1:1 Solomon’s Most Excellent Love Song.
Solomon wrote over 1,005 songs. Only this one song is recorded in Scripture. It is wise for the Bible student to compare this divinely-inspired love song with the other “love” songs of the current satanic world system.
1:2 Oh, how I wish you would kiss me passionately! For your lovemaking is more delightful than wine.
The speaker is Shulamite, She will become the next wife of King Solomon. The wedding ceremony has already taken place. She is in the palace getting ready for her wedding feast and the wedding night to follow.
In this song, Shulamite is speaking to an imaginary chorus. The chorus consists of young women of Jerusalem who desire to help her on her wedding night.
The Hebrew word for “lovemaking” is דּוֹד (dod), meaning to carouse, swing, rock, fondle, love, and to move by thrusts and pushes, all of which have sexual connotations. She tells her female chorus that she is looking forward to consummating the marriage in the Jewish bridal chamber with her new husband. Kissing here is used in the sense of foreplay in preparation for sexual love.
1:3 The fragrance of your colognes is delightful; your name is like the finest perfume. No wonder the young women adore you!
During the wedding feast, wine will be served and the entire palace will be sprinkled with perfume. However, the fragrance of Solomon’s love will surpass the smell of perfume. Many of the young virgins of marriageable age would love to marry Solomon.
1:4 Draw me after you; let us hurry! May the king bring me into his bedroom chambers! We will rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine. The Beloved to Her Lover: How rightly the young women adore you!
The Hebrew word for “draw me” is מָשַׁך (meshal), meaning a gentle drawing of love towards itself. While the first desire was for sexual love, the second desire is emotional love. Sexual love without emotional love is lust. Proper sexual love in the Scriptures is an emotional bonding between husband and wife.
Shulamite wants her new husband to bring her into the bedroom chamber and consummate the marriage bed as soon as possible. When Solomon takes her into the bedroom chamber, then the female chorus will rejoice for her.
1:5 I am dark but lovely, O maidens of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Qedar, lovely like the tent curtains of Salmah.
The Hebrew word for “dark” is שָׁחֹר (shachor), meaning black, dusky, or jetty. It is usually used with dark skin or hair color. It is never used of race.
The “tents of Qedar” refer to the black tents of the Bedouins. These were generally made of black goat skins and hair. The “tent curtains” refer to Solomon’s pleasure tent. Shulamite was so dark and beautiful, that she looked like a Kedar native from the family line of Ishmael.
The bride is dark of skin because of working long in the sun in the family vineyards (Song of Solomon 1:6). She looked like a Kedar native (descendant of Ishmael and the desert Arabians). Nevertheless, her beauty had brought her to young Solomon’s attention. They soon fell in love. Solomon took her as his bride.
1:6 Do not stare at me because I am dark, for the sun has burned my skin. My brothers were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards. Alas, my own vineyard I could not keep!
Shulamite’s brothers forced her to work in the sun in the family vineyards, so her tan was much darker than the lily-white girls who lived indoors inside of Solomon’s palace.
1:7 Tell me, O you whom my heart loves, where do you pasture your sheep? Where do you rest your sheep during the midday heat? Tell me lest I wander around beside the flocks of your companions!
Shulamite does not yet know that Solomon is the King of Israel. She thinks that he is just a local shepherd. She wants to know where Solomon pastures his sheep.
Solomon may have learned shepherding from his father (King David). He may have loved to spend time in the fields with his many flocks. Solomon may have met Shulamite on one of his shepherding days.
1:8 If you do not know, O most beautiful of women, simply follow the tracks of my flock, and pasture your little lambs beside the tents of the shepherds.
The female chorus answers. Shulamite is told to follow the tracks of Solomon’s flock. When she does this, she will discover the royal identity of Solomon.
1:9 O my beloved, you are like a mare among Pharaoh’s stallions.
Solomon and Shulamite are reclining on a couch at the wedding feast and mutually praising each other’s beauty. Solomon speaks first. Solomon loved beautiful horses, so he compares Shulamite to a beautiful horse. This was not an insult in ancient Israel.
1:10 Your cheeks are beautiful with ornaments; your neck is lovely with strings of jewels. 11 We will make for you gold ornaments studded with silver.
Since the royal horses were beautifully clothed, Shulamite is compared to the royal horses who were decked out in royal ornaments.
Whereas Solomon compared Shulamite to the loveliest of mares and to jewels, she compares him to the finest spices.
1:12 While the king was at his banqueting table, my nard gave forth its fragrance.
Solomon and Shulamite were eating a meal together at the banquet table. Nard was an expensive fragrant plant which came from India. Mary Magdalene poured out this same type of perfume on the feet of Jesus. It gave off a sweet perfume smell throughout the palace. It was also a spice used to arouse sexual passion.
1:13 My beloved is like a fragrant pouch of myrrh spending the night between my breasts.
Ancient Jewish women wore a bundle of myrrh from a chain hanging around their necks which gave off a pleasant smell counter-acting body odor. Myrrh also came from India. Shulamite expressed that Solomon was like this sweet-smelling perfume between her breasts.
1:14 My beloved is like a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En-Gedi.
Solomon is compared to a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En-Gedi. Henna blossoms were plants with fragrant yellow and white flowers.
1:15 Oh, how beautiful you are, my beloved! Oh, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are like doves!
Solomon and Shulamite move into the wedding chamber to spend their first night together and to consummate the marriage. Solomon compliments the beauty of his new wife, especially in the beauty of her eyes.
1:16 Oh, how handsome you are, my lover! Oh, how delightful you are! The lush foliage is our canopied bed;
Shulamite responds by complimenting Solomon’s physical appearance. She also compliments the beauty of the canopied wedding bed in which Solomon built for her.
17 the cedars are the beams of our bedroom chamber; the pines are the rafters of our bedroom.
The canopied wedding bed was made of beautiful and expensive cedars and cypresses which were most likely imported from Tyre.
In conclusion, God approves of a healthy sex life between husbands and wives. “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4), “but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” Later, Solomon will leave his first love and marry many other wives for political reasons. These foreign women will later turn his heart away from God.