all the symbolism, like the leaping deer and gardens and fruit. It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. So Linda gave me an assignment to read Song of Solomon and to really ponder on what I might learn from the woman in this story, the young bride. And as I was reading, I remember thinking that the bride in the Song of Solomon was way more inspiring and convicting than what we might consider the Wonder Woman of the Bible, which is the Proverbs 31 woman, yet nobody had ever sent to me as a wife, like be like her.
Juli
She was passionate, she was honest, uninhibited in her sexual relationship. I remember thinking that if most husbands were to choose, they’d probably rather be married to the bride in Song of Solomon than even the Proverbs 31 woman, because sexual passion and intimacy is just important in marriage. A lot of wives don’t know how to enjoy that and tap into that.
The bride in the Song of Solomon really changed the way I began to see sex in my marriage. So I invited an expert, Dr. Sandra Glahn, to help us better understand this poetic book, some of the ancient language that it holds, and also what it tells us about God’s design for sex and marriage. Now Dr. Glahn, or Dr. G, is a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Juli (02:22.334)
She has a Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. and a PhD from the University of Texas. Along with the dozens of books that she’s authored, she’s also a contributor to the new LifeWay CSB Women’s Study Bible. And that’ll be coming out January 1st, and you can pre-order it today. I think you’re gonna enjoy diving into the Song of Solomon with her, so let’s head to the coffee shop.
Juli (02:47.608)
I’m really excited to dive into the Song of Songs with you. It’s also called the Song of Solomon. Do you have a preference?
Sandra
I don’t.
Juli
Yeah? Alright.
Sandra
I like SOS rather than SO… SOS.
Juli
Yeah. They’re both SOS, right? Yeah. So when I had a conversation with you last time, you shared some of your story, you shared some of your interest in scripture and learning more about scripture in reference to understanding women in scripture. But I wonder if you have a similar story of maybe when you were first exposed to Song of Solomon and how now you have begun to see it differently than maybe you first learned it.
Sandra
Yes, so I learned Song of Solomon as a story with a beginning and a middle and an end. And I now know that such thinking comes from Aristotle and the Greek tragedies that had a beginning, middle, and end. And our television shows are built around that for the most part. But Ancient Hebrew poetry did not work that way. And thank God it didn’t, because let’s say it had to rhyme. Rhymes just don’t translate. Anytime you’ve ever tried to translate lyrics, you see that, they don’t rhyme if they need to in another language. But the beauty of Hebrew poetry, which Song of Songs is, is that you might have two ideas that are the same that are repeated using different words, and that helps us translate, that helps us with meaning, too. If we’re not sure exactly what the writer meant, but we know it means the synonym to this word over here, okay, that’s where we’re going. So it’s easier to translate, which is wonderful, since we want to translate the Bible into a gazillion languages.
Sandra (04:29.144)
But the other thing that’s really important to learn is that it’s most likely, I would say definitely, not a beginning and a middle and end. And the reason that is so important with Song of Songs is because we’ve read it as dating, marriage, and then after marriage. The challenge with that is you got a lot of hankypanky going on in sections that dating is supposed to happen. And then if you know about ancient cultures, you’re like, they didn’t even do dating.
Like they had arranged marriages. There was no such thing. So what does that mean? Well, more likely it’s a “chiasm” or “chiasm”, both are correct pronunciations. We have a “chiasm” in English. Think, we have lots of them. Think about like you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy, right? Take boy, country, country, boy, take. Okay. So it’s kind of like A, B, C, B prime, A prime.
Sandra
And probably the central idea of Song of Songs focuses on Solomon’s wedding day. And that is probably the oldest piece of poetry in the song. And in fact, they’ve probably built poetry around it. And here’s the best analogy I can think of. You take some love poetry like, how do I love thee, let me count the ways. And that to us is old poetry. And let’s take that and make that the central idea, but then let’s do a lead in and a lead out from that, but put that at the very center of the piece, and that’s the apex. That is probably what’s happening with Song of Solomon, and that means you’re gonna have some things that are repeated in the beginning and the end, in the second and the fourth, and then the third, you know, number three is the apex of it all. And so what we’re not seeing is a chronological progression of a relationship. You’re maybe seeing some snapshots.
Juli
So, to kind of rephrase what you said about Chiasm or Chiasm, it’s almost like I have a book, I have the Bible open in front of me. Like if I were to open the Bible exactly in the middle, it would be working outward both ways.
