Intimate Dream Turned to Nightmare - Song of Solomon 5-6

 Song of Songs 5:2-7 (ESV)

2 I slept, but my heart was awake.

A sound! My beloved is knocking.

“Open to me, my sister, my love,

my dove, my perfect one,

for my head is wet with dew,

my locks with the drops of the night.”

3 I had put off my garment;

how could I put it on?

I had bathed my feet;

how could I soil them?

4 My beloved put his hand to the latch,

and my heart was thrilled within me.

5 I arose to open to my beloved,

and my hands dripped with myrrh,

my fingers with liquid myrrh,

on the handles of the bolt.

6 I opened to my beloved,

but my beloved had turned and gone.

My soul failed me when he spoke.

I sought him, but found him not;

I called him, but he gave no answer.

7 The watchmen found me

as they went about in the city;

they beat me, they bruised me,

they took away my veil,

those watchmen of the walls.

Intimate Dream Turned to Nightmare

There is much debate about the meaning of the above text.   Many interpret the material as a dream that the woman is having in regard to a sexual experience with her, soon to be, husband, Solomon.  It is hard to tell if this is a dream about a sexual experience, or an actual sexual encounter.  In verses 2-5 we certainly see many double entendre.   We can visualize many references to the love making between two lovers in each line.   The difficulty begins in the middle of verse six.   If this is a reference to the woman opening up in a sexual manner, something abruptly happens to her.  As she turns to respond in the love, her lover is instantly gone.   This makes the entire prose look more like a dream than an actual event.   She suddenly turns to find no lover at all with her and, like in chapter three, she goes to seek him.  And, again, like in 3:3, the watchmen find her.  But, this time they beat her (verse 7).  Perhaps they thought she was being promiscuous?   We have no indication later in the entire book that Solomon, her soon to be husband, notices the beating.   In fact, in chapter six we see her praised, once again, for her beauty.    Perhaps the entire section is a dream of her upcoming nuptials, while at the same time a nightmare and/or fear she has.   This bride to be is both excited about the upcoming wedding and fearful to be rejected.   Perhaps the entire purpose the chapter is for us to see both the excitement of love and the danger of what happens when we notice that “my beloved had turned and gone.”  The tension in the passage is between the embracing we see in 2-6a and the lost and beating if 6b-7.   Love is exciting.  Abandonment is cruel.   We have to remember that ll things in Scripture points to Christ.   If this is a story of Christ’s love for us we can rejoice in the intimacy of our love with Him.  We can rejoice that we will NEVER turn and find Him gone!!  He has stated He will never leave us for forsake us. 

Hebrews 13:5 (ESV)

5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”