The Song of Solomon & the End of Open-Ended Dating

Romantic love is a great thing, but not the greatest thing. Without covenant love, eros becomes a god, then a demon, and finally a fire that burns those who refuse to give it a home. Instead, pursue the greater love of—and love for—the Lord.

Valentine’s Day beckons, our annual corporate celebration of eros, even though we married folk can each celebrate our anniversaries without having to make single people feel left out. But we’re always willing to sacrifice for what we exalt most, and in our culture, few things are more exalted than eros. So, we sacrifice the feelings of the single. We contrarians may be tempted to react by decrying eros, but the Bible, in its hundreds of pages, has a brief little book, about 0.6% of its pages—really a song—exalting eros: the Song of Solomon.

Immediately, we Christians start fighting over how to interpret it. Platonic philosophy, which pervaded Western culture, encourages an allegorical interpretation. It assumes that the body, and so sex, is degrading, or at least unspiritual. So, in the Western church, the approach to sex is first to hush, then to blush, and then to bash. Without the assumptions of Platonism, Asian Christianity sees it differently. Asian Christians aren’t so shy about sex, even when they are strictly conservative, like the Korean missionary young lady who, over dinner with my Chinese wife and me, joked about the effects of traditional aphrodisiacs. I was blushing.

In Western society, for centuries, Christians assumed that the Song couldn’t possibly mean what it appears to mean. So, for example, the “rose of Sharon, a lily among the valleys” was Christ Himself, whom we are to desire. It sounds so pious. Who wants to argue with it? The problem is, first, that’s not what the original author intended. Second, reading it allegorically is arbitrary. Christians say it’s about Jesus’s love for the church, while Jews say it’s Yahweh’s love for Israel, and individualists say it’s God’s love for them. Each little thing mentioned, each body part, they say, is symbolic for this or that. But who’s to say? It’s based on nothing other than the feelings of a sentimental interpreter.

In our highly sexualized culture, others have swung to the opposite extreme, so far as to interpret the Song as a sex manual, with, for example, “Our couch is green; the beams of our house are cedar; our rafters are pine” (1:16–17), giving specific instructions on how you should decorate your bedroom. (By the way, they’re in a forest; that’s why their “couch” is green and their “house” is made of cedar and pine; they’re sitting on grass and looking up at trees.) The problem with the sex-manual approach is obvious: who writes an instruction manual in poetry? Wouldn’t you be irritated if you got instructions on how to assemble a bicycle written in verse?

The fact is, the Song of Solomon is not all about sex. It’s much bigger than that. It’s about the relationship in which sex is found—what C.S. Lewis calls eros, romantic love. And in its celebration of eros, it reveals critical truths for your love life.

1. Love Is Affirming

Love makes you feel prized, wanted, appreciated. The woman says, about herself, “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys” (2:1). That’s how this relationship makes her feel about herself. We see why: “As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women” (2:2). He’s saying, ‘You’re like a flower compared to the rest.’ And she responds, “As an apple among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men” (2:3). Most trees in a forest don’t bear fruit; but to me, you do.’ If instead a woman is made to feel, ‘I’m fat, I’m stupid, I can’t do anything right, and I’m just lucky he will put up with me,’ that’s the sign of a bad relationship. That’s not love, because love is affirming.

2. Love Is Specific

The lovers speak of “whom my soul loves” (3:4). She’s not looking for just any man; she’s looking for one particular one. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Eros makes a man really want, not a woman but one particular woman.”

3. Love Is a Family Affair

She wants to bring her man home to mother (3:4). Contrary to so much romantic fiction, all the way back to Romeo and Juliet, ideally, love wants to include the family. Only a bad guy wants to take a woman out of a good social network, isolate her from family, friends, and church. Real love will want to keep you close to good families.

4. Love Waits… Until It Acts

Three times comes the warning: “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (2:7; 3:5; 8:4). In the midst of the celebration of love is a warning to single people beginning to long for what the Song is about. Be warned against the dangers of eros for the same reason we warn against the dangers of electricity. Don’t turn on the power until the house is ready.

The Problem of Open-Ended Dating

But here the modern church has stumbled into a complementary error. If the “Daughters of Jerusalem” are warned not to awaken love too early, modern couples are often guilty of keeping love awake too long without giving it a home. This is the problem of open-ended dating.

Notice the momentum of the Song. It moves from attraction to the wedding procession (3:6–11) with purposeful speed. It does not linger in the forest of what Albert Mohler has described as “permanent adolescence,” an ambiguous stage of open-ended dating, in which men enjoy the emotional benefits of romance without assuming the biblical responsibilities of leadership, provision, and commitment. Women, likewise, can put off a man’s proposal but not break off the dating relationship, because she wants a companion on Friday nights, but she’s not ready to commit to “death do us part.” She wants to pursue a career but keep the door open to marriage if she should opt for that later. Dating becomes a way to sample eros without covenant.