Sandra (06:42.062)
Perfect. That’s exactly it.
Juli
And the most important central thought is going to be at the very middle. That really helps us understand. So what is the exact middle then? You said it’s the wedding day. it a chapter? Is it a verse?
Sandra
He is celebrating, his mother is putting a crown on his head that she has made him. It’s a celebration of marriage. It’s a celebration of the wedding. And we know from, interestingly enough, the Gospel of John borrows a lot of imagery from Song of Solomon. And it’s interesting that John is the only Gospel writer that has the wedding at Cana, which is Jesus is blessing. He’s choosing that as his first thing to bless.
And so this idea of a wedding as a ball and chain is just so, so gross. It’s just such an odd contradiction to scriptural view of a wedding. You don’t even see the bride of Christ called the wife of Christ. She’s the bride. It’s the joy. It’s the best wine. It is good. It is celebration. It’s beautiful. And that is who we are as Christians.
We are part of the bride of Christ. And so we do see this imagery of the bride as beautiful. Again, interestingly enough, in the Song of Solomon, the bride says, I’m dark but lovely. She has been working in the vineyard. Her brothers have made her work outside. She’s in a culture where a suntan is a sign of, dark skin isn’t a sign of being lower class. I mean, you’re Semitic, but super dark suntan skin means that you’ve had to work in the sun.
Sandra (08:26.274)
And he sees like, you’re beautiful. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. And there is no one universal standard of beauty. Thank God. So she is beautiful. You see in the book, I could get into things that we see in women that we don’t usually see in other Ancient Near Eastern poetry, but I’m getting ahead of ourselves.
Juli
Okay, all right, great. I love it. I love the passion for it. One objection that people often say when we talk about this particular book is who was Solomon to write this? Like particularly to be any sort of person we want to emulate with sexuality or marriage having had like a thousand wives and concubines and you know, like he wasn’t the best example of this. So why should we even value what he has written here?
Sandra
Honestly, if I were looking for a proof text on fidelity, I wouldn’t zero in on Song of Songs. Not that it teaches infidelity at all. It’s just, and there are whispers of don’t awaken love before it’s time. Like it gives time a place, it’s a secret garden, it’s exclusive. But again, I wouldn’t focus, there’s really plain teaching on that in other places in scripture. I think we’re supposed to see in Song of Songs much more celebration. Much more, you know, some other places are the landmines around love. I don’t see that here. It’s not, that’s not the focus. It’s not that it’s not true or that it doesn’t say it. It’s that it’s saying there are figs, there are birds, there are butterflies, there are trees in bloom. We’re gonna go away. We’re gonna make love outside. We’re gonna, you know, it’s gonna be awesome. And she looks at his body and from toe to head to toe again, she admires it, which women don’t do in this culture.
Juli
You’re right. Yeah. And he admires her body from head to toe as well.
Sandra (10:11.96)
He does. Which you expect in ancient, in poetry, what you don’t expect is equal time. In fact, she speaks more often in this text than he does. The only time the word “lead” shows up, she says, honey, I would lead you to my mother’s house.
Juli
So… Wow. I did some study on this many years ago, and I believe this is true that the bride in the Song of Solomon has more words in scripture than any other woman. it is very interesting. That’s probably true. And some of our listeners will know some of my history with this book. I used to not like it at all.
Sandra
Why is that?
Juli
I just didn’t get it. You read it and… I’m not the poetic sort and I didn’t understand what I was supposed to get from it. And I think I probably read it from kind of like a traditional guy’s perspective almost and not seeing the woman and her passion. Linda Dillow was a big influence in me for me like relooking at this and saying, look at the bride, like look at how much she enjoys sexual pleasure. And that was a struggle in my life at that stage like having grown up in the church, women aren’t told that we’re supposed to enjoy sexual pleasure in marriage. So it was a real aha moment.
Sandra
And Solomon tells us that we are. She’s like, may he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. And yeah, and you know, it’s not just the word for mouth. It’s palate. I mean, we got some French kissing happening here. That’s, she’s having a good time.
Juli (11:47.68)
Okay, so help us understand some of the cryptic wording and poetry in here. Like what does some of these words mean that we would read over and not realize how erotic it actually is?
