“And they lived happily ever after.” Fairytales end at the beginning. Everything in the story moves to the prince saving the damsel in distress and riding off into the sunset to live happily ever after. The wedding, however, is not the end of the marriage; it’s the beginning. Many think that when they marry they are at the zenith of their love. They are uniquely different than all other married couples who struggle in life and love. Our view of marriage has been trained to think if we can just find our mate all else is perfection. Hans Christian Anderson’s classic, The Little Mermaid, ends with a tragic, noble sacrifice in which the Mermaid must see her Prince marry another girl. In Disney’s version, however, the Mermaid marrys the Prince, and they live happily ever after. Truman Capote’s novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, ends with Holly Golightly going off to Brazil and disappearing from Paul’s life, but who can forget the movie ending with Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard kissing in the rain.
Are these our choices—the tragedy of “nothing ends well”or the uninterrupted bliss of “happily ever after”? Neither is realistic. The Song offers us a more realistic view things. It moves from the revelries of the wedding (in the last section) to the realism of married life, with the frustration of the couple not being ready for intimacy at the same time.
I don’t think it comes natural for humans to approach intimacy as servants. Additionally, I don’t think it is natural for humans to see their selfishness, especially in intimacy. In marriage, we are seeking to satisfy ourselves, but we are seeking self-satisfaction in another person. The way to being satisfied is in loving service to our mate, finding joy in our mate, being satisfied with who our mate is for us. Curiously, our needs are met not by seeking to meet our needs but by meeting the needs of others.
This is at least one way that marriage is a metaphor pointing to the gospel. We must be satisfied with all that Christ is for us. John Piper calls this Christian hedonism. Do you love Christ? Is your affection set on Him? Are you satisfied with who He is and what He has done for you? If so, this pushes you out in self-giving service to Him.
Self-giving intimacy is a common struggle in marriages. A fairytale mentality can lead to disappointment. A Don Juan mentality can, also, lead to disappointment. Perhaps you thought that marriage marked the end of all frustration and disappointment. Perhaps you brought expectations to your wedding night and to your marriage that were unrealistic.
None of us come to a relationship neutral. We’ve been shaped by something—our own imagination, conversations with peers, books we’ve read, movies and television, even pornography. We need to recognize what has shaped us. What has shaped us may not be a good guide to navigate marriage.
We are people of extremes. Our unrealistic expectations push us there. We move from everything being great to utter despair. We have our first marital spat and think, All is lost. Perhaps we even briefly regret having married our mate. Maybe we fantasize about what it would be like to be married to someone else. How perfect it would be! Do we not see how selfish such thinking is? Selfish people make terrible friends, terrible lovers, terrible spouses.
At the lowest point in their relationship to this point, the woman rehearses all the things about her man that drew her to him in the first place and caps her description off with these words, This is my beloved and this is my friend… (5:16). This word friend is the masculine form of his favorite term of endearment for her (my love, also translated my darling—1:9, 15; 2:2, 10, 13; 4:1, 7; 5:2; 6:4). She has taken his favorite term for her and used it from him. They are more than lovers; they are friends. The have a relationship outside the bedroom. It’s the friendship they have, the genuine caring for each other, that will shape the relationship in the bedroom.
In a fairytale the Prince and the Maiden are not friends. They don’t know each other. Through some accident of fate the Princess kisses a frog, and He becomes a Prince. Or some Prince finds a peasant foot that fits in a shoe, and they get married. It’s magic; it’s a miracle. They are exalted to bliss with none of the work to get there. They have never done anything together. How they manage to live happily ever after, I’ll never know.
Friend and lovers serve each other. They are other-focused. We never say of someone, He’ll take the shirt right off of your back. He is a good friend. No. It’s the other way around. Friends are committed to each other. They seek each other’s good. They accept each other for who they are. They are honest with each other. They call each other out for the good of the other person. Many married couples act like siblings rather than friends and lovers. They are selfish, always trying to get their way, and get the upper hand. They abuse each other like kids. It’s no longer a marriage; it’s a contest. In the Song, we will see how friendship grounded in covenant love aids the couple in navigating life together.
Conflict is an opportunity for growth. When you are first married and think you could not love your mate more, you are like a 15 year old who just got his driver’s license and thinks he is the best driver on the road. There is much more to come. The truth is the early years show us how selfish and self-serving we really are. Marriage really is for our sanctification.
When you marry, you think you really know a person. You don’t. You know them in a certain context, perhaps the easiest most carefree time of life. Life will present a thousand more contexts in which to know your mate. There is your mate when you’re dating; then there is your mate pursuing a career, managing money, doing chores around the house, raising kids, after the kids have gone, aging. Throughout life, you will discover things about your mate that you did not know.
