God’s Word for You
Song of Solomon 6:10 as clear as the summer sun
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, July 7, 2024
Friends (or, the Husband)
10 “Who is this woman who looks down like the dawn,
beautiful as the white moon, clear as the summer sun,
majestic as troops with banners?”
There is a great deal of poetry here that’s worth our while to appreciate. First, “she who looks down” is an unusual use of the normally passive nifal verb stem. The nifal can also show a reflexive or back-and-forth idea, and for some reason that made perfect sense to Moses (Numbers 23:28) and later writers, a mountainous “overlook” required this word, such as “the borderland overlooking the Valley of Zeboim” (1 Samuel 13:18). Perhaps the idea was that a person would be cautious at such a place, leaning out a little but careful not to lose his or her balance. So in our verse, the bride is described as leaning carefully out of her window or from the roof of their house, exactly (to his mind) like the dawn (when night’s candles are burned out) that “stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.”
Calling up to her as she looks down from upstairs, the speaker fills his words with more and more words as rare as they are full of meaning. But who is the speaker? We have similar questions asked in 3:6 and the first part of 8:5. These are usually taken to be the words of the woman’s friends, but they could also be spoken by the husband. We will look at them from both points of view.
Instead of just “moon” (Hebrew yareach, Joel 3:4; Ecclesiastes 12:2) he says she is as beautiful as the “white moon” (labanah), the full moon in all of her bright and unstained beauty. And besides this, the wife’s beauty is unstained, pure and clear “as the hot sun” or “as the summer sun.” This is the sun we love to bask in, to simply turn our faces to the sky and close our eyes. Some think of this in modern times as soaking in certain vitamins, but it simply feels good to let the sun’s rays strike the face and skin.
Finally, the speaker (or speakers) brings up the earlier compliment of her being as impressive as troops with their banners flying (see 6:4). Some men can’t help but bring up certain comparisons when they talk. For some guys, it’s sports. Think of Paul talking about boxing (1 Corinthians 9:26) or running a race (Galatians 2:2, 5:7). For other men, it’s boats and sailing (Acts 13:4, 14:26, 15:39, 16:11, 20:6, 27:5, 28:13). Other times, it might be horses or chariots or armor; the modern man often talks about cars and trucks. Here, the husband talks about war and troops with their banners just like David does in Psalm 20:5. Perhaps the “troops with banners” image is a reflection of the regularity of her lovely features, and “banners” could even suggest her flowing hair caught by the breeze, since she is standing or sitting above, leaning out of the window.
Some translations (NIV) take the last phrase to be about the stars, which fits the context but has no footing in the Hebrew text. If the speaker is the husband, he is more than pleased with the way his wife looks, and suggests the emotions of love warming him like the sun. If the speaker is a group of friends, they praise her and are happy about her marriage to her excellent husband.
Therefore, two spiritual applications suggest themselves. One is the less likely case of the husband speaking, in which case the Lord God would be describing the church looking out the window of the world at her Savior; perhaps Christ’s state of humiliation could be suggested by her appearance above and his below, since there is no other possible spiritual meaning if he is speaking about her. Christ’s delight in certain believers would then come to mind, like when he says to a Gentile: “I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith” (Matthew 8:10; Luke 7:9).
If the passage is spoken by her friends, then their praise must be taken with caution. We praise one another at certain times, such as in a funeral, or when we see faith showing itself. I know of a man who was once encouraged by a stranger who overheard him praying before he and his family ate a meal in a restaurant. But we should be quicker to give praise than to grope for it. Our Lord knows our faith and our trials. He sees the things that we do, he hears the things that we say, he alone even knows our thoughts (Psalm 94:11). We live content to serve him and love him, and we bask in his blessings, turning the thought of the verse around as if in a mirror, for to know God is to feel joy and peace, “as clear as the summer sun.”
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.