The Song of Songs · Solomon’s Heart Turns

In context

The Song of Songs is a love song: a woman and the man she loves speak to each other, and friends join in. Its first line calls it “The Song of songs, which is Solomon’s” (Song of Songs 1:1), and in it King Solomon is crowned by his mother “in the day of his weddings” (3:11). Jewish and Christian readers have long read it both as a love song and as a picture of the love between God and his people.

Then comes the end of Solomon’s reign. He loved many foreign women from the nations the Lord had warned about, and when he was old, “his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kings 11:1–4). He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (wives of lower rank), and he built high places for Chemosh of Moab and Molech of Ammon on the mountain facing Jerusalem (11:3, 7).

The Lord says the kingdom will be torn from him, but not in his lifetime, “for David your father’s sake,” and his son will keep one tribe (11:11–13). Enemies rise: Hadad of Edom, Rezon in Damascus, and Jeroboam son of Nebat, one of Solomon’s own officials, to whom the prophet Ahijah gives ten pieces of his torn cloak (11:14–31). After forty years as king, Solomon dies (11:42–43).