Why We Love Weddings, Part Four: Go Out and Look

[11] Go out, O daughters of Zion,
and look upon King Solomon,
with the crown with which his mother crowned him
on the day of his wedding,
on the day of the gladness of his heart.
(Song of Solomon 3:11 ESV)


And after an unexpected delay, we're back with part four of this little wedding series.  It's a good little conclusion, focusing on the emotion of the bride.  It also has some good practical advice to share, so let's just dive in!

"Go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon"

So why does this passage focus so much on Solomon?  After all, this is the wedding day, the day that is focused on the bride in our modern culture.  Why does Song of Solomon focus so much on the groom, and not on the bride?

There are a few reasons.  First: because the bride is the one who's talking!  If a woman loves a man, she absolultey adores when he makes a public declaration of his love to her, and her adoration ramps up as the declaration becomes more and more grand.  So right now she is completely taken with her amazing husband-to-be!  So what does she do?  She tells her friends to check out how amazing her man is!  She's been saying it since verse 6, but now she says it directly: "Go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon!"

So this passage is the opposite of being chauvanistic, as if it were glorifying the man instead of the woman.  This passage esteems the woman by showing how excited she is to see her man coming to her, riding in the carriage he made specifically for her, as a visible display of his love for her!

Also, the next entire passage is nothing but a detailed, extravagant list of praises for the bride and her beauty.  She gets her praise, too.

(Footnote: While some commentators think this might be a different narrator than the woman talking, ultimately, that makes little sense in light of the entire book.  When Solomon wrote this book, he chose to record only the direct speech of himself, his bride, and a chorus of their friends.  There is nothing else in the entire book but speech!  Solomon didn't even want to use narrative words like "he said" or "she responded."  The vast majority of the book is simply these two love birds talking to each other.  Whenever their friends speak, the speech is very short, one sentence at most, and it always responds to something one of the two lovers has already said.  It would be a complete stylistic break for the book to introduce a mysterious third person as a narrator for this block of text, without ever identifying them or giving an indication that the narrator is someone new.  In short, there's no reason to suppose that this is any one other than the bride speaking, unless you're just needlessly skeptical).  

"with the crown with which his mother crowned him"  The word used for "crown" here doesn't refer to a golden, jewel-encrusted piece of metal that a king wears in his court, but rather more of a wreath of leaves and flowers.  And whereas everything else in this passage was Solomon's idea, this little laurel wreath was the idea of Solomon's mother, Bathsheba, who probably insisted that Solomon wear it on his wedding day.  

"on the day of his wedding, on the day of the gladness of his heart."  Just in case you had any doubt, the text makes it even more clear: Solomon was extremely, crazily, giddily happy on his wedding day!  This is not the kind of situation where a girl had to chase a guy and he just kind of goes along with it all.  Solomon is beside himself with joy at the thought of marrying this woman he loves so much!

So what can we learn from this whole thing?

Men: strive to be this man!  Especially if you're single, but no less so if you're dating or married, strive to grow, to improve yourself, to repent of sin, to make yourself into a man whom a woman will swoon for!  Don't just spend your days on yourself, doing what seems fun.  

Women: Keep your standards high.  Don't stoop for just any man who comes your way and asks you out.  As a daughter of the King, you deserve to be swept off your feet, to be enthralled with the man you will marry!  

One note of caution, women: remember that you're not looking for absolute perfection now, because no guy is there, or will ever be.  Look for a man who is growing, who repents of his sin, who strives to improve himself, who admits when he's wrong, who submits to coaching, guidance, and constructive criticism.  If your man is strong, yet humble, and is already displaying his desire to grow, he will become more and more your prince every day of his life. 

But if he is resistant to that, if he always has to be right, if he reacts negatively to constructive criticism or coaching, if he doesn't truly repent of his sin or has no desire to do the hard work of repentance, then he's not a catch, no matter how grand he seems now.  

In short, ladies: every man will make mistakes.  What matters is how he deals with those mistakes, whether he grows and overcomes them, or denies them and hides them.  

And if you want to know what truly separates the men from the boys, look for a man who isn't waiting for mistakes to show him where he needs to grow.  Look for a man who is striving to grow now, to become more Christ-like now, so that he won't make nearly as many mistakes in the future.  In other words: it's far better to find a man who repents when he sins instead of one who continues to sin, but it's better still to find a man who strives to live his life in the fear of the Lord, so that he doesn't have so much need to repent in the first place.  

This will probably take time.  It will undoubtedly be quicker to hook up with a decent guy now, instead of waiting for an extraordinary guy later.  But if you want to be as excited as Solomon's bride on your wedding day, if you want to be that elated about your husband-to-be, you need to let the boys pass on by, and hold out for the true men, the ones who have fully surrendered their lives to Christ.