Behold King Solomon on the Day of his Wedding: A Symbolic-Diachronic Reading of Song 3,6-11 and 4,12-5,1

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 sensus

literalis. 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.