Some couples never learn they are to serve each other in every area of life. They are lovers but not friends and perhaps not good lovers because they haven’t learned to serve. Our couple in the Song is about to learn through conflict what it means to be friends and lovers not theoretically but in real life.
As we read this text, we have to remember that we are reading poetry. It is not a biographical account of a couple’s life, but it presents a life situation to help us come to terms with our own feelings and emotions in our marriages.
She is in that land between sleep and wakefulness and hears her beloved knocking. He calls to her, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one…. He puts together the longest string of endearing terms in the Song. He better sweet-talk her because he is knocking at the door in the middle of the night. He offers 2 reasons she should open the door, one restates and intensifies the other (v2c My head is wet…my locks with the drops of the night). Are these not the lamest excuses you’ve ever heard? That is not why he wants in the room, and she knows that is not why he wants in.
She counters with two reasons for not letting him in (v3). She has put off her garments and washed her feet. That is exactly why he wants in. Not to be deterred, he tries to open the door. The door is locked. He is disappointed and leaves. The second effort changed her mind, however (v4). She got up and opened the door, but he was gone. She, also, feels the pain of disappointment (v6).
The bolt of the door is dripping myrrh. The source of the myrrh is unclear—him or her, or both. Myrrh has become the fragrance of their love. He is a sachet of myrrh between her breasts (1:13). She is perfumed with myrrh (4:6). She is a garden with myrrh that he gathers (4:14; 5:1). Whatever myrrh is, it is a symbol of their love and passion for each other. Myrrh in this text shows that their disappointment has not diminished their love. They can say to each other, I am hurt, but I love you.
What can we make of this text? The text is full of double entendre. Almost every Hebrew idiom for sexual intimacy in the Bible is used here. This is a text charged with unfulfilled sexual passion. Perhaps there is not one of us who cannot identify with the feelings and emotions of this text.
Here is the sanctifying aspect of marriage. The couple is just coming to realize how selfish they are. He is totally inconsiderate. He is wet, cold, and late. She is settling in to sleep and doesn’t want to be bothered. Their excuses are lame. He pouts and leaves. She changes her mind too late and emotionally breaks down. They have come upon a situation when they have both behaved selfishly. Their trouble centers around the desire for sexual intimacy. He wants to. She doesn’t. She changes her mind. He is too upset.
I am not taking sides. They both have fault. I want to point out some things that can help with romantic frustration as you deal with this common marital issue.
Everybody wants to know what normal is, but normal keeps changing in different stages of life. You have to determine what is normal in your relationship. So I offer some averages not to set a rule in your life or give you any ammo for argument. I simply want you to know what the reality is out there.
I offer this because it could be that your ideas of normal have been obscured by what you have allowed yourself to be exposed to—pornography, peers, Hollywood, books, shoptalk. You may have some detoxing to do. The world is not telling the truth about intimacy because the world does not know what the truth is. The world is simply exploiting people for money. You don’t watch Bruce Willis in Red 2 kill six heavily armed men with his bare hands and think you can do that too. Why is it that you would let your views of sexuality be shaped by Hollywood?
Married couples are together intimately an average of 68 times per year, a little over 1 time per week. 15-20% of couples are together 10 or less times a year. Some of those may not have been together for years. This is called a sexless marriage.
We tend to think selfishly about intimacy. The rule seems to be that if I don’t want to be intimate, I should feel no obligation to be intimate. Do you see how selfish this kind of thinking is? It is the thinking of our couple in the Song. Is desire a legitimate excuse? Do we both have to be in the mood at the same time?
Almost 50% of people has desire issues. Another 25% sometimes has desire issues. Only 6% says they never have desire issues.
The ultimate issue is not what your level of sexual desire is. Any number of things can play on desire—fatigue, laziness, hormonal issues, busyness, etc. The ultimate issue is serving your mate. If you know your mate has a need meet it. Serving your mate can start to change your desire.
We see the female in the Song move from no desire to an intense desire that moves her to seek out her beloved. Second effort pays off. Don’t pull away from your mate if he or she has desire issues. Your relationship is not based on sex. You relationship is based on your covenant commitment. If you pull away, you’re saying your relationship not based on covenant commitment but sex. If you don’t work on this you are going to have problems as your needs as a couple change. You will begin to blame each other for your problems in intimacy. Serve don’t blame.
Friends and lovers will have conflict but they leave myrrh on the door that separates them. They work their problems out.
This is such an odd text. It parallels 3:1-5. There the watchmen are passive, but here they take her veil and beat her (v7). What are we to make of them? I think we can draw a few applications.
You are going to have a hard enough time living out you covenant commitment without exposing each other danger. Don’t complicate things by leaving your mate exposed. If he had not gone off and pouted, she would not have been humiliated and beaten. If you are not serving your mate, you are exposing your mate temptation (1Cor 7). This doesn’t excuse your mate but it establishes culpability.