John Piper, in counsel to singles, presses a similar logic. If you know this is the person you want to marry, why are you waiting? If you don’t know, why are you still dating? His point is not haste for its own sake, but clarity and honesty.

Jonathan “JP” Pokluda, lead pastor of Harris Creek Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, has made the same argument. In Outdated, he warns against treating dating as a recreational activity rather than a discernment process. He writes that dating without the intent to marry is like reading a menu with no intention of ordering. Dating, after all, is not an end in itself. It is for evaluation and decision, not play. Once it becomes clear that marriage is not the direction, the loving thing to do is to stop. Just so, once one has decided to marry his “Rose of Sharon” or her “Apple Tree,” then do it. Get married right away. Prolonging dating or engagement just to finish a degree, waiting months for the perfect wedding venue to open up, or whatever other excuse is a waste. Take it from one of us post-young-people: youth doesn’t last very long. Get married as soon as you have decided who to marry. Don’t dawdle.

Matt Chandler, preaching through the Song of Solomon in The Mingling of Souls, offers the same warning. Dating without trajectory toward marriage is dangerous because it often takes what belongs to someone’s future spouse—time, affection, emotional focus—without covenantal responsibility. The Song of Solomon knows nothing of a boyfriend-girlfriend limbo that lasts for years. Hence, next….

5. Love Is Marital

Notice the term “my bride,” repeated six times from 4:8 to 5:1. They are married. That’s what makes the Song different from so much Hollywood romance. Love has brought them into a commitment they dream of lasting until death do them part. C.S. Lewis wrote, “To be in love is both to intend and to promise life-long fidelity.”

This highlights why the relatively swift transition from attraction to marriage matters. The “one flesh” intimacy celebrated in the Song requires the safety of covenant. Long engagements or undefined dating relationships invite the fire of passion without the fireplace of marriage.

6. Love Is Sexual

“His left hand is under my head and his right hand embraces me!” (2:6). That’s not symbolic. Love wants to touch. From 4:11 to 5:1 the sensual imagery intensifies. The bride is a garden locked—a virgin—until now, when marriage opens what was previously sealed. Her chastity is celebrated, not despised. No one else enjoyed what now belongs to her husband.

Here’s the irony of the interpretive debate. Some insist the Song must be allegorical because no inspired book could exalt sex. But it mostly isn’t allegory; it’s symbolism. He uses poetic comparisons—eyes like doves, hair like goats—to praise her beauty. But ironically, when the Song does become allegorical (4:16–5:1), it is precisely to speak about sex. They are not actually gardening.

I’ll say it again for the Platonists in the back: love is sexual. Christians sometimes forget this. Sexual silence has produced needless confusion, dysfunction, and shame. It’s not always been so. In my doctoral research, I found a Puritan church in which a wife brought the problem of her husband not having enough sex with her before the church. That’s Puritanism.

That love is sexual is another reason for dating Christian couples to hasten to the wedding altar – so they can hasten to the wedding bed. If you have decided to marry Mr or Miss Right, it is unnatural – by God’s design – not to show love sexually. And you can only do that rightly, in God’s eyes, in marriage. So, once you’ve decided who to marry, hurry up so you can be morally sexual.

7. Love Is Public

Throughout the Song, there is a chorus—others watching, affirming, warning. At the end, the community turns its attention to a younger sister (8:8–9). If she is a wall—virtuous and wise—they will honor her. If she is a door—vulnerable—they will protect her.

Contrary to the assumptions of our individualistic culture, in which we’re told over and over that what two people decide to do is their business alone, the loving community has input into the relationship. A biblical community does not watch a couple date for three years and say nothing. It asks the hard questions: Are you moving toward covenant, or merely stirring up love?

When my wife and I were dating in seminary in California, elders from her church in Singapore sent a professor to speak with her to ensure she was being cared for. They later asked her to return to Singapore, leaving me behind. She obeyed. About a year later, those same elders officiated our wedding. Love is public.

Eros’ Limitations

In our age, Christianity’s greatest rival may not be Islam or materialism but eroticism—the worship of sexual fulfillment. Eros is exalted as absolute. To deny it is considered cruelty. Even God, some churches imply, exists to maintain it.

But the Song of Solomon refuses this idolatry. Eros is glorious, but it is not supreme. It drives us to promise what it cannot sustain. It urges us toward covenant, but cannot create covenant. It is fickle.

What eros needs is something stronger to hold it in place: the steadfast, covenant love of God. That love is seen supremely at the cross. Romantic love is a great thing—but not the greatest thing. Without covenant love, eros becomes a god, then a demon, and finally a fire that burns those who refuse to give it a home.

Instead, pursue the greater love of—and love for—the Lord. The greatest love is not finally found at the altar or the bed, but at the cross.

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The featured image is “Song of Songs” (1893), by Gustave Moreau, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.