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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Solomon’s crown

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Song of Songs 3:11 speaks of the crowning of Solomon on the day of his wedding. Most commentators refer to the Orthodox practice of crowning grooms and brides as new Adams and Eves. I’ve got no problem with that, but I suspect there’s something else.

First, as Ernst Wendland says in an article (forthcoming in Lovely, Lively Lyrics: Selected Studies in Biblical Hebrew Verse [Dallas: SIL Academic], generously supplied by the author) there are many verbal links between the appearance of Solomon’s palanquin (3:6-11) and the description of the bride in 4:1-7. That the palanquin and the bride are the same is also suggested by the parallel of 3:6 and 8:5. Wendland notes that these two questions are in structurally similar locations in the poem – each at the climax of its respective half of the Song. 8:5 is explicitly a question about the bride, perhaps so too 3:6.

Second, beyond the verbal links that Wendland notices, there are structural indications that the two sections form sub-portions of a larger unit. At least there seems to be an inclusio around the two sections:

A. Myrrh and frankincense, 3:6

B. Mighty men with swords, 3:7-8

B’. Necklace like shields of mighty men, 4:4

A’. Myrrh and frankincense, 4:6

(There is also an inclusio at 4:1, 7 with “beautiful, my darling.”)

If we take this inclusio as a frame for a single unit, then the move from 3:11 to 4:1 doesn’t seem abrupt. There were, of course, no chapter divisions in the original text, and so the text would move from “gaze on Solomon with the crown” to “how beautiful you are, my darling.” There is clearly a change of speaker, but the scene has not, perhaps, shifted as thoroughly as is often thought. What are the daughters of Zion supposed to look at? Solomon with his crown, and then Solomon goes on to describe his “crown,” his beautiful bride.

In short, Solomon’s bride is his crown – just as we’d expect from the king who wrote Proverbs 12:4: “a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, March 8, 2010 at 3:10 pm

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Bible - OT - Song of Songs: Solomon’s crown

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