Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon were probably written toward the end of Solomon’s life. In 1 Kings 11, we find that the Lord appeared to Solomon and rebuked him for building altars to foreign gods to please his foreign wives. He had found life so meaningless no matter what he gave himself to do that he finally gave into the wishes of his pagan wives. After God told him that his son would lose most of his kingdom because of Solomon’s departure from the Lord, he woke up and repented. Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon seem to have this as the background.
When King David was old and in his last years, he could not keep warm in bed. 1 Kings 1 tells us that one of David’s servants suggested finding a young woman to be his caregiver including sleeping with him. “They search for a beautiful girl throughout the territory of Israel; they found Abishag the Shunammite and brought her to the king. The girl was of unsurpassed beauty, and she became the king’s caregiver. She served him, but he was not intimate with her.” 1Kings 1:3-4 NLT. Shortly after David’s death, his son Adonijah who tried to have himself crowned king, went to Bathsheba, David’s wife and the mother of Solomon, and asked her to speak to Solomon about giving Abishag to him as his wife. Solomon correctly saw this as a new attempt to usurp the throne and had his half brother killed. It
appears that Abishag is the wife of Solomon’s song, Shunammite exchanged for Shulammite (l for n).
This is a story of true love and the intimacy between newly married people and is a picture of the relationship God expects between husbands and wives. But more than this, as Solomon was contemplating his mistake in looking for meaning to life among false gods, he tries to remember his relationship with the real God in his early years. That relationship reminds him of the similarities of his relationship with Abishag, and he finds this as the best way to describe the spiritual relationship God wants to have with each believer because we cannot express to others, we cannot find the words that picture what God means to us. That relationship is real yet so undefinable. Our vocabularies are so limited we cannot get other people to picture in their minds how such a relationship can exist. Sometimes we feel God’s closeness to us and at other times we feel separated and we don’t understand
why. Where has God gone? Have I disappointed Him? Why won’t He speak to me? That is why we read the Bible, God’s love letter to us. The Apostle Paul describes it best when he writes, and you are the fullness of Him Who fills everything else. Paraphrase NLT.
The key verse is “I belong to my love, and his desire is for me”. Song of Solomon 7:10 NLT.