... come out, and look, you daughters of Zion. Look on King Solomon wearing a crown, the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, the day his heart rejoiced. – Song of Songs 3:11

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 27, 2013): Song of Songs 3

There are items in our lives that we attribute special value to for no other reason than that they remind us of someone special. I have books in my library that are from my grandfather’s library and every time I see the books, or I read an inscription addressed to my grandfather in the front of the book, I think of him and realize how much I miss him. In fact, my grandfather moved late in his life and he gave a lot of his library away to some random person because he did not think that anyone in the family would want the books. And my reaction was I love books, but these books would have been treasured for no other reason than that they were yours.

I had a chair. To be honest, it was an ugly orange chair. And as time wore on, it also started to be a chair that was desperate need of ... something. The chair became uncomfortable. It was broken and it had one busted spring that poked a wire out of the front of the chair. The wire became known as the incredible growing wire because no matter how often we cut the wire off at its base, it grew back. It finally became apparent that the chair needed to be discarded; there was nothing else that we could do to it and it was just not a beautiful chair, except that it had belonged to my grandmother. And that one fact was what made the chair beautiful – at least to me.

This passage speaks of the King coming surrounded by his warriors and he is wearing a crown. Kings do that, a crown is part of the things that they wear. But the passage does not say that he was wearing the crown of the kingdom of Israel. This is not the crown that was placed on top of his head on the day of his coronation – it was the crown that was placed on his head by his mother. It was a common practice in Solomon’s time that mom would place a crown on the head of her son or her daughter on the day of their wedding, because on this day they were king and queen – in fact, forever more this couple would rule as supreme monarchs inside their homes – there they were royalty.

Some have wondered if Solomon’s wearing of this crown instead of the one that would have been placed on his head by the priest on the day of his coronation meant that this event happened before he was crowned king of Israel. But the problem with that thought is that he is addressed in this passage as the “king.” It seems to be a more natural explanation that Solomon wore the crown that his mother, Bathsheba, had placed on his head on this day because this possibly was his wedding day – or because it was the crown his mother had placed on his head that carried with it intense sentimental value for Solomon. Or it might even be that both of these reasons are true.    

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Song of Songs 4

Note: The VantagePoint Community Church (Edmonton) sermons "Heaven Touching Earth" and "All Dressed Up With No Place to Go" are now available on the Vantagepoint Website.