Song of Solomon: The Praised One

The Song of Solomon — also known as the Song of Songs — is one of the most distinctive books of the Old Testament, a collection of lyrical poetry celebrating love and beauty that has generated extensive theological commentary in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Muslim scholars, including Ahmad Deedat, have drawn attention to a specific passage in this book that contains, in the original Hebrew, a direct reference to the name Muhammad. Whether this reference constitutes a prophetic utterance pointing toward the Prophet of Islam or is a coincidental occurrence of a similar-sounding word is a question that illuminates the deeper methodological issues involved in inter-textual religious interpretation.

The passage in question is Song of Solomon 5:16, in which the speaker describes her beloved and concludes: 'His mouth is most sweet; he is altogether lovely.' The Hebrew word translated as 'altogether lovely' or 'wholly desirable' is machmaddim — the plural of machmad, which is derived from the same Semitic root as the Arabic name Muhammad, meaning 'the praised one' or 'the greatly lauded one.' The Hebrew root h-m-d, meaning 'to be desired, praised, or precious,' corresponds directly to the Arabic root h-m-d from which Muhammad's name derives.

Deedat argues that this is not a coincidence but a deliberate prophetic reference. The speaker in the Song of Solomon is describing an idealized beloved figure, and the use of a word whose root is identical to the Prophet's name — in a context of superlative praise — points toward a recognition of the prophetic significance of this name embedded within the Hebrew text. He notes that the Hebrew machmaddim appears in this verse in the plural form, which in Hebrew is sometimes used as a form of emphasis or majesty — the 'plural of excellence' — similar to how the name Ahmad can be understood as the most praised among those who praise.

Christian and Jewish scholars typically interpret this passage in purely poetic terms, as a description of the physical and personal beauty of the beloved, without any prophetic dimension. The word machmad appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible in its non-name sense (meaning 'desirable things' or 'precious things'), which supports the traditional literary interpretation. Deedat acknowledges these alternative readings but maintains that the specific context of Song of Solomon 5:16 — where the word functions as the climactic description of a supremely praised individual — lends itself to the prophetic interpretation he proposes.

Beyond the specific textual argument, Deedat uses this passage to raise a broader point about the relationship between the Arabic and Hebrew languages — both Semitic languages sharing a common root structure — and about the consistency of prophetic names across the Abrahamic traditions. The name Muhammad, and its related form Ahmad, carries a theological meaning: 'the most praised one.' The Quran declares that Muhammad will praise Allah in the highest, and that his community will be 'the praisers' — the hamdun. The very name of the Prophet encapsulates his mission and his relationship with his Creator, and Deedat argues that this divinely chosen name left traces in the earlier scriptures.

This chapter of Deedat's analysis, while more linguistically technical than others, serves his overarching purpose of demonstrating that the Prophet Muhammad's coming was foretold across multiple books and multiple passages of the biblical text — that his prophethood was not an unexpected development but the fulfillment of a prophetic trajectory visible, for those with eyes to see, throughout the earlier Abrahamic revelation.