Song of Songs

A. Boyd Luter

General Editor: H. Wayne House

Old Testament Editor: William Barrick

Song of Songs: Evangelical Exegetical Commentary

Copyright 2013 A. Boyd Luter. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America.

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English quotations from Song of Songs in this commentary are the author’s own translation.

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from biblical books other than Song of Songs are from the Lexham English Bible. Copyright 2013 Lexham Press.

For Cindy

מַה־יָּפִית֙ וּמַה־נָּעַ֔מְתְּ אַהֲבָ֖ה

“How beautiful and how pleasant (you are), O love!”

Song 7:6 (7:7 mt)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My initial interest in the literary structure of the Bible was spurred by an article that Craig Blomberg published in the Criswell Theological Review in 1989, in which he laid out nine rigorous criteria for detecting the presence of extended chiasm*. In many respects, Blomberg’s work was the impetus for a number of early articles (and one commentary) I published on literary structure in Ruth and Philippians. Some of those studies were coauthored with my former colleagues at Talbot School of Theology, Richard Rigsby and Barry Davis, as well as my former graduate assistant, now Dr. Michelle Lee. For their many insights, I remain deeply grateful. My work on literary structure extended to a number of other biblical books through several of the more popular volumes I have since written, including those coauthored with Kathy McReynolds and Richard Wells, two of Yahweh’s greatly gifted servants. But it was through David Dorsey’s one-of-a-kind work, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis–Malachi, that I first became acquainted with a completely viable inverted parallel structuring of the Song of Songs—something I had scoffed at in my previous study of the Song. Then, a personal gift from Craig Glickman of his work Solomon’s Song of Love reignited my interest in the Song of Songs. I was struck by the depth of the literary analysis in its appended materials—far beyond that of his 1978 volume, A Song for Lovers—much of which was dependent on Dorsey’s book.

When the gracious invitation to write the commentary on the Song of Songs for the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary series came from General Editor Wayne House and Old Testament Editor Bill Barrick, I was excited to have the opportunity to further probe this beautiful and fascinating, but often abused, book. This project has proven both a great challenge and a great joy. Perhaps more than any other writing project I have ever undertaken, I was consistently faced with the humbling realization of the fact that I did not know how little I knew. Yet the Lord ...