The most beautiful love song in the Tanakh, the Song of Songs — who was the beloved it was written about?
Stop. Just before you say that the beloved is the People of Israel and the man is the Holy One, blessed be He — before the allegory, what is the parable itself? Who was the beloved who stood before Solomon’s eyes as he composed this stirring love song?
It seems that a simple look at the sources shows almost unmistakably who the mysterious beloved is. Hold on tight:
Pharaoh’s daughter.
Of all Solomon’s wives, Scripture clearly emphasizes who the favored one was. In fact she is almost the only one mentioned at all (apart from Naamah the Ammonite, who is mentioned in passing as the mother of Rehoboam rather than as Solomon’s wife). Pharaoh’s daughter is mentioned five separate times as King Solomon’s principal and beloved wife:
Her marriage is described with excitement, like a groom finally bringing his beloved home:
“And Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter, and brought her into the City of David” (1 Kings 3:1).
Later, she is the only one who receives the title “Solomon’s wife” (1 Kings 9:16).
Solomon built an enormous project, the “Millo,” just so he could build her a special house near the king’s palace and the Temple: “But Pharaoh’s daughter came up out of the City of David to her house which he had built for her; then he built the Millo” (1 Kings 9:24).
And even when his other wives are mentioned anonymously, Pharaoh’s daughter is singled out separately and specially: “Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh” (1 Kings 11:1).
According to the Book of Kings there is no doubt: the principal beloved is Pharaoh’s daughter.
Does the Song of Songs itself hint at this?
The central images of the first chapter show that it does:
“I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar… Do not gaze at me because I am dark, for the sun has tanned me” (Song of Songs 1:5). The ancient Egyptians, as is well known, were dark-skinned (like today’s Copts, who are their descendants — unlike Egypt’s Arabs, whose origins lie in the lands of Arabia and who are fair-skinned). According to the Song of Songs the beloved was black, and this was considered beauty: “I am black and beautiful.” Later in the chapter Solomon likens the beloved: “To a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots I have compared you, my love.”
If the identification is correct, one can practically feel the drumbeat of the royal wedding later in the Song of Songs as well: “Who is this coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the powders of the merchant?” (Song of Songs 3:6). Pharaoh’s daughter is being brought from Egypt, through the desert, in a royal caravan scented with a whole array of fine fragrances and perfumes.
The idea for this identification comes from Rabbi Uri Sherki, and he adds something wonderful: only after Solomon’s wedding to Pharaoh’s daughter is it also said, “And Solomon loved the Lord.” Only one who knows the love of a woman can know the love of God. There is no allegory without a living, true parable, as the poet Rivka Miriam taught me.
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This surprising identification sheds new light on the custom of reading the Song of Songs on Passover.
The Exodus from Egypt was a break from the loftiest culture of the age — Egypt — and the creation of a distinct, separate people. King Solomon, in whose days nearly all the Torah’s visions were coming true, tries to join all the nations to his kingdom, which finds expression in his desire to marry many foreign women; not out of lust but out of a wish to connect all the nations to Israel. The crowning achievement was bringing over the daughter of the ruler of the cultural superpower, Egypt. Instead of the Exodus from Egypt: Egypt comes up to us. Now that there is quiet and peace, we are not afraid of the dominant culture of the age; we want partnership with it, we want to bring it to Jerusalem, with all that this implies.
Solomon was not the first to try to join the culture of Egypt to Israel. Abraham our father married Hagar the Egyptian, and Moses took, in addition to Zipporah, a Cushite wife (according to the plain reading). Like his predecessors, Solomon’s attempt also failed. His wives turned his heart astray, and the building of the palace for Pharaoh’s daughter was one of the main causes of the revolt of Jeroboam son of Nebat. And still — the attempt itself at an “ascent of Egypt” continues to echo for us every year in the Song of Songs. This does not rule out the other interpretations, which are wonderful in their own right, and still there is something moving in this reading:
According to this interpretation, the Song of Songs is also a love song between Israel and the culture of the nations, a story with disappointments and falls, but one that ends with “Then was I in his eyes as one who finds peace.”
