Song of Songs Verse 6 - Solomon's House of The Rising Sun

Well, I keep plumbing the depths of this verse in the Song of Solomon, but at some point in time I guess I'm going to have to do the podcast because it's just so deep that I don't know. I got today in the Song of Solomon and let me just read it and we'll dig as far as we can dig. And I certainly have titled this one, The House of the Rising Sun, which is wow, just wow. Anyway, verse six, Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.

My mother's children were angry with me, they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard I have not kept. So wow, you know, just to begin with it says do not look upon me because I'm black, because the sun had looked upon me. Well, you know, Solomon is known through Ecclesiastes to be concerned about the sun, you know, nothing under the sun and you think about all those verses where he makes reference to the sun. I don't know anybody that makes more references to the sun than Solomon.

And the idea of under the sun is kind of like that whole idea of the House of the Rising Sun because here's what that is. In Hebrew, that's Beth Shemesh. And if you look in that story, which Rashi notes when talking about this verse of Beth Shemesh, he also mentions it obviously when Solomon is speaking about under the sun in Ecclesiastes, is that Beth Shemesh means the house of the sun. And it is down there in Judah and there's a very famous story in 1 Samuel chapter 6, you might remember that the Ark of the Covenant, you know, the very, very Holy of Holies was stolen by the Philistines. And of course they got a whole bunch of trouble because of that and all sorts of afflictions. And so they made all these golden tumors and these golden rats and they put it on a special cart and they sent it with these two cows to, you know, or just to see where, you know, God would take it to see if it was a God that was going to get it out of there for them. And these cattle that were on there went down the road to Beth Shemesh, which is, again, the house of the sun, which was in Judah. And when they, you know, the Philistine saw that it went there, you know, they were good and they took off and said, okay, you know, we got rid of this thing. Well, the people of Beth Shemesh, they began to worship, this is wonderful, you know, we have our ark back and they sacrificed the cattle and they had quite a deal there.

But then the story goes south really quickly because you'll see that if you continue on in the story that, you know, they decide to look upon this, they look in the Ark of the Covenant somehow. And it says, depending on how you want to read it, that the Lord smote 50,070. So the interesting thing the Jews teach about that, I don't know, but it's something to think about, that what happened there was there were 70, like a Sanhedrin elders that were in the town. And that's why that number 70 is so significant. And they say that because of the power of those 70, it was like the same thing as smoting 50,000 people.

However you want to look at it, there was a whole lot of death that went on, and of course they got all upset about the ark being there and they sent it off. But there's a lot to just consider there that here we are in the house of the sun. And Solomon goes on and on about the sun. And if you look carefully, and I did a whole bunch of study on the sun, to see that the sun quite often has to do with this idea of accomplishment.

Like we're from day to day, what am I going to get done, not with God's help, but with my own accomplishment. Versus the Torah, which gives light, right? Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. And the light, you know, it's very beautiful verse to consider on this whole subject of toiling away under the sun before we even get to the mother's brothers and all that stuff. Is in Isaiah 60, there is a verse that speaks to this very idea that I'm talking about here, which I think is worth quoting.

So in Isaiah 60 20 it says, Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself. For the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Well, you see the significance of that word mourning because of a number of things that that idea of black that is used here.

He says, don't look, you know, when she says don't look at me because I'm black. Well, that idea of black we talked about in the last verse has to do with mourning. And then you'll note a very neat, I don't know, something to ponder for a long time, is that there was a great stone that they put the ark on there in the Beth Shemesh story in the House of the Rising Sun story. And that stone is called the Great Stone of Abel. And it even says in First Samuel, that stone is there to this day.

And actually, if there are ruins in Beth Shemesh, which you can see, you can see a YouTube video if you want to, and they even have pictures of this table. But the idea of the word Abel there is the idea of mourning. And so, you know, obviously, Abel, you know, died. And so this, again, was very much connected because Esau, I mean, excuse me, Cain slew Abel. And, you know, if you look into Josephus, it teaches that the reason that Cain did that was because he plowed the field and he was trying to make his own way under the sun. He was laboring under the sun under his own accomplishments. And when his brother didn't just raise his sheep, by the way, God made him and he got the he got all the the look of favor from God from the situation.

