Solomon's Song of Love

Let a Song of Songs Inspire Your Own Love Story

Craig Glickman

• Publisher: Howard Books
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781451605242
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

One of the most beautiful and mysterious books of the Bible is laid open for all to understand in this unparalleled work by Dr. Craig Glickman.

With apparent ease, Glickman unveils the mysteries of the Song of Solomon in a popular-read format. But the surface simplicity is backed up by a lifetime of study and scholarship, three special appendices, and interpretive notes that validate his interpretation. Also included is a fresh translation of the Song published in this book for the first time.

Initial readers of this book offer resounding praise. This book is "the most fascinating book I have ever read about the Song," says Dr. Henry Cloud. Old Testament scholars praise it as an academic breakthrough: "clear, cogent, and convincing," says Dr. Eugene Merrill; "a valuable contribution to our translation and understanding of the Song," says Ed Blum, general editor of the HCSB translation. Dr. Paul Meier sums it up in these words, "Craig weaves thousands of years of wisdom together to paint a vivid word picture of emotional and sexual intimacy."

CHAPTER ONE
When Love Breaks Through

Sometimes love breaks through, and an artist captures it.

Like in the film Jerry Maguire when Tom Cruise breaks through his fear of commitment. He’s hurriedly explaining his feelings to Renee Zellweger until he pauses to catch his breath, and she says, “You had me at hello.”

Or in As Good as It Gets when Jack Nicholson breaks through his awkward neuroses and tells Helen Hunt, “You make me want to be a better man.”

It’s the first kiss in Titanic between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, with the sound of “My Heart Will Go On” in the background.

Its Romeo’s first kiss of Juliet.

It’s all those wonderful moments in film and novel, poem and song, when love breaks through the clouds of ordinary life.

The songwriter composes music to sing about love in a new way. Poets create new images to describe love in an original way. Or a talented group of scriptwriter, director, cast, and crew captures aspects of love in a romantic scene which is like—and yet quite unlike—any before it.

The best of these moments have a timeless quality about them: the scenes of love in the drama of Casablanca, The English Patient, or Senseand Sensibility; the realization of love in the romantic comedies of Notting Hill, You’ve Got Mail, or Sleepless in Seattle; the poetry of love in Shakespeare, Shelley, or Donne.

We feel these timeless moments especially in song, that mysterious and moving marriage of melody and poetry.

I saw and felt the power of romantic song unforgettably once in Stockholm, Sweden. At a festival in the city, several thousand people mingled from one tent to the next, sampling the foods, listening to the various bands, enjoying a perfect summer day.

One of the bands started a new song. A man with a wonderful tenor voice began to sing, softly at first. Then his voice rose slightly above the din of the crowd. The people nearest him were the first to quiet their conversation. Gradually a hush spread out like ripples in a pond, and even those far away stopped, turned, and listened. The entire crowd became like an amphitheater, with the vocalist on his small stage in the center. He sang with passion and warmth, from the depths of his heart. I could see the pain and joy, disappointment and hope, in the expressions of the listeners as he sang “The Rose.”

Some say love, it is a river,
that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor,
that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
and you its only seed.

It’s the heart, afraid of breaking,
that never learns to dance.
It’s the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance.
It’s the one who won’t be taken,
who cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dyin’,
that never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely,
and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only,
for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter,
far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the suns love,
in the spring becomes the rose.

As the last words lingered in the summer air, no one moved. Then a few began to speak softly. Others began shuffling off to the various tents of the festival, many with meditative expressions. The song had touched our hearts, and we silently acknowledged the insight of its lyrics. Because for some of us, love had been harsh. What we thought would be a refreshing source of water became a river drowning us. Romance had felt like a razor leaving our hearts to bleed. And for many of us, the nights had indeed been lonely. All that remained was a yearning hunger, “an endless, aching need.” And some had no doubt concluded that love was only for “the lucky and the strong.”

