"Behold King Solomon on the Day of his Wedding"

The Song of Songs is a theological work in its literal sense. For
centuries this was recognized by the overwhelming majority of its
readers. Yet, in the argument of this study the Song is neither an
allegory of divine-human love, nor a mere human love song. Rather, by
adopting a symbolic language, the Song is able to express the realities
of divine love in and through human love, thereby giving full expression
to both dimensions. In order to substantiate and advance this view, this
study introduces a new hermeneutical refinement into the discussion,
giving careful consideration to different orders of textual meaning
(i.e. “metaphor”, “allegory”, and “symbol”) in order to better
understand what precisely we mean in speaking of the <i>sensus
literalis</i>. The success of this symbolic approach owes much to its
diachronic method. In particular, it is able to assimilate a redactional
analysis of the Song’s composition in which the personage of Solomon
plays a remarkable and increasingly significant role (i.e. “Solomonic
Redaction”). This prominence of Israel’s legendary king is plotted
within an identifiable ancient Near Eastern royal ideology marked by an
unmistakably religious orientation. This ideology in turn opens the door
to a phenomenology of the kingship symbol by which certain aporias are
resolved and the poetics of the text recover their full force.