Solomon, who humbly asked God for wisdom (1 Kings 3:9), ultimately lost sight of God, lamenting that “all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14). He documented his struggle with lust, describing his heart as being “drawn away” by women (Ecclesiastes 7:26), and amassed wealth and wives in a futile attempt to fill the inner emptiness he so acutely perceived.

In the end, however, Solomon celebrates the unique intimacy of a faithful marriage. While he himself failed to live up to this ideal, the Song of Solomon stands as a God-inspired vision of it. This vision emerges from the same mind that penned Proverbs’ description of a noble wife who is far more precious than jewels (Proverbs 31:10) and warned against the adulteress who leads down to death (Proverbs 7:27). In the Song, Solomon—the king and bridegroom—serves as a type, a prophetic foreshadowing of a greater King. His poetic cry, “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song of Solomon 2:16), points beyond his own failures to a perfect, covenantal love.

Ultimately, Solomon’s story points to someone greater than himself: Christ, who is the very “wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). In perfect faithfulness to God, Christ fulfills the pattern Solomon could only foreshadow. He is the ultimate Bridegroom King who, as the New Testament proclaims, “loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). The cry of the Song finds its divine answer in the union between Christ and His Church: “He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:17). Thus, the poetic ideal of the Song, the wisdom of Proverbs, and the confessed emptiness of Ecclesiastes all find their ultimate resolution in Christ, who makes the shadow a divine reality.