Reading this chapter today with our worldly context, we might think of this as some kind of pornography. But since we know that God inspired Solomon to write this message, we have to look at this from a different angle. What Solomon saw in the perfection of his wife’s beauty, he has now felt having confessed his sin and experienced God’s forgiveness.
Think about David’s prayer when he confessed his sin to God. “Sprinkle me with the cleansing blood and I shall be clean again. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. And after You have punished me, give me back my joy again. Don’t keep looking at my sins – erase them from Your sight. Create in me a new clean heart, O God, filled with clean thoughts and right desires. Don’t toss me aside, banished forever from Your presence. Don’t take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me again the joy of Your salvation and make me willing to obey You.” (Psalm 51:7-12). Maybe David told Solomon about this prayer and the joy and forgiveness he felt.
Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:1-2, “Follow God’s example in everything you do just as a much loved child imitates his father. Be full of love for others, following the example of Christ who loved you and gave Himself to God as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, for Christ’s love for you was like sweet perfume to Him.”
John amplifies this in his writings. “See how very much our heavenly Father loves us, for He allows us to be called His children – think of it – and we really are! But since most people don’t know God, naturally they don’t understand that we are His children. Yes, dear friends, we are already God’s children, right now, and we can’t even imagine what it is going to be like later on. But we do know this, that when He comes we will be like Him, as a result of seeing Him as He really is. And everyone who really believes this will try to stay pure because Christ is pure.” (1 John 3:1-3).
This must have been Solomon’s realization after God rebuked him and he confessed his sin. He felt the cleanness, the pureness of God’s forgiveness, and captured it in his description of his beautiful bride.