Today is the 6th day of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It is wonderful

to be here with you today as we gather around the global campfire and move forward together.

In the Old Testament we have spent some time in the Book of Job and in the Book of Ecclesiastes,

a wisdom literature but very very particular, dealing with some of the more darker,

difficult topics that we face as human beings. But this leads us to some brand new territory,

unlike any other territory that we've been in the Bible so far. And this territory is known as

the Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon. And it's pretty short. We will read it over the course

of the next couple of days but it is poetry and it's potent poetry, beautiful poetry,

that on the face of it deals with human sexuality. And it's a poem and so it's poetry and so

poetry is full of metaphor and allegory. And so this book, the Song of Solomon has been looked at

a number of ways which is totally fine. It's poetry. We look through a certain lens when we

understand what the genre is, what we're reading. Well, we also need to take it at face value and

understand that human sexuality. And the joy of covenantal, marital relationship is important,

important enough that we find it here in the middle of the Bible. That is literally what we will

read in the poem, a passionate consummation of love between a man and a woman who

are lovesick and cannot get enough of each other. And it stands on its own for that sake.

Ancient Jewish tradition as well as Christian tradition has allegorical views of this poetry.

So like from an ancient Jewish perspective, it's the story of God revealing how passionate

he is and how passionately he loves his children who are the Hebrew people. And that is

totally supportable in the scriptures. In the Christian tradition, it's like an allegorical look

at Christ, Jesus, passionate love for his church, his bride, and foreshadowing of his desire

for her. And we're in one of these situations where we're dealing with poetry. And so it can speak

...