Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. Quick heads up before we get into this episode.

Today we're going to talk about a book in the Bible called The Song of Songs.

So if you're listening to this around someone who doesn't know about the birds and the bees,

I suggest putting on some headphones.

Song of Songs is struck many readers throughout history as like what is semi-erotic love poetry doing in the Bible?

And once again, it's all about the assumptions that we bring to the Bible.

We're in the middle of examining the books of wisdom in the Hebrew Scriptures,

learning how to read them well in light of the whole story of the Bible.

And today we're going to dive into the book called The Song of Songs.

Now for most of us, including song of songs in the wisdom literature might be a bit of a curveball.

And if you're like me, you've never really known where to put this book in the Bible.

It just seems like a random collection of love poetry.

However, if you've been an attentive reader of the Hebrew Scriptures,

you know that story lines can be symbolic and read on multiple levels.

But something similar with the Song of Songs, multiple layers of meaning that work simultaneously.

So you can read it as love poetry.

But if you start paying attention to hyperlinks, you'll notice that there's all of this Eden imagery going on.

If you pay attention to other hyperlinks, sometimes even the same ones,

there's all this temple, temple Solomon imagery going on.

At one level, the Song of Songs is about sexuality.

So what do we do with that?

Communities pursuit of knowledge and wisdom in order to rule can be completely made on analogy

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