The Ancients on Solomon's contribution to the Bible

Proverbs offers those interested moral benefit, while Ecclesiastes comments on the nature of visible realities and thoroughly explains the futility of the present life so that we may learn its transitory character, despise passing realities and long for the future as something lasting.

The Song of Songs . . . brings out the mystical intercourse between the bride and the bridegroom, the result being that the whole of Solomon's work constitutes a kind of ladder with three steps--moral, physical, and mystical.

That is to say, the person approaching a religious way of life must first purify the mind with good behavior, then strive to discern the futility of impermanent things and the transitory character of what seems pleasant, and then finally take wings and long for the bridegroom, who promises eternal goods.