We’ve gone through all the scenes of romance in the Song of Songs only now to be told what the book is about. It’s about love, true love. To close the Song, the writer brings all the characters across the stage to help us understand the nature of love. The author, first, holds out to us what love looks like and how it manifests itself in ornate poems, pet names, teasing games, and unrealistic views of each other--“What do you see in him?” (5:9), she was asked. “His arms are rods of gold, set with jewels. His body is polished ivory, bedecked with sapphires” (5:14). In modern lingo, “He’s a rock star.”

After holding all the pleasure of love up to us, the author now for the first time tells us of the nature of love, which results in such pleasure.

A. Substitutes for Love

What is the nature of true love? You know love is misunderstood when we have to use phrases like “true love.” Is there any other kind? Love is a basic human need but in a fallen world often gets twisted into something very ugly.

Much sexual disorientation is due in part to the emotional damage of love denied. Whatever is wrong with me, and whatever is right with me is due in large part to the way I have been loved. This does not give me an excuse. It does not make me a victim. It does mean, however, I must deal with what has shaped me, so it doesn’t deal with me.

Restless lovers pursue it in affairs. Perhaps they want to be understood, desired, cared for, or listened to. Perhaps they want to punish an unresponsive or erring mate.

Many young girls have been deeply hurt by fathers who have abandoned them. They crave male affection, which leads them to promiscuous behavior. Many men struggling with same sex attraction have layer after layer of relational issues and have viewed pornography from a very young age.

Entire industries have capitalized on the misconceptions of love. There is a market for it. Perhaps you are a consumer of it. This world’s imitations of love will never fill the longing that you are feeding. You will only get a larger appetite. The only way to kill a craving or a longing is to starve it out. This is painful. Then, you must replace it with what is before you.

I remember when we first settled in Moldova away from all of my native foods. I would have cravings for pizza buffets, KFC, and Dr. Pepper. I would dream about these foods, long for them, and have fantasies of indulging in them, often so real I could taste the flavors and smell the aromas. Frustrated at every turn, after about a year, all cravings were gone. New tastes took their place. Now I long for varenaki, pelmani, halodez, berenza, borsch, and golubtsy.

B. Assumptions about Love

Occasionally, someone will see an older married couple and say, “I want what they have.” It may be good to ask them how they got there. I have found the general assumption is that getting there (wherever there is) is natural. Somehow humans are imprinted with the innate ability to have a long, loving, fruitful relationship. We can’t prove that by the landscape.

Often people will say, “I want someone who will make me happy.” Listen to the selfishness of that statement. Perhaps, no thought has been given to making the other happy. Your responsibility is to get happy and give yourself to making your mate happy. Your mate’s responsibility is to get happy and give self to making you happy. We have to create the environment where happiness is a possibility. To put all of the responsibility of my happiness on my mate is a prescription for misery.

At least part of the reason for the repeated warnings to not awaken love until its time is due to the tendency of humans to corrupt love. How can I know true love when I see it? What is the nature of it? Will I ever have it? I don’t want to give easy answers to hard questions, but I think we will be helped by the Song’s take on the nature of a love that is true.

1. True Love is a Powerful Passion (vv5-7)

The Songs holds out to us no great narrative. The barebones narrative on which the poetry hangs seems to be no more than a couple in love, who marry, consummate their marriage, and now are living life together. Verse 5 brings together several themes in the Song. We have seen the question of v5a twice before (3:6; 6:10). At every occurrence the answer is the girl.

A. That is Awakened (5)

The scene is set to talk about the nature of true love as we see the girl coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved reminding him of how where their love began (v5). She reminds him of how she “awakened” him under the apple tree. We can’t forget the apple tree scene in 2:3.

The awakening of love is an important theme in the Song. The idea is used 6 times in the texts calling on the daughters of Jerusalem not to awaken love until it pleases (2:7; 3:5; 8:4) and twice showing the awakening of the girl’s love (4:16; 5:2). Awakening is an apt description of the realization of love. We use this metaphor when people don’t see the obvious or when they day dream. “Wake up.” Love is an awakening.

I was in the airport in Richmond, Virginia, one day. I noticed a lady in the next gate over sound asleep. She was dead to the world. Her head was dangling over the back of the chair. Her flight was called. She didn’t budge. Call after call after call came out. Finally, the desk called for the person by name. Nothing. Picture this. The gate area is small. No one is left in it. Sleeping beauty is feet away from the flight desk. Calls are ringing out. I’m in the adjoining gate and can hear the gate attendants’ conversation with each other and the airplane. As an observer, I think, “Why don’t they awaken her to see if she is the passenger?” I debate internally whether I should awaken her? They download the lady’s luggage, close the gate, and push the airplane away.