You see that he killed his brother, you know, and so there you have this whole idea again of laboring under the sun. If you study the thing of and so then you see these people in Beth Shemesh, you know, they were trying to do stuff in their own power rather than go by what God was going to do. So they decided to look in the ark.

Why were they doing that? Well, they were trying to do things that were different than God's will. And the idea is that's going to make you mourn. And it certainly made, you know, this great stone of Abel right there in Beth Shemesh.

Many mourned, obviously, as a result of looking into something that they shouldn't have looked into. Which gets us back to this verse that we're talking about in Song of Solomon, right? She is warning the Shulamite, the beloved, is warning the daughters of Jerusalem. Don't look into things that you're not supposed to look into, and she actually goes into a little bit of her testimony, but she's saying that this is holy. Her story is holy.

And don't look at me because I'm dark. And she goes on to explain why. And I think it's a wonderful warning. We shouldn't look down on people and look at them because their stories are holy and we don't even know what happened.

And here's what happened in her case. She says, I love it, that her mother's sons. Well, it's interesting that, you know, very much this is just another whole thing you could spend a lot of time on if you want to, is that the Jews consider if your mother is Jewish, then you're Jewish. But if your father was Jewish and your mother was a Gentile, then you're a Gentile.

So, you know, again, that's another whole long discussion. But there's no doubt that your mother's sons are very, very closely related. You know, that the sons of your mother and you have a little bit different bond than if you have a different father. And I have that in my own family, you know, where I have stepsisters and brothers.

I have lots of them. And then I have some that were my mother's brothers. So there's a difference there in the relation. And then there's this idea of these vineyards. And here we go back to toiling under the sun, which is how she gets dark. And this is the story that, again, they're making reference, they feel like, or the Jews teach this is making reference to Egypt, taking them into bondage and making them serve the sun god and that kind of thing.

Well, you know, how about in your own life? You know, when you go to work for somebody, you're definitely working in their vineyard. And the interesting thing that the word that Solomon chooses to use, that her brothers are angry with her, is also usually connected to the idea of burning and actually turning black. And so these brothers of hers are burning hot, right?

And they are burning her with what they're doing. And I don't know if you've ever had the situation where you were, and I think the perfect example of this is Mary and Martha. So Mary and Martha, you know, her sister burned because her vineyard was, we got to get all this stuff done, where Mary was better. She was working on her own vineyard, which was, you know, planting good seeds that would bear good fruit based on what Jesus was doing. And you see, there's a picture of a sister that was burning to get her sisters to work in her vineyard. And, you know, a lot of times when we're at work, you know, we end up in somebody else's vineyard.

And if they see us in any way, shape or forms, you know, sitting at Jesus's feet, you might have experienced this burning. And I told the story, you know, back earlier when we were doing the 119 Psalm about when I worked for Bob Neal, Chrysler, Plymouth, Chief Eagle, and my bosses came to me, that even what I was doing in my spare time, which was having a Bible study, and they burned. And they had me stop that, right? Because it was inflecting on, you know, whether or not we were being completely whatever.

But the point is, is that they had everything to do with me working in their vineyard, but they weren't okay with me tending my own vineyard. And so as you look at that in your own life, you know, and or, you know, the whole idea of working under the sun, am I toiling with what God is asking me to do? Or am I toiling, you know, based like Abel did, and just letting God doing it, working with him as a partnership, rather than me figure out how I'm going to accomplish all this stuff. It's an interesting thing to work under the sun. And when you look, do a whole study of that and what's in Deuteronomy on it.

And there is a whole study on being done under the sun. Of course, that's what Ecclesiastes is about. But the other thing that I think to note as we apply this verse to our lives is, you know, when we're looking at other people's sin, we're looking at something that's holy. And don't look at them because they're dark. Look at what Jesus is doing in their life. And if they are sitting at his feet, oh my goodness, you know, how can we help them go about doing that?

Because clearly there is a curse involved by looking at somebody else's sin and judging and all that other stuff like, wow, this is great advice that the Shulamite is giving of the daughters of Jerusalem. And it's also an interesting understanding of all this stuff under the sun. Thanks for listening. Thank you.