Investigation: Why Is Love Poetry in Scripture?

Around AD 100, the rabbis at Yavneh debated which books "defile the hands." The phrase is technical: holy scrolls conveyed a ritual impurity to hands that touched them, a rule that protected them from careless handling. The Mishnah (Yadayim 3:5) records that the Song and Ecclesiastes were discussed.

Rabbi Akiva answered: "God forbid! No one in Israel ever disputed that the Song of Songs defiles the hands. For all the ages are not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the Writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies." (Mishnah Yadayim 3:5, translated.) Elsewhere he warns that whoever sings the Song as a drinking song at banquets has no share in the world to come (Tosefta Sanhedrin 12:10).

Two explanations

(1) Allegory first: the Song was accepted because it was already read as a song of God and Israel (a view T. H. Lim weighs in a 2024 study). (2) Scripture first: it was accepted for other reasons (its Solomonic heading, its use, its beauty), and allegorical reading grew as a way to read a holy book about love (J. Kaplan and A. M. Wilson-Wright, 2018, argue that the divine-love reading developed in specific stages). M. Giszczak (2016) argues that Yadayim 3:5 shows the Song's canonical status was being defended, not newly decided. The evidence is too thin to be certain.

Human love as a theme of Scripture

Even without allegory, the Song fits the Bible's affirmations: "male and female created he them" and "it was very good" (Genesis 1:27, 31); the man's delight in the woman (Genesis 2:23–25); "rejoice with the wife of thy youth" (Proverbs 5:18–19); "live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest" (Ecclesiastes 9:9). Prophets used marriage as an image of God and Israel (Hosea 2; Isaiah 54; 62; Jeremiah 2; Ezekiel 16), which made the allegorical reading natural.

Christian canon

The Song is in every Christian canon. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and later writers read it as the love of Christ and the church or soul. Theodore of Mopsuestia (died 428), who read it as Solomon's love poetry, was condemned posthumously at the Second Council of Constantinople (553), partly for this view. Reformers varied: Luther read it politically (Solomon's thanks for his peaceful kingdom), Calvin defended its place against Sebastian Castellio, who wanted it treated as a secular love song. Modern Christian interpreters often read it first as a celebration of human love and marriage, then theologically.