SuperLutheran on Nostr: 6 What is that coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with ...

6 What is that coming up from the wilderness
like columns of smoke,
perfumed with myrrh and frankincense,
with all the fragrant powders of a merchant?
7 Behold, it is the litter of Solomon!
Around it are sixty mighty men,
some of the mighty men of Israel,
8 all of them wearing swords
and expert in war,
each with his sword at his thigh,
against terror by night.
9 King Solomon made himself a carriage
from the wood of Lebanon.
10 He made its posts of silver,
its back of gold, its seat of purple;
its interior was inlaid with love
by the daughters of Jerusalem.
11 Go out, O daughters of Zion,
and look upon King Solomon,
with the crown with which his mother crowned him
on the day of his wedding,
on the day of the gladness of his heart.
-Song of Solomon 3:6-11

So the day of the wedding arrives. Finally, the man and the woman are going to be rewarded for their patience and diligent obedience to God's plan and rules for courtship. But here the interpreter must make a decision: is Solomon the man in the story, or is he just attending the wedding? I am in the latter camp of interpretation.

Solomon is writing this entire book to show a couple doing things differently than he did. He had a pile of 700 wives, with 300 live-in hookers (or "concubines") at his disposal. It didn't satisfy him, and in the latter part of his life these indiscretions gnaw at his heart while he writes his Song.

Note the irony of the eleventh verse. Attending the wedding as a guest, he is still the king so he must wear a crown. What crown does he wear? The crown his mother gave him when he started his love life - his mother Bathsheba... the adulteress. Yes, Solomon was happy on the day of his first wedding, but the tragic irony is *very* present here on account of the way things panned out. He wears this crown as a reminder of who his mother was and the way he followed in her footsteps; though he puts on a parade, it is for someone else.

So what is our author saying then, if this is not his wedding? He is telling us that he joins the chorus, the "others" that occasionally speak to the woman in the book. He attends the wedding with as much pomp and praise as possible because this relationship is what he has been looking for! It is this sort of Godly wedding and marriage between two saints that he wants to see, and the moment he hears of it he will go at length to make all Israel celebrate it. If Godly marriage is important, then Solomon is saying this is the way it *ought* to be celebrated.