Hey friends, Emma here. I've been out sick over the last few days, so good friends of the podcast,

Nathan Wagnon and Hannah Stobbs, jumped in. That said, throughout the next few days, you'll get to hear

snippets of their conversations and I'll add some of my own commentary, so the episodes may be a bit

longer. As we start the book of Song of Solomon, I wanted to give you a heads up that the content is,

in nature, very adult. In fact, during the days of the early church, young boys were not allowed

to read Song of Solomon until they had thoroughly studied or sometimes even memorized. All of the

Pentateuch, all of the historical books, all of the prophets except

Ezekiel, and all of the poetical books. Once they'd done that, then they could study Song of

Solomon. So that said, if you're listening with children or minors around or nearby, we'd recommend

you listen by yourself first before listening with kids. Before we jump

into Nathan and Hannah's conversation, here are three things I want us to remember. Number one,

some scholars believe Solomon wrote this book. Others don't. No matter what you think in regard to

authorship, we are certain the book belongs in our Bibles. Number two, this book is

full of poetry with a lot of springtime imagery depicting a romantic relationship between a man

and a woman. And number three, in the ancient Near East, there was a lot of sexual dysfunction.

People operated outside of God's design. But this book celebrates God's

design and the book provides a clear standard of God's design for sexual love. Let's jump in.

All right now, if we're honest, reading the Bible consistently can be a challenge, but it's never

too late to start and we're in this together. This is the Join the Journey podcast.

Thanks for joining Hannah Stabs here with the Watermark Institute and I'm back in the podcast

studio with Nathan Wagonon. What up? What up Hannah?

Nathan, as we even get into this text, we talked about it a little bit if you listen to the podcast yesterday, kind of just an overview of where we're at in Song of Solomon, that this passage of this book, rather, is important, although it can be a little different, not your normal.

...