Of course people approach the Bible metaphorically, even Evangelical Bible-thumpers. "The snake in the Garden of Eden was Satan acktually" isn't mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Taken literally, it's just about how the snake lost its legs. All that Satan stuff came much later. Taken literally, the Song of Songs is some generic love poem that has little theological significance. Like, God isn't even mentioned in the poem at all. It doesn't really tell us anything about Solomon outside of some chick wanting to be with him and even that's disputed because it's never explicitly stated in the text that the man she's pining for is King Solomon. "But ackutally the woman is supposed to represent the early Church and Solomon is supposed to be Christ" Nah, that's shit that got added later because people had to find a reason why some secular love poem where the man poetically describes wanting to fondle her titties is part of a religious canon. Seriously, go read the poem.

In general, it's virtually impossible to completely take any substantial text literally. What's happening is what people from every single culture and time and place have always done: they pick and choose what part of the text to emphasis and what part of the text to pretend doesn't exist. More intellectually dishonest people will also shamelessly make shit up out of thin air like "Acktually, "the eye of a needle" is a name of some gate, so a camel passing through the eye of a needle is acktually really easy to do."