The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs

“Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful.” – Song of Solomon 1:16

One rabbi wrote that the Song of Solomon is “a lock for which the key had been lost.” Reading this book does evoke a singular longing. The romantic love depicted here has a balance and depth that our world so rarely attains. The language is sexually provocative, but never spiritually impure, something most of us don’t know much about in a culture which, as Phil Ryken writes, “impatiently pushes past the erotic to experience the pornographic.” Admiration is made of not only the physical but the non-physical: the bride extols his “name,” which at that time referred to reputation and character. We see a love that is strikingly exclusive, yet evolves within the context of a faith community (“we will exult and rejoice,” 1:4). We hear from a woman who is unafraid to be the first to speak and to state her desires, yet asks the man to initiate (“Let him kiss me… Draw me after you,” 1:2, 4). 

And while these songs can be read literally, it is impossible to miss the allusions to God’s love for us. The book is set in a garden (4:16) and in Jerusalem (1:5, 3:5), following the geographical story arc of the Bible, which begins in Eden and ends in the New Jerusalem. The bridegroom emerges “from the wilderness like columns of smoke” (3:6), as God did. Isaiah tells us that “your Maker is your husband” (Isaiah 54:5); Paul that the mystery of marriage “refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). As Ryken puts it (in the book from which this post gets its title), “The Bible repeatedly uses marital imagery to describe God’s love relationship with his people. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is the trailer for an epic romance that ends with the Son of God marrying his beautiful bride, the church. The Song of Songs is the soundtrack for that story. Its love is not merely human but also divine.”

I confess I don’t know exactly how this works. I just know the key has not been lost. It is found in Jesus. One day our union with him will be something that rewrites all the broken love songs and tawdry romance novels of our world, that unlocks the best fairy tale ever told. This book is here for a reason. It is okay to look our desires in the eye, to look through them to Jesus, the one who says to us, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love.”

When Trouble Comes

“But I have trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

- Psalm 13:5-6

Two January’s ago, I went through a period of what I ended up calling “situational dysthymia.” The opening of this Psalm reminded me of that time: wondering how long it would last and having a sense of helplessness about how I felt (v1), not always able to sense God’s presence (v1), having to counsel myself to live a normal life every day (v2), taking longer to fall asleep (v3), not feeling up to being with people (v4).

At the time I took notes from Phil Ryken’s When Trouble Comes that were helpful—he looked at the lives of Spurgeon, Elijah, David, Job, Isaiah, and Jesus and wrote, “all of this leads me to accept seasons of doubt, discouragement and depression as a normal part of life in a fallen world.” It’s okay to be unhappy and say that you are unhappy. Keep on keeping on, he says: tell faithful friends and get support from them, stay in the Word, eat something healthy every day even if your appetite is low, exercise, try to be present with your children, take walks in nature, keep going to church.

While the first four verses are David’s present reality—we learn that it’s normal to feel this way and okay to talk with God openly about it—in the last two verses, David speaks only in terms of the past and the future. It’s another chiasm, the past flanking the future. In the Hebrew, there are only eight words:

batach (but I have trusted)- lit, “to set one’s hope and confidence in”

checed (in your steadfast love)- lit, “to show oneself to be good or kind”

leb (my heart)- lit, “the inner part of me, including mind, will, feelings”

giyl (shall rejoice)- lit, “to spin around under the influence of a violent emotion”

yeshuw’ah (in your salvation)- lit, passive participle of “save or deliver”

shiyr (I will sing)- lit… to sing

Yehovah (unto the Lord)- the unpronounced name of God, from root “to exist”

Gamal (because he has dealt bountifully with me)- lit, “to treat well”

Interestingly, the last word of the Psalm, gamal, is translated elsewhere “wean” (as in baby) or “ripen” (as in fruit); it has the connotation of cherishing and warming. David looks back, to God’s kindness and gamal, and ahead, to joy and singing. Not only perhaps in the sense of musical worship, but as he was a composer and musician, also in the sense of not losing who he is, his vocation and sense of self. All of it frames this alliterative yeshuw-ah – yehovah: the God who simply exists, beyond and above all situations. The one by whom we are delivered. 

How do I equip myself to be able to pray as David when times of trouble come? Can I recount the gamal of God in my life? Have I allowed myself to experience and express sorrow and giyl? How well do I know this Yehovah? David is honest about his present, but he also sees that God is the sovereign God of all time. He sees he is not able to save himself. He is able to experience his feelings, yet realize that there has been, and will be, a savior and a reality beyond them.