Thursday • 11/7/2024 •
Proper 26
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 71; Song of Songs 8:6-7; Revelation 16:12-21; Luke 13:18-30
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
For our Old Testament reading the past two weeks and this week, I am treating the Song of Songs instead of the lectionary’s Ecclesiasticus. Together, I hope we are discovering or rediscovering some of the elegance of this enchanting “Best of Songs.” Today’s portion is Song of Songs 8:6–7.
I noted at the beginning of our meditations on Song of Songs that this “best of songs” is a song about yearning for love. We’ve seen how elusive love can be, and how dedicated our “Solomon” and our “Shulammite” are to finding each other and to satisfying each other’s desire for love.
In something of a climax, the Song—and we must remember that Song of Songs is a song—extols love itself. Song of Songs 8:6-7 marks a zenith, not just because its topic is the very love that has drawn our couple together, but because this couplet includes the singular mention of God’s name. Here is the more accurate rendering of the last phrase of 8:6, where jealous love is said to be “a flame of Yahweh himself” (8:6d). This song is “the best of songs” because, finally, it extols the God who is love.
“Set me as a seal…” — Song of Songs 8:6a. A seal is the way, especially in societies where literacy was not universal, by which one person would certify their identity. We are not sure who is speaking in these verses—some commentators think it’s the Bride, others that it’s the Groom. It doesn’t matter, because either could be expressing this desire. When I ask you to take me “as a seal (hanging as a pendant around your neck) over your heart,” I commit myself to adapting my thoughts and attitudes and expressions to you; and to do so in such a complete way that when people see and hear me, they see and hear you. Scripture speaks elsewhere of being “one flesh” — that is, two people with a common identity. That is our Bride and her Groom.
This kind of love becomes what Charles Williams (Christian novelist and “Inklings” member) calls “coinherence”: something like a mutual indwelling. And to a Christian sensibility, coinherence is possible because, and only because, it is a sharing in the inner life of the Triune God. Jesus promised his disciples: “…you will know that I am in the Father and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). As Williams’s fellow Inkling C. S. Lewis put it, our Heavenly Father wishes to absorb us into his life without devouring us; he “wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” Such is the intimacy our “Solomon” and our “Shulammite” desire for and in each other. Such is the mystery of the bond between Christ and his Bride (Ephesians 5:32). Such is the aspiration, at least, of a man and a woman when they pledge their lives in the bond of marriage. May God grant grace.
“For love is strong as Death…” — Song of Songs 8:6b. Our loving couple rhapsodize about love being stronger than death. They liken love to a fire no amount of water can put out, and they claim their love is so much beyond price that money can’t sully it. Experience teaches, however, that such rhapsodizing feels like a leap into unbridled romanticism—like so many songs from the youth culture of my teenage years. Wedding services that may even include today’s verses about love being as strong as death may nonetheless stipulate that the vows taken are: “till death do us part.” Love can flame out—with or without external flooding. And finances have shipwrecked countless marriages.
But then, notice the capital “D” in Death as I’ve quoted it above. Here’s the Jerusalem Bible’s rendering of Song of Songs 8:6-7. I commend it to you:
6 For love is strong as Death
jealousy relentless as Sheol.
The flash of it is a flash of fire,
a flame of Yahweh himself.
7 Love no flood can quench,
no torrents drown.
Were a man to offer all the wealth of his house to buy love,
contempt is all he would purchase.
This passage is brimming with theological meaning. In Canaanite religion “Death” (Mot) is the force that the pagan god Baal fought against. Sheol is the place inhabited by spirits entrapped by death. And the twice appearing word “flash” could have been capitalized too as “Flash,” because it is Resep, the name of the Canaanite god of pestilence (per Jenson). The Old Testament treats Yahweh as the one who delivers, not just from the torrential flood of the Red Sea, but from cosmic watery chaos (Psalm 93:3-4; Habakkuk 3:8,15). And in the biblical world, money isn’t just money, it is Mammon, the worship of which is idolatry.
Intriguingly, the last phrase of verse six includes the single mention of God—and that, by his personal name—in the entire Song: more precisely, “a flame of Yah.” It’s mystifying to me that most translations bury the reference to Yahweh. The verse invokes as guarantor of love’s strength the God who has revealed himself in Exodus 3 in a burning bush as Deliverer (“I AM THAT I AM,” from which “Yahweh” derives), who loves his people for no other reason than that “love” is who he is (Exodus 34; Deuteronomy 7), whose name is “Jealous” (Exodus 34:14), and who therefore is “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29). The God of the Bible is a consuming fire that comes against all that would destroy the creation he loves, and above all, the humans he has lovingly fashioned to bear his image and to steward and tend his creation.
There is, therefore, a place where love proved strong as Death: the Cross and Empty Tomb of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus (whose name means “Yahweh saves”) that Yahweh takes on and defeats the enemies of his people: death, disease, chaos, and cupidity. Jesus is God’s jealously protective love. It is to him that the Song of Songs elegantly, exquisitely, and evocatively points.
And that, to offer one final point, is why it is so important to choose not to be among the citizens of Babylon who drink “the wine cup of the fury of his wrath” (Revelation 16:19), but, instead, to be a part of the Bride of Christ and to prepare to “feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29 Jerusalem Bible). May you choose wisely.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+