The Wisdom Library · King Solomon · Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs: what love is
From the greatest of Solomon’s 1,005 songs: the Bible’s own words on what real love is — and how to guard it.
17 verses quotedKing James VersionEvery verse verified
How this page works. The Song of Solomon is a love poem, not a book of instructions
— so rather than commenting on every line of poetry, this page gathers the passages where the Song pauses to
teach: its plainest statements about what love is and how to treat it. Every verse is quoted exactly from the
King James Version, with one-tap NLT and ESV links under each passage. To read the whole poem — and
it’s worth it — open any Bible to the Song of Songs.
01
The wisdom of the Song — what love is, from the man who wrote a thousand songs
The Song of Solomon (also called the Song of Songs — Hebrew for "the greatest of all songs") is different from Solomon's other books: not proverbs or a sermon, but a love poem — a duet between a bride and bridegroom. The Bible includes it because romantic love is God's invention, worth a masterpiece. For centuries readers have also seen in it a picture of God's love for His people; both readings have been treasured side by side. It isn't a book of advice, so this page doesn't walk verse by verse. Instead, here are the passages where the poem pauses and teaches — the places where the greatest of songs tells you plainly what love is and how to handle it.
6Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.7Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
The summit of the whole Song, and one of the greatest statements about love ever written. "Set me as a seal upon thine heart" — a seal was identity itself, the signet you signed with: love asks to be permanent and to mark you. "For love is strong as death" — death never loses; the Song says love is its equal. "The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame" — the Hebrew hints "a flame of the LORD": real love is God's own fire, not a human spark. Then two facts to build a life on: "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it" — true love survives floods (hard years, illness, distance, disappointment) — and it is not for sale: "if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned." All the money in a house offered for love would be laughed out of the room. Everything Solomon owned couldn't purchase the one thing this poem is about. If you learn only one thing from the Song: love is the treasure, not the price tag — you can't buy it, and you should never sell it.
Three times — the Song's only repeated command — the bride turns to the young women listening and makes them promise: "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem... that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please." In the middle of the most passionate poem in the Bible stands a triple warning: don't force love awake before its time. Rushed romance — dating out of boredom, pushing intimacy early, marrying to check a box — wakes something powerful before it (or you) is ready, and powerful things woken early do damage. For a young reader this is the whole talk: real love is worth the wait, and waiting doesn't kill the real thing — it proves it. The poem that celebrates desire most is the one that says: let it sleep until its season.
"Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." In the middle of the romance, a work order: little foxes — small, cute, easy to ignore — slip into vineyards and gnaw the blossoms, and the harvest quietly never comes. Relationships are rarely killed by wolves; they're nibbled to death by foxes: the small unspoken resentment, the phone at the dinner table, the joke that cuts, the apology skipped, the anniversary half-remembered. "Take us the foxes" is plural — catching them is a team sport: couples (and friends, and families) who name the little things early — "this small thing is hurting us" — keep their vines. The tender grapes are the point: the best things in a relationship are always the most easily spoiled, and always worth guarding.
The Song's refrain, said three ways across the poem: "My beloved is mine, and I am his" — then "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine" — and finally "I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me." Mutual, total, and exclusive: each belongs to the other, no thirds, no backup options, no percentages. Notice the quiet progression across the three verses: she begins with what she possesses ("my beloved is mine") and matures into what she gives ("I am my beloved's") — love grows up by moving from claiming to belonging. And the last line — "his desire is toward me" — is the security every heart is actually looking for: not just being chosen once, but being wanted still. That's the standard worth waiting for, and worth being: wholehearted, both directions, for good.
15Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes.16Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
"Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair" — and she answers right back: "Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant." The entire Song is two people out-complimenting each other for eight chapters, climaxing in "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." Is she literally flawless? No — earlier she worries aloud about her sun-darkened skin (1:6). That's the lesson: love looks at a real, imperfect person and chooses to see and to say the best. Not flattery — attention. Long-married elders confirm it constantly: affection that stays silent starves a marriage, and admiration spoken daily feeds one. The Song's method is repetition out loud. Tell the people you love what's beautiful about them, in words, today — and notice it goes both directions: in this poem, she speaks as much praise as she receives.
After five chapters of the most extravagant romantic imagery in the Bible, the bride ends her description of her husband with the quietest, strongest word available: "This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." Friend. The fire of the poem rests on the bedrock of friendship — the person you'd choose for a fifty-year conversation, not just a wedding day. Every serious study of lasting marriage lands on this verse's doorstep: passion opens the story; friendship carries it. So the practical test, before you give anyone your heart: strip away the sparks and ask — is this my friend? Would I want them on my side in an ordinary, unglamorous week? The Song's answer is that the best love is both: beloved and friend, in the same person, for keeps.
10My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.11For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;12The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;13The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
"My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come." Love arrives here as springtime and an invitation — the whole world turning green while someone says come away with me. Ecclesiastes taught that everything has a season; the Song shows the sweetest one being seized: when the right person and the right season arrive together, rise up — say yes to the beginning, don't over-wait out of fear (the same poem already warned against waking love early; this is the other error: sleeping through it when it truly comes). Winters — of loneliness, of grief, of long waiting — do pass. When yours does, and the flowers appear, have the courage to get up and go.