Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap.

Today we finished our 13th book of the Bible. We just keep moving past these milestones,

you guys. Congratulations! We read through the whole book of Song of Solomon or Song of

Songs depending which version of the Bible you're reading. This book is incredibly layered

and there's a lot of uncertainty about several aspects of it. For instance, we don't know

if Solomon wrote it or if it was written about Solomon or if it was just written during

the time of Solomon. If it was written about Solomon, it would have to be about his relationship

with his first wife because the book describes a monogamous relationship and he eventually

had a thousand women in his herm, 700 wives and 300 concubines. And we'll see how well

that goes for him. And here's another confusing thing. People have argued for centuries

over whether it's a story about human love or if it's an allegory about God's love for

his people. Personally, I tend to think it's both. Much like how David can write a song

about his own personal misery that is also a prophecy of the coming Messiah. But that's

just my opinion. Most commentators believe the ancient Jews regarded it as love poetry

that belonged in the wisdom literature of Scripture. And in fact, from what I understand,

young Hebrew boys were even forbidden to read it because it was too risky. For the sake

of today's conversation, we'll look at it like the ancient Jews did, literally. But

it's also helpful to consider that there does seem to be lots of content that can serve

as an illustration for us. If you hold to the romantic interpretation of the book, you

can see that it follows the progression of the ancient Jewish relationship from courtship

to wedding feast to wedding, then marriage. Much of the book is a conversation and there

are four primary speakers, the Sheppardis, her entourage, the Sheppard and King Solomon.

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