Sandra
I think we have something similar in our culture. If any of your listeners were around in the 80s, there was a big hit that had lyrics like, “I really like your peaches when I shake your tree”. And that is not that different from what’s happening here. He is saying, wow, there’s a tree here and I want to climb it.
Juli
Uh-huh.
Sandra (12:30.03)
I mean, and here’s part of the beauty of it’s all this sensory image that is saying, love your body, I love what it does to my body, I love you and what’s happening and I wanna get together and if I turn you down, I might even regret it, not because he dumps her because he’s angry, which is wrong teaching on that. She’s just like, I washed my feet and I’ve already gone to bed and then he leaves and she regrets it. Like, this is a normal relationship, right? This is not like power struggle. Anyway.
The language is intended to be sensory and I’m really grateful that it’s not medical language. Because can you imagine it, I really love your vulva. It just does not, I’m sorry, no. Sometimes euphemism is bad in sex and sometimes it’s way better. And I think this is an example of we do need to learn body parts and we need to not be ashamed, use anatomically correct language, absolutely.
Sandra
But this is love poetry that is serving a different purpose. It’s not an anatomy lesson, it’s not anything other than this is a trans-cultural way of expressing affection and love and enjoying pleasure and saying this is a gift from God.
And I think one of the things that’s really important to take away from Song of Songs is there are no children and no reproduction mentioned anywhere in this book. So for those who say those are the reason, for sexual intimacy, it’s on you to prove otherwise because you would think if this is the center of the Bible talking about love between a man and a woman and the goal is baby making, that’s really weird that they’re not there.
Juli
Right. Boy, I never put that together. That’s pretty cool. Okay, so this also, from my understanding, is the only book in the Bible that is strictly about human relationship. Like every other book of the Bible brings in God at some level or…
Sandra (14:29.772)
Yeah, and God is not mentioned. Right.
Juli
So why, of all the relationships that could be in the Bible, is it not just about marriage, but it’s about the sexual relationship in marriage? Why would God inspire that?
Sandra
Well, I mean, if you think about, I mean, you teach human anatomy, we can go to anatomy. Like the very location of the clitoris says for most women, orgasm isn’t going to happen during penetration. Well, praise God, because that means it’s clear that this is made for pleasure and that pleasure is a creation of God. And that’s just not the language that often comes with talking about sexual intimacy.
And I think the fact that God is not mentioned by name is supposed to make us go, well, he’s there. He’s not mentioned by name in Esther either, but come on. I look at all the events that are happening. He made this, he made the human body. And he’s not gonna give us a manual, how boring, how technical. He’s saying, hey, let me give you some poetry friends and get busy, have fun.
Juli
I would love to take a piece of this poetry and just have you walk us through maybe some of the some of the symbolism that we missed. Do you have a favorite passage you’d like us to go through or do want me to pick one? Okay. All right. Let’s see.
Sandra (15:51.448)
Oh no, pick one.
Juli (15:56.814)
Okay, so many good things here. I will do how Solomon admires his bride’s beauty. Okay, so this is chapter four. Behold, you’re beautiful, my love. Behold, you are beautiful. Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. Okay, what’s that?
Sandra
Elsewhere, she describes his eyes as doves. So one of the things that I love about this language is that it defies gender stereotypes. They use some of the same language to describe each other. It’s not like there’s a way to describe guys and a way to describe girls. It’s like, so picture a dove. It’s, I don’t know, it’s coy in a good way. It’s beautiful. Pick your favorite image. He’s outside, he’s picking a bird that is not like a trash bird, like a grackle. He’s picking one connected with beauty and saying she reminds him of that.
Juli
Okay, good. Then he says, your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from washing, all of them which bear…
Sandra
And none of them are missing!
Juli
… and none of them have lost its young. So I guess that was a big deal in that day and age before Orthodontists…
Sandra (17:19.246)
We didn’t have dentistry. So you’re only young and beautiful for, you know, I don’t know, until you’re 18 maybe.
Juli
Wow. That’s sad.
Sandra
Yeah, it is really sad. It’s really sad. Even my ancestors, the photos I have of them, they are smiling without showing their teeth because their teeth were probably rotten in, you know, 17, 1800s. So yeah, he’s saying you look young and beautiful. You have a gorgeous smile.
