The Song of Solomon is a rarely-discussed book in the biblical canon; for Latter-day Saints, it is due to Joseph Smith rejecting its inspiration, and for non-LDS, it is due largely that, outside allegorical interpretations of certain texts (usually by Catholics to prop up the Marian Dogmas), there is very little, if anything, of theological importance. Notwithstanding, many Muslim apologists have argued that the Song of Solomon contains a direct prophecy of Muhammad (e.g. this page).
Song 5:16 reads as follows:
His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
The Hebrew term the KJV translates as "beloved" is מַחֲּמַדִּים, the plural of מַחְמָד which means "desirable," a noun with the mem preformative acting as a descriptive adjective.
There are a number of problems with this claim by Shabir Ally and other Muslim apologists.
Firstly, the term is not a proper noun in Song 5:16, but a descriptive adjective.
Secondly, the term appears in a number of places throughout the Hebrew Bible; indeed, reading the term as a prophecy of Muhammad leads to inane interpretations:
Yet I will send my servants unto thee to tomorrow about this time, and they shall search thine house, and the houses of thy servants, and it shall be, that whatsoever is pleasant in thine eyes, they shall put it in their hand, and take it away. (1 Kgs 20:6)
And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the places thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. (2 Chron 36:19)
Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste. (Isa 64:10)
Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her Sabbaths . . . The adversary hath spread out of his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation. All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile. (Lam 1:7, 10-11)
He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion; he poured out his fury like fire. (Lam 2:4)
Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down . . . Speak unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the excellency of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and that which your soul piteth, and your sons and your daughters whom ye have left shall fall by the sword . . . Also, thou son of man, shall it not be in the day when I take from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and that whereupon they set their minds, their sons and their daughters. (Ezek 24:16, 21, 25)
For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be their tabernacles . . . Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, through they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb. (Hos 9:6, 16)
Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things. (Joel 3:5 [4:5 in the Hebrew])
Reading the adjective as a proper name (i.e. Muhammad) in Song 5:16 would force a Muslim apologist to argue (if they were consistent) that Muhammad was a vessel from the temple (2 Chron 36:19) or that Muhammad was laid waste in Isa 64:10, or that he was killed in Lam 2:4.
Thirdly, the context of Song 5:16 further disproves the Islamic claim, as the speaker is a wife who is speaking poetically about the beauty of her husband; to read into this a prophecy of Muhammad makes absolutely no contextual and exegetical sense.
Fourthly, Muslims are engaging in a common fallacy when approaching languages, namely, the false (and inane) claim that if two words sound like one another they must be etymologically related to one another and/or have the same meaning. Of course, anyone who has any training in languages realises that this is, to put things nicely, utterly inane. For example, using this approach, one can prove that Muslims believe that Allah is a mouse. After all, the Hebrew term for “mouse” is עַכְבָּר (transliterated as 'akbar), and "Allah is great" is "Allahu Akhbar," so, Muslims are in reality saying "Allah is a mouse." Of course, as with the "argument" Muslims forward vis-a-vis Muhammad and Song 5:16, such is utterly inane.
Finally, let us address the true meaning of this verse. The following comes from Marvin Pope:
16b. desirable. The form mahăddîm, “desirable (things),” corresponds to the pattern of mamaqqîm of the preceding stich and the syntax is the same, “His totality is desirable things,” i.e. “He is utterly desirable.” In Ugaritic mhmd is used of “choice cedars” and of gold (lhmd is apparently a scribal error for mhmd in the expression lhmd hrs):
The mountains will bring you much silver, The hills of the choicest gold. (4[51].5.100-101)
In Ezek 24:16 mahmad ‘enekai, “the desire of your eyes,” is applied to the prophet’s wife. (
Clearly, this verse is not a prophecy, let alone a prophecy of Muhammad.
Much more could be said about this Islamic claim, but from the above, we can see how utterly desperate many Muslim apologists are to prop up the claim that Muhammed was a prophet.
