So, What Does It Say? (YWS Week 28)

Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.

If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.

Bowels Opened Study Plan

1. Discuss Biblical Hermeneutics, which is the science of biblical interpretation.
2. Explore various interpretations of the Song of Solomon.
3. Brief outline of what I believe to be a correct interpretation.
4. Canonization – Why is this book in the Canon?

Summary/Engagement

Last week we explored a few of the more popular, albeit wrong, interpretations of the Song of Solomon. I want to remind everyone to read the first two posts above that lay some of the ground work for today. When reading the Bible we have to pay attention to what the author willed to convey to the original audience, keeping in mind their culture and place in history. Thus, we cannot impose 21st century western American cultural values on a Middle Eastern, Semitic, 3000 year old text. If we do, we won’t make any sense of it and seek to resolve that with allegorical interpretations, dramatic interpretations that wouldn’t have existed in the region until 1500 years later, or force it into contemporary cultic interpretations that do not fit.

Let me introduce one more category for our vocabulary of hermeneutics and interpretation. Literary Genre.

Literary Genre – The literary form being used by the author and the rules governing that form.

What literary form is the Song of Solomon? A love song, or really a collection of love songs. If I look at what the book says an pay attention to how it was written, what other conclusion could I come to? To be fair, there are those who hold to alternate readings as we discussed last week. However, I think they suffer from imposing a reading on the text to cover what they see as problematic or improper.

If we ignore the author and their willed meaning we end up with incorrect interpretations and thus incorrect applications. Look at what Sibbes says about Song of Solomon 5:2 – “I slept, but my heart was awake.” Dr. Sibbes interprets this to mean:

Indeed the church might have said, My heart sleepeth, but my heart waketh. For it is the same faculty, the same power of the soul, both in the state of corruption, and of grace, in which the soul is; as in the twilight we cannot say, this is light and that is darkness, because there is such a mixture. In all the powers of the soul there is something good and something ill, something flesh and something spirit. The heart was asleep, and likewise was awake. ‘ I sleep, but my heart waketh.’

He goes on to conclude that in the Christian there exists both good and evil. From this his application is that we should recognize that which is good and that which is evil so that we don’t bear false witness. His conclusions and applications are not heretical. They are good observations. The problem lies in those observations having no correlation to the text.

You might say, “Yes he was wrong but it isn’t heresy, so what’s the harm?”

What’s The Harm?

This is dangerous for any student of scripture to miss the meaning and thus misapply the text. God inspired the writing of Scripture using human authors to convey a specific meaning. We cannot take the word of God and make excuses, impose meaning, or seek to explain what is not there. To do so robs the Word of its power and hinders its transformative power in our life. Don’t think so?

What if I took John 3:16, “For God so loved the World, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,” and imposed a meaning that did not arise from the text. For example, I could say that the text speaks about the love between fathers and sons, and that all fathers should love their sons like God loves Jesus. Not necessarily heretical in the sense of denying the Gospel, but the interpretation is simply flat wrong and takes a passage concerning the Gospel and salvation and moralizes it into human behavior. We cannot impose our meaning on the text. That is called eisegesis. Not only can we not do that, we have no right.

I would also conclude that the Song of Solomon is not a metaphor for Christ and the Church. The language is not there. You may object that the institution of marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. I wholeheartedly agree with that. However, this is a love song that delves in to the physical consummation of the marriage relationship. Christ is never referred to in such a way in the rest of the Bible. To introduce Christ in to the physical aspect is to run dangerously close to Pagan fertility cult beliefs. Many disagree with my assessment. Did God physically interact with Mary in the conception of Christ? No! Why would we ascribe a love song with vivid physical imagery to anything resembling Christ’s relationship with the Church?

OK, why is it in the Bible? What is the purpose of it being there? How did it get canonized?

Good questions. We’ll take those up next week.

Helpful Links

A COMPLETELY FREE online Hermeneutics class taught by Dr. Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Check it out!

Two helpful books:

1. Robert Stein: A Basic Guide To Interpreting The Bible.
2. Robert Plummer: 40 Questions About Interpreting The Bible.

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Last week, we read the Second Part of Bowels Opened and discussed the variety of interpretations of Song of Solomon.

Next week, we finish Bowels Opened and consider its canonicity.