But the song reminded us that the seeds of love are within us still, like the seed of the rose beneath the bitter winter snows, and we can’t be afraid to let the warmth of the sun give it life.

The song encourages openness to love. And it freshly expresses a timeless paradox: In giving love, we receive it; but in withholding it, we lose what we are trying to protect.

Why do love songs from various times and places speak to all of us? Because they arise from the heart, and since the hearts of lovers remain the same, the songs from their hearts speak to ours.

The songs are not only a treasury of lyrics to delight us but a reservoir of wisdom to guide us—a collection of insights from lovers everywhere.

They show, for example, love’s unusual timing—its frustrating elusiveness, but also its delightful unpredictability. No one knows when Cupids arrow will strike. Love comes unexpectedly and often after painful longing.

It’s true that love is only for the young, the middle-aged, and the aged! People at every stage of life long for love and find its arrival a wonderful surprise.

English scholar and author C.S. Lewis married Joy Gresham when he was fifty-seven. It was Lewis’s first marriage and an experience he’d come to assume he would never have. His romance was as surprising as a summer snowfall.

Even when love does come early in life, it seems like we’ve waited forever. I was reminded why when I was tucking my eleven-year-old son into bed. He usually saved his serious comments for this time. After I turned out the lights and started to walk out, he spoke.

“Dad.”

“Yes,” I replied.

“I’m president of the Hot Girls Club,” he said neutrally.

In the dark my eyebrows pinched, and I proceeded cautiously. “Really? Who’s in the club, Son?”

The members were the usual suspects—his three closest friends.

“What do you do in the club?” I asked curiously.

“At recess we go sit under the tree on the playground, and we talk about hot girls.”

“I see. Anything else?”

“No. I just wanted to tell you.”

“OK, Son.” I kissed him goodnight, reminded of conversations I’d had years ago as one of the earlier members of the “club”—whose still earlier members, no doubt, included my father and grandfathers. I’m sure when my son first falls in love, it will seem like an endless wait has gone before.

Romantic songs also speak of love’s transforming power. Black-and-white blushes with color. Winter blossoms into spring. The dormant life under the surface rises in all its flowery beauty.

Love songs describe a heightened awareness of the world around us and feelings of joy and wholeness. “Till There Was You,” you didn’t hear the birds in the sky singing or the bells on the hill ringing.

Even the love songs from Egypt three thousand years ago described the changes love can bring. The hearts of lovers remain wonderfully the same no matter what the century. So I felt no surprise when a somewhat cynical, twentieth-century Meg Ryan, as Kate, fell in love with nineteenth-century Leopold in Kate and Leopold.

The songs speak of the oneness love brings too.

The Greeks claimed this as evidence that one preexistent soul had been split in two to make a man and woman on earth. When those two people found each other, they immediately recognized their other half, and they so perfectly completed each other that each knew they had found their soul mate. It’s a picture in myth of the completion love songs describe.

Their lyrics say love meets our deepest needs, involves every aspect of our personalities, and can bring caring support in all of life. As Celine Dion sings, she found strength “Because You Loved Me.”

Lovers have always said, “You complete me.”

It’s no wonder then, with the experience of love described in these lyrics, that perhaps the most common theme of the songs is the promise that love will last a lifetime. It was clear in Titanic that Kate Winslet would never forget Leonardo DiCaprio, even as he drifted off to the icy grave of the Atlantic. Decades after the tragedy, he still lived in her heart, and so she could sing, “My Heart Will Go On.”

Another common theme of love songs, unfortunately, is the depth of pain when love is lost. It could not be otherwise, of course. If love brings so much pleasure, then its loss must bring great pain.

Celine Dion expresses the pain of loss poignantly in, “Its All Coming Back to Me Now.”

She captures the escalation of hurt: “There were those empty threats and hollow lies, and whenever you tried to hurt me, I just hurt you even worse and so much deeper”; the anger from rejection: “You were history with the slamming of the door … and I banished every memory you and I had ever made”; and the emptiness of loss: “There were nights when the wind was so cold that my body froze in bed, if I just listened to it right outside the window.”