Juli (17:43.83)
Okay. let me skip ahead and maybe get to some hotter stuff here. So, your lips, your lips drip, drip nectar, my bride, honey and milk are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked a fountain seal.
Sandra
So that is the poetic way of talking about exclusivity. You’re mine, you’re not anybody else’s. And it’s not that I locked you in the garden. You are garden locked, you are exotic pleasures, you are unique, you are, I meet you in the secret places. There’s another place where he says, I have one hand under you, my left hand under my head and my right hand embraces me, which could be… There could be some veiled references to oral sex there. There could be some references to manual sex there. It’s pretty explicit without being explicit, right?
Juli
Uh-huh, it is. All right. It absolutely is. Okay, so he goes on, your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choices fruits, henna with nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all choice spices, a garden fountain, a well of living water and flowing streams from Lebanon. Away go north and come, o south wind, blow on pomegranate garden, let its spices.
Juli
Okay, I read that.
Sandra
Activate.
Juli
That means nothing to me.
Sandra (19:18.355)
Activate the census.
Juli
So help me understand.
Sandra (19:23.98)
How fun, all right, well first of all, it’s hard to imagine a world without a spice rack for most of us. We can even get saffron, it’s expensive, but we can get it. But in Solomon’s world, spices are one of the things you bring to a king from far away places, because you can’t get them. You can get salt in Israel, but some of these places, he is saying, you’re rare, it’s exotic, it’s expensive, it comes from far away, and then the wind blows in, which is activating all those aromas.
So she is giving off some, you know, scents. She smells awesome to him. Probably some of her own scents and some that she has added through the perfumery. This is a world where we don’t have deodorant and she smells good to him. The wind blowing suggests, you could read that a couple of different ways.
Juli
How could you read it? Tell me.
Sandra
I think you could read it that she wears perfume and wind wafts by and he smells it. I had a pastor friend who said when his wife was out of town, he was in a bookstore and the woman across the aisle from him was wearing the same perfume his wife wore. And he said, I’m sorry to say I stalked her from like the other aisle so she couldn’t see me just because for a minute I missed my wife and I love that smell. She smells awesome to him. But I also think he’s saying our intimacy has activated.
Your you know your bodily…
Juli
There are smells associated…
Sandra
… there are smells associated and it smells good and it is exciting it means you’re enjoying yourself.
Juli (20:57.966)
Mhmm, there you go. That’s good. Okay, so I’m going to skip over to chapter five where we have the bride admiring her husband. I read some of these verses. You tell me what they mean. His cheeks are like beds of spices, mounds of sweet smelling herbs. His lips are lilies dripping liquid myrrh. His arms are rods of gold set with jewels. His body is polished ivory beckoned with sapphires. His legs are alabaster columns set on bases of gold.
Sandra
They are coming up with the most wealthy images they can. This is… She’s saying, your body looks great to me, you have awesome legs. You know, your myrrh and gold, are what rich people have. And actually, you know, she’s a shepherd girl. She’s not a rich girl. She’s worked outside. He, on the other hand, he’s the king, but she’s not. And doesn’t matter. He sees beauty in her. He sees wealth in her. But in this case, she’s seeing it in him.
Yeah, he’s a stud. You know, Myrrh is, I think so often we connect Myrrh with the death of Jesus, which we should. And sometimes even when we talk about the wise men coming with Myrrh, we say this is foreshadowing the death of Jesus. And that’s unfortunate because while it’s true, and there was Myrrh, and Myrrh is part of embalming, Myrrh is very associated with royalty in the Bible and in the Ancient Near East. So she is seeing her king and going, dude, you know, you got some wealth and you, by the way, you smell great and you taste great under your tongue. It tastes really good. You look great. Look great, smell great, are great. Come on.
Juli (22:45.55)
Yeah. Okay. I hear from couples and men and women individually all the time who are saying, I want to be able to enjoy my spouse and our marital pleasure the way God wants me to, but my mind is just filled with the world. Like I have a history of pornography. I’ve got images from my past I can’t let go of. How do I enter into sensuality in a way that is God-honoring.
Sandra
That’s such a great question.
Juli
Yeah, and how does Song of Solomon help us with that, like very practically?
Sandra (23:25.016)
So my understanding is the number one problem in sexual intimacy is talking about it. And Song of Solomon gives us some common language to do that. And the beauty of poetic language in it that it is not super explicit is that it’s easier to coax out things that might be hard to say. And again, I’m all for blowing off euphemism and going for, I think it’s important to use anatomically correct language.
