The Old Testament · The Wisdom Books · Book 26 of 73
Prophecy in the Song of Songs
A book of love poems in which God is never named. A man and a woman seek each other, lose each other and find each other again. The Church receives it as inspired Scripture, and her saints have heard in it the love of Christ for his Church, and for each soul, that ends in the wedding feast of the Lamb.
In progress: 5 passages so far
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The book at a glance
The book opens: “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's” (Song of Songs 1:1). The title means the greatest of songs. In some Bibles it is called the Song of Solomon, and in older Catholic Bibles the Canticle of Canticles. The NABRE introduction explains that its language and style point to a time after the Babylonian exile, and that an unknown poet probably gathered older love poems and perhaps wrote new ones, arranging them as a dialogue between the woman, the man and a chorus. Whoever its human author, the Church receives it among the books of the Old Testament (CCC 120).
The Song is poetry, not prediction, and this page does not pretend otherwise. Its literal sense is human love between a man and a woman, received as a gift of God; the Catechism says that Tradition has always seen in it “a unique expression of human love,” insofar as it reflects God's love, a love “strong as death” (CCC 1611). From there both Jewish and Christian tradition read it as an image of a greater love: the Lord and Israel, Christ and the Church, Christ and the soul. That is the spiritual sense, developed above all by Origen in his commentary and homilies on the Song and by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in his Sermons on the Song of Songs. Each card below says which sense it is reading.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1:1–4 | The whole Song: the bride and the Bridegroom | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 2:8–17 | Arise, my friend: the winter is past | Fulfilled Unfolding |
| 4:7 | No flaw in you | Fulfilled Future |
| 6:10 | Who is this that comes forth like the dawn? | Unfolding |
| 8:6–7 | Love is strong as Death | Fulfilled Future |
The passages
“Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine,”
- Reading
- The Song begins in the middle of desire, with the woman speaking first. In its literal sense this is the voice of a woman in love. The NABRE introduction notes that Jewish tradition read the Song of the Lord and Israel, drawing on the prophets who called the covenant a marriage (Hosea 2; Isaiah 54; Jeremiah 2:2; Ezekiel 16), and that the Song softens their harsh use of the image with mutual joy.
- Fulfilled
- The New Testament calls Jesus “the bridegroom” (John 3:29; compare Matthew 9:15), and St. Paul says of husband and wife: “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). In that light the Fathers read the Song as the love of Christ and his Church. St. Bernard's sermons dwell at length on this opening verse and hear in it the soul's longing for the Word himself.
- Unfolding
- The same tradition reads the Song of Christ and each soul. St. John of the Cross wrote his Spiritual Canticle on its pattern. This reading is the spiritual sense, not a prediction; it rests on the literal sense and does not replace it.
“Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come! For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone.” (2:10–11)
- Reading
- The lover comes leaping over the mountains and calls the woman out into the spring: “The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the turtledove is heard in our land” (2:12). The poem ends in belonging: “My lover belongs to me and I to him” (2:16).
- Fulfilled
- The Church reads 2:8–14 in the last days of Advent, on December 21, as a choice for the first reading beside the Visitation, when Mary sets out in haste to the hill country. The Bridegroom is coming; the long winter of waiting is nearly past. This is a liturgical use of the text, a spiritual reading, not a claim about its first meaning.
- Unfolding
- Spring after winter is the pattern of Easter, and of every soul called out of sin. Revelation ends with the same call in reverse: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’” (Revelation 22:17).
“You are beautiful in every way, my friend, there is no flaw in you!”
- Reading
- In the poem the man praises the woman he loves and then calls her his bride: “With me from Lebanon, my bride!” (4:8).
- Fulfilled
- The Church's liturgy applies this verse to Mary. The ancient antiphon Tota pulchra es, “You are all beautiful,” taken from this verse in the Latin, is traditionally sung for the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, praising her as preserved from every stain of original sin from the first moment of her conception (CCC 491). This is a liturgical application in the spiritual sense; the dogma does not rest on this verse, but the Church finds it fitting.
- Future
- What is true of Mary is promised to the whole Church. Christ gave himself for her “that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27). The bride without flaw is the Church as she will be at the end.
“Who is this that comes forth like the dawn, beautiful as the white moon, pure as the blazing sun, fearsome as celestial visions?”
- Reading
- In the poem the other women see the beloved and praise her. She is the one chosen above all: “One alone is my dove, my perfect one” (6:9).
- Unfolding
- The Church's Marian liturgy has long sung this verse of the Mother of God, and Christian readers have heard in it an echo of the great sign of Revelation: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet” (Revelation 12:1). The dawn, the moon and the sun gather around the woman in both texts. The woman of Revelation is Mary and also the Church, still bringing forth children in struggle, which is why this card is marked unfolding. This is a liturgical and spiritual reading; the Song's author did not write about Revelation.
- See also
- Revelation 12: The Woman and the Dragon; Genesis 3:15.
“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For Love is strong as Death, longing is fierce as Sheol.”
- Reading
- Near its end the Song says plainly what all its poems mean: “Deep waters cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away” (8:7). The Church reads these verses at weddings, and the Catechism quotes them of married love as a reflection of God's love (CCC 1611).
- Fulfilled
- Christians read the verse at its full depth on the Cross, where love met death and was stronger. The seal on the heart recalls the open side of Christ, and the love no waters could quench is the love that went down into death and rose.
- Future
- Death is not the last word. Revelation sees it thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14), and God “will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death” (21:4). Love outlasts it.
The bride from the Song to Revelation
The Bible opens with a wedding in the garden and ends with one in the city. The Song stands between them as the Bible's love song.
| Song of Songs | The New Testament |
|---|
| “Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come!” (2:10) | “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’” (Revelation 22:17) |
| “My lover belongs to me and I to him” (2:16) | “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32) |
| “there is no flaw in you!” (4:7) | The church “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27) |
| “With me from Lebanon, my bride!” (4:8) | “For the wedding day of the Lamb has come, his bride has made herself ready”; “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:7, 9) |
| The bride adorned and praised (4:1–15) | “the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2) |
| “Love is strong as Death” (8:6) | “there shall be no more death” (Revelation 21:4) |
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: the woman seeking her beloved through the city at night (3:1–4; 5:2–8), read on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene beside her search for the risen Lord (
John 20:11–18); the one coming up from the desert (3:6; 8:5); the garden enclosed and the sealed fountain (4:12), long applied to Mary's virginity; and the lily among thorns (2:2).
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