Equally emotional is the rebirth of their relationship, beginning with the vivid recollection of memories from the past: “But when you touch me like this, and you hold me like that, I just have to admit that it’s all coming back to me … it was gone with the wind but it’s all coming back to me”; and based on forgiveness and acceptance: “If you forgive me all this, if I forgive you all that, we forgive and forget, and it’s all coming back to me now.”

This song touched my heart deeply when I first heard it. I was in a relationship that was ending, and I felt isolated and rejected. It was an impossible mixture of anger and love; of disappointment and hope; and finally, of hopelessness and despair.

The song was like an empathetic friend. It expressed the feelings deep inside that I couldn’t reach. And in doing so, it put me in touch with those feelings so I could understand and accept my loss.

I was surprised that the lyrics and melody of the song so accurately expressed my emotional struggle. I had naively thought I was one of the few who had been through so heart wrenching and disorienting an experience.

When “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” achieved worldwide popularity, I realized that a great many others understood the journey as well. The song and its wide acceptance made me feel like I belonged in the human race after all.

Sometimes, of course, the love is lost forever.

Who cannot empathize with the pain of Fan tine in the stage musical Les Misérables? Her song comes from the heart, but it is a broken heart.

Almost to the end, Fantine clings to the hope that her lover will return, and they will “live the years together.” But in sorrow she realizes also that “there are dreams that cannot be, and there are storms we cannot weather.”

Many of us pass through the dark disappointment of relationships that end. We journey through anger and pain, cynicism and doubt. I cannot pretend to have experienced the depth of Famine’s sorrow. But I know something about loss. My own marriage ended painfully some years ago. We had hoped to live the years together too. And it was devastating to accept that there were dreams that could not be. The landscape of life never looked so barren and empty as then.

When I needed help to begin new dreams, I found it in the same places as the old dreams had begun—talking with friends, reading about relationships, contemplating the insights of artists who created pictures of love I could grasp and songs of love I could feel.

It’s hard to compare the benefit of, say, reading a self-help book on relationships and of listening to a song like “The Rose.” Both are helpful in different ways. The book instructs me, and I learn from its insights. But the song inspires me, and I long to feel deeply again.

Some of us hesitate to begin the journey because we fear we cannot reach the ideals. But they are guides to help us, not rules to discourage us. I love the expression of this in a poem I memorized years ago:

Ideals are like stars;
we never reach them,
but like mariners of the sea,
we chart our course by them.

To end with “we never reach them” would promote cynicism. But to say, “we chart our course by them,” provides encouragement. It tells us the ideals should be guides to the best we can achieve.

The ideals of song and film have lifted my heart many times. They have expressed the way I’d like to feel and the love I would like to experience.

One song I haven’t yet mentioned has helped me most of all.

The influence of this song upon me is, perhaps, surprising. It’s from another time and culture, composed nearly three thousand years ago. The original melody has been lost, leaving only the images and story of its lyrics. And the poetry of its verse is often...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• CHAPTER ONE: When Love Breaks Through
• CHAPTER TWO: A Night to Remember
• CHAPTER THREE: The Birth of Love
• CHAPTER FOUR: Hearts with Wings
• CHAPTER FIVE: A Spring of Romance
• CHAPTER SIX: A Time to Marry
• CHAPTER SEVEN: The Pain of Loss
• CHAPTER EIGHT: A Dance of Joy
• CHAPTER NINE: Passion and Paradise
• CHAPTER TEN: Freedom and Delight
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: Devotion and Fire
• CHAPTER TWELVE: Hope and Fulfillment
• Epilogue
• A LETTER TO THE READER
• APPENDIX A: The Song and Christian Faith
• APPENDIX B: The Song of Songs: A New Translation
• APPENDIX C: The Elegant Design of the Song