The Song of Solomon has much to teach us about love.  Rob Bell, in his Nooma video “Flame” points out that Solomon uses three different words of love throughout his Song.  Most are familiar with the multiple versions of “love” in the Greek (eros, philios, agape), but few know that the Hebrew has three as well.

The first is raya, a deep friendship.  This kind of love is similar to our word “soulmate”.  It is a love that is irrespective of gender and is based on commonality, shared experience, and camaraderie.

The second is ahavah, love of the will.  This love is the love of choice.  We talk a lot about this love in churches.  I have preached that this is “real love”, to choose to put someone else’s needs above your own.  And while this is an important and often missing aspect of love, it is not the only type of love we experience.

The third is dod, the love of passion, sexual attraction, and physicality.  It is romance, arousal, and the most worshiped kind of love in our culture.  In fact, modern media seems to be obsessed with this particular kind of love to the detriment of the other two.

Solomon uses all three of these words for love throughout his Song because all three are important aspects of our relationships.  In fact, Bell notices, without all three, our marriages don’t work.  Imagine a marriage missing it’s raya.  This marriage is a chore you chose to do every day, with occasional bouts of romance but no real friendship for the day to day living together.  Or a marriage without it’s dod, a boring affair where the two are close friends with common interests but no attraction to each other beyond familiarity.  And of course a marriage without ahavah is rather common in today’s society, leading us to the current 53% divorce rate.  This is a marriage based on physical attraction that leads to friendships, but no self-sacrifice and no foundation.

Which aspect of love are you experiencing the most these days?  Which one is missing or weak?  How might you build that aspect up in your friendships, marriage, and even relationship with God?

The Song of Solomon is one of the oddest books to be included in the bible.  From the fact that to this day we can’t agree on a name (“Song of Solomon?”  “Song of Songs?” or even “Canticle of Canticles?”), to the fact that it is hard to find any teaching about God in it, this book is often ignored in preaching, bible studies, and discussion.  So we have to ask why it is in there at all.

Many have posited that it is a rather risque description of the deep love we have for God and that God has for us.  We collectively are the “she” of these verses and God is the “he”.  But even this feels forced, like we’re trying to Christianize (though being OT, it’s probably more accurate to say, “Yahweh-ize”) a Jewish love letter.

Many find it hard to preach this text due to its “PG-13” elements, frank discussion of lovers in love, and romanticism of our holy relationship with God.  But in reality, I believe that it is simply hard to find moral lessons in this book, and without a moral, it is neither parable, proverb, nor teachable poem.  So how does one preach it to a congregation looking for one more moral lesson to work on through the week?

The truth is, I don’t know.  But I do love things that shake up our traditional, staid and stoic view of God and faith, so we’re going to talk about it in the days to come, learn what we may.