The Kingdom
- When
- Solomon’s era
- Written by
- Solomon, by tradition
- Chapters
- 8
The big idea
A love song between bride and bridegroom, read by Israel and the Church as the love between God and his people.
Themes
- Human love as gift
- God and his people
- Longing and union
- Christ and the Church
Memory verse
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.
Key passages
- 1:1–3The opening song
- 2:10–13Arise, my love
- 5:2–6:2The search for the beloved
- 8:6–7Love strong as death
Links to other Scripture
- Ephesians 5:25–32A great mystery
- Hosea 2:19–20I will betroth you
- Revelation 19:7–9The marriage of the Lamb
- John 3:29The friend of the bridegroom
Read the text
Choose a chapter to read it here in the King James Version. Verses with a dotted underline have notes from Bible scholars. Tap one to open them.
Notes from
Chapters
King James text and the commentaries of Henry, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Gill, Clarke, Calvin, and Keil and Delitzsch are in the public domain. Tyndale Open Study Notes are used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, from tyndaleopenresources.com. Texts were reformatted for this site.
Journal prompts
Keep a journal or notebook for your study. Write your answers there, in your own words.
- Where do you see Christ in this book?
- The song is about desire and delight, not duty. What would it be like to approach God with that kind of longing?
- The bride says “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” What does it mean to belong to him?
- Read chapter 2:10 to 13 slowly. What is God inviting you to come away into?
- In one sentence, this book is about…