But also, when you’re in the context of lovemaking, poetry is a beautiful thing. I know that some couples who have been helped by first studying it so they have a sense of what it means and then reading it together to remind themselves that this is a holy thing we’re called to. This is not a nasty, dirty thing we’re engaging in. This is God’s self telling us, I invite you to pleasure. Let me give you some language. In the same way that when I’m grieving or I am mourning or lamenting, I don’t have the words I need to say what I feel, but the Psalms express the words for me. And so I can use preformed words of someone else to help, I don’t know, prime the pump, get started, get going, when I myself don’t begin to know how to articulate what is good and holy.
Juli
Okay, so what I hear you saying is a few things. Number one, this really gives a couple permission to do the things we see here, to go on a field trip and have adventurous sex, to fantasize about each other, each other’s bodies and call out the beauty of each other’s bodies.
Sandra
Say how it’s affecting you. Say you smell great. Yep, you taste good. All that, yep.
Juli (25:10.638)
And then you’re saying that there’s language here that we can read together and borrow or even be inspired to create our own descriptive language.
Sandra
So I’m glad you said that because I think that’s a good next step. Once you borrow the exact language, if that helps, then your cheeks are like fill in the blank for yourself. Your legs are like fill in the blank for yourself. My beloved’s XYZ is XYZ.
Juli
Yeah. OK.
Sandra
And read it to each other.
Juli
Another thing that I think has really helped me with Song of Solomon that I see in here is activating all the senses. So often when we rely on past images, we’re dissociating. We’re separating our mind from what’s happening in the present. And what we see here is all this grounding in the smells, the sights, the sounds, what it feels like to be touched.
Sandra
Yes, absolutely. So if you’re working to overcome something visually, one of the helps can be, compensate orally, tactily. Smell is a huge association with memory. create, in fact, there is a rule God gives for the tabernacle. Here is the recipe for the incense, and we put to death anyone who uses it for anything but worship.
Sandra (26:35.97)
So that whenever people smell that thing, they immediately go to worship because they have no other associations with it. So get rid of something that has negative associations with aroma and introduce your smell, the smell you’re going to use as part of your healthy lovemaking. Just only use as part of that unique encounter or your unique smell as a couple.
Juli
Now you are a scholar of biblical history and church history. How has this book been misunderstood throughout church history and even neglected?
Sandra
Yeah, well, some have read it allegorically. So for example, you know, the women’s breasts are Israel and Samaria, right? Things stand for things. And I was listening to a teacher talk about Romans, I think it was Romans 9, where it’s talking about, no, it was Revelation. It’s talking about how the trees are gonna be destroyed. And somebody raised their hand and said, Pastor, what do you think the trees stand for? He’s like, I think they stand for trees.
And sometimes we try to make this equal that too much. It’s true this is poetic language, but we can take that too far. And even if there are some truths on an allegorical level, allegory only works if it’s true on a literal level. And the reason this works on an allegorical level is because literally men and women have sex, and they enjoy each other. And sex is a gift from God.
Sandra
And God celebrates it. So you can make it into an allegory, but on its plain sense of the language structure, it’s a poetry about romance. So, you know, allegory is probably the biggest. In the Middle Ages, there was a lot of ink. And, you know, ink, it was hard to find paper. Like they’re writing on paper. So a lot of very valuable product is used talking about allegory. But also, you know you have young Jewish families where they understand what they got here.
Sandra (28:37.686)
A young man is not allowed to read it until he reaches a certain age because, you know, imagine if we made that taboo instead of porn. You don’t get to read this until you’re ready for it.
Juli
Well, thank you for your scholarship on this and also just for making this practical for us.
Sandra
Thank you for your journey and sharing your journey. I’m sure that it is shared by many, self-included.
Juli (29:09.784)
Well, all right, friends, it got a little spicy in here today, didn’t it? I hope you learned something new about God’s design for married sex, and about the gift of sexual pleasure. If you enjoy going deeper into God’s Word with other women, we will link to the new LifeWay CSB Women’s Study Bible in our show notes. Dr. Glahn, as I mentioned, is a contributor to that study Bible, and it comes out January 1st.
Thanks for listening today and I look forward to having coffee with you next time for some more Java with Juli.