Realize that Satan hates marriage. He hates it because it is a living metaphor of the gospel. He will do anything to destroy it. You will never have a moment when your relationship is not in danger. Dangers abound. They come in the shape of friends, acquaintances, affairs, porn, addictions to drugs and alcohol, anger, laziness, etc. Your mate needs to be clothed in the protection of a mate who is both a friend and lover.
The watchmen were on the street to keep the city safe. It was entirely inappropriate for a young woman to be out on the streets in search of a man. It looked bad. It was humiliating and embarrassing to be chastised by the watchmen. She had a mate, however, she had exposed to danger. She was going find him.
People may say, Let him suffer a few days. That will teach him. Don’t run after him. He will take you for granted. Don’t listen to the conventional wisdom. It is not about having a relationship. It is about who gets the upper hand.
You don’t really want the upper hand. It is not your place to punish your mate. Your task is to take every risk, pay any price, and overcome every obstacle to protect your mate.
When the watchmen stood in her way, she tried to enlist the help of others (v8). Friends and lovers overcome the powers that separate them. They find away.
This text is one of the few extant female descriptions of a male from the ancient world. It sets the Song apart from other ancient love poetry. The place of women in the Bible is exalted. They have prominent places in both Testaments. Bigoted people may blame their views of women on the Bible. They show that they don’t know the Bible. Of the 111 lines from 5:2 to the end of the Song, 80 belong to the woman.
In response to her asking the daughters of Jerusalem to help her find her lover, they ask her, What’s so special about your man? What distinguishes him from any other man?
Couples who are not doing well need to be strengthened. They need counsel but not just any counsel.
These questions, What makes your man so special? What makes you think he’s better than any other man? are not godly counsel. Agreed, these questions set the stage for her description of him, but the daughters of Jerusalem do not always give good counsel.
Friends will give you all kinds of counsel, but that does not mean they know what they are talking about. We are not going to tell them anything that makes us look bad. They are going to make themselves look good and wise in what they say. If you’re giving counsel, you either have it together in that area of life or you act like you do. If you and your friends have the same problems, how can you help each other? You just push each other deeper into problems. If they haven’t told you their problems, it doesn’t mean they don’t have any. They are just not going to put them out there.
Younger women need to seek out counsel from older women, but not just any older woman. Find an older woman who is godly. Older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands….
Beware of counsel if you are fighting for your marriage. Many counselors will tell you what you want to hear. Godly friends will tell you the truth. They can see right through all the mess and help you see your sin. It is not going about talking about the difficulties of your relationship that will sustain it. It is your commitment to be a friend and lover to your spouse.
We have an example here of how a woman ought to speak of her husband. She is asked, What is so special about your man? She responds with a description of her man that would not help anybody pick him out in crowd. It shows rather how she feels about him. She begins and ends her description with general statements (vv 10, 16). We could sum it up: He is manly, and He is hot. She emphatically closes her description with, This is my beloved and this is my friend. In the details of her description, she starts with his head and works her way down. She uses the most costly metaphors to describe him. We could sum it up: He is divine. She finds him flawless.
Who is going to speak well of your man if you don’t? You may cause people to think poorly of your man who otherwise would have thought well of him. If he is not a beautiful man in your eyes, in whose eyes will he be beautiful? You will find that if you will speak well of your mate and kindly to your mate, your feelings about your mate will change.
She speaks of her mate in such a way that her friends are compelled to help her fight for her marriage. She is drawn to her husband by the way she speaks of him. The Song reminds us that our mouths were made for the praise of God and our mates. Friends and lovers speak well of each other.
After her description of her man, the daughters of Jerusalem are ready to help her find him. He is worth finding. There is no need to search for him. He has gone down to his garden. She is his garden. What brought them together? Their covenant commitment (v3). Trouble will not last forever, not where there is commitment. It is your commitment that will sustain your love and friendship.
It could be you have some repenting to do. Maybe you haven’t served your mate. You’ve pushed your mate out there unprotected by your friendship and love. Maybe you have an issue that has long festered that you have not been open to working through. You have put borders up around a relational “no man’s land” and declared it off limits. It may have robbed your mate of friendship and intimacy in your marriage. Maybe you have spoken harshly to you mate and about your mate. Perhaps you have given bad advice to those who are struggling. It could be that someone has confided in you, and you have gossiped about them. Maybe the you’ve taken a certain comfort in troubles of others. Perhaps you have turned to someone other than your mate to get your emotional needs met.
In coming to the table, we see the metaphor of marriage giving way to its fulfillment in Christ. The Song has a theme of seeking and finding. Christ is the great seeker. The Bible says, He came to seek and save the lost.
He not only seeks out the lost. He seeks out His own. He is the friend and lover who stands at the door and knocks. At this table, he bids us open the door and fellowship with him and he with us.