This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Song of Songs 7:1-13; Revelation 14:14–5:8; Luke 13:1-9

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

The redemption of desire. Our “Solomon’s” loving gaze takes in the whole of his “Shulammite’s” form, from bottom to top, perhaps even, as some commentators suggest, as she accepts the earlier invitation to dance (but for him, and him alone). He exults in her every feature, from sandaled feet to captivating tresses, with tantalizing stops along the way: her shapely thighs, her inviting midsection, her charming breasts, and her regal head and face. It is all very straightforward, and, because the couple’s love is bounded by covenant, it is also altogether pure. Following her description of him in the previous chapter (6:4-7), this, his second graphic description of her (see 4:1-7), is a part of the expression of a shared surrender of two lives that have become “one flesh.”

A telling detail lies in the distinctive way she completes the thought “I am my beloved’s…” (the third appearance of that line in Song of Songs; see 2:16; 6:3). This time she follows with, “…and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:10). It is one more signal of our couple’s rediscovering Eden. This use of the term “desire” (Heb teshuqah) is the third of only three times that this particular word for “desire” appears in the Hebrew Bible. And it cannot, in my view, be accidental. 

One mark of the curse imposed after the Fall in Eden is that the woman’s “desire” (Heb teshuqah) for her husband will be answered, not by mutuality, but by power: “he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). Then, outside the locked gates of Eden, in the hope of averting Cain’s ill treatment of his brother Abel, the Lord warns Cain that “sin is lurking at the door; its desire (Heb teshuqah) is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). In both cases, “desire” is sin-laden: people will find longings rebuffed by power, and relationships will be shattered by sin as a pernicious personified power. 

But the Bible can’t leave it there. The couple whose love the Song of Songs explores is re-entering an Eden of sorts. By the end of this chapter, the Bride invites the Bridegroom to yet another scene for love-making that is redolent with Eden imagery: blossoming grape vines, blooming pomegranates, fragrant mandrakes, and “all choice fruits” (7:12-13). What makes the entire scene an anticipation of a re-Edenized cosmos is her declaration that, “… his desire (Heb teshuqah) is for me.” Here, in a new Eden, he answers her desire with a desire of his own. The desire that overpowers in the Song of Songs is not relationship-destroying sin, but life-giving love: “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love” (5:1; and see also 2:5; 4:9). At last, man and woman meet in love’s garden as equals and partners. They come together for each other’s flourishing and delight. 

A theological hint of love’s incarnation. Jewish interpreters long ago detected theological hints in the Bride’s and the Bridegroom’s respective descriptions in chapters six and seven. She describes his statuesque splendor “from above to below,” from golden head to alabaster legs (5:10-15). He describes her undulating loveliness “from below to above,” from sandaled feet to flowing locks (7:1-5). God, so the inference goes, in becoming husband to his people, descends from “high to low” in order to raise us up from “low to high,” that we might meet as “friends”: “This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem” (Song of Songs 5:16c). Says Jewish commentator Michael Fishbane: “This account also conveys messianic hope. Whereas God moves from transcendence to immanence, in response to Israel’s beckoning love, the people are promised ascendance and restoration.” 

Christians insist that the picture has come into clear focus now that God’s love has become incarnate, now that the Divine Husband literally has come “from above to below” to raise his bride “from below to above.” In the Old Testament God describes his bride (Israel) in Ezekiel 16 as lewd, defiled, and unworthy. She is utterly undesirable: cast to the side of the road due to her whorings, abominations, and wickedness. Now, because of God’s forgiveness and redemption through Jesus Christ, she, the church, has come to know definitively that “his desire is for me.” The church knows that “Christ loved [her] and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 6:26-27).  Not at all unlike the female lover in the Song of Songs, the church confesses that she belongs to her Beloved, and she rejoices that her Beloved’s desire is for her.

A note on physicality in Song of Songs. As we near the end of our study of this “best of songs” in praise of human love, it seems a word about God’s delight in physicality is in order. The Bible has no patience with a bifurcated spirituality, a splitting of reality into “good” (spirituality) and “evil” (physicality). The Bible’s Lord is maker of all of heaven and all of earth. And though the earth he loves has come, for a time, under the alien domination of sin and evil and death, the Bible’s Lord has not surrendered his creation to those forces. The entire point of the incarnation is that Yahweh is intent upon redeeming and reclaiming all of created reality—his created reality. Mutually joyous intimacy, spiritual and physical, between a husband and wife provides the richest of pictures of the mystery of God’s own commitment to enfold us—fallen creatures though we now are—into the eternal intimacy of the triune life. 

So, here’s to our ancient couple’s delight in one another—body and soul. And here’s to the profound tone-poem they have left us for enjoying the Divine Romance. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+