This is how we are until love is awakened. Incidentally, texts like this argue against the allegorical interpretation of the book. We do not awaken Christ.

B. That Needs Instruction (5)

Oddly enough, when the couple is in the most intimate of situations “mother” language pops up (3:4; 8:2). Such language serves a couple purposes. First, it is a euphemistic way to speak of sexual intimacy. Second, parents need to teach their children the art of love. They don’t need the “sex talk.” They need all-inclusive, lifelong, love education. There will be times when “talks” will occur. It takes all of their youth of you living a life of love before them, looking for teachable moments to instruct them no topics off limits, and holding the nature of true love up to them.

Too much of our education is don’t, don’t, don’t. I know we need to do this because it is so awkward. If you hold up true love before them, they will want it and will not settle for cheap imitations. The couple has confidence in their love because they have seen it lived out in their homes. They will not settle for less.

C. That is Committed (6-7)

She wants to be the seal that marks his identity and possession. When she walks up from the wilderness leaning her beloved, she wants everyone to know that she belongs to him, and he belongs to her (4:16; 6:3; 7:10). There is something about the public nature of love that marks out it permanent commitment. This is an ancient “till death do us part.”

Don’t let some guy hang out with you privately and ignore you publicly. That’s like driving up to house and blowing the horn for you to come out. That is not love, and it’s never going to be love. True love will look a daddy holding a shotgun in the eye and declare its honor and its intentions. By the way, if you go to visit a girl and her dad takes you out shooting, don’t miss the message.

Why does she want to be set as a seal on his heart? Her love is public and permanent; it is committed.

1. The strength and tenacity of her love (6b)

In verses 6-7, she uses the most powerful metaphors the mind can conceive to communicate the nature of love. Love is as strong as death, she says. When death calls, no one can resist. Though death is a strong irresistible force, when you experience the call of love, you have experienced something of equal strength.

Then the parallel line further describes love as a “jealousy as fierce as the grave.” Jealousy has a wide range of meaning. We usually don’t think of it, or death for that matter, in a positive light. The idea here is not negative, but rather a passion for someone that tolerates no rivals (Longman, NICOT, 209). Like the grave love is unyielding and relentless in its pursuit. It never gives up.

2. The intensity and inextinguishable character of her love (vv6c-7a)

“Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.” “Flame of the Lord” is one word in the Hebrew text. It’s the word “flame” with the suffix “Yah,” a shortened form of Yahweh. The question is should it be translates the “mightiest flame” or as the “flame of Yahweh.” Does the text really mean that love is “the very flame of the Lord”? Or is this simply a superlative, “the mightiest flame?”

Here we have the intensity of the passion of true love. True love is a reflection of the very character of God himself. It is the fingerprint of God in the human soul. The truest, most tangible pointer to the intensity and passion of God’s love for His people is the true love between a husband and a wife.

Many waters cannot quench love, and rivers cannot drown it. Love is indestructible because it is the reflection of the character of God. Waters and rivers represent the forces that are hostile to the good order of God. It is inevitable that love will be tested, but no hostile forces can quench the flame of love.

All of the hybrids propagated by the chaotic forces of hell cannot destroy love. I remember when the free love revolution of the 1960s began. Sociologists predicted that the demise of marriage in a generation. Didn’t happen. Now same-sex marriage has the same goal. If the institution cannot be destroyed, then make it mean nothing distinctive.

You can legalize unions with guerrillas if you want, but you will never rid the world of meaningful, committed heterosexual union. You will never create a socio-cultural construct where unions other than heterosexual unions seem acceptable, good, and proper. The reason is not because of the strength of our arguments, but because God built committed, heterosexual union into the fabric of creation, and He upholds it against all assaults. You can outlaw it, fine people for doing it, force them to hide in the caves and dens of the earth to do it, but when the fire of true love blazes in the human heart, heterosexual, committed, exclusive unions will take place.

There has never been any campaign to push the rightness of heterosexual union. From tribal societies to postmodern societies, heterosexual union is alive and well. When God made them male and female, He created complementary union and fueled it with the flame of His own character.

3. The priceless quality of her love (v7b)

If a man tried to buy love, love would mock him. It cannot be bought or sold. Love is so precious that it is beyond price. Love cannot be bought; it has to be given. The contrast is set up here with those who think of love as a commercial transaction. Money, wealth, and power are cheap and unsatisfying substitutes for love.

Where can you find such love? How do you get it? Why is it so hard to find? Some get it and throw it away. Some never find it. We live in a fallen, broken world. If, however, you have never had or had and lost the love described here, there is a love that is better than this—unfailing, permanent, and committed—a love that is not only as strong as death but stronger.

God’s love for His people is stronger than death. Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. His death was a demonstration of God’s love for sinners. Those who experience the love of God through Christ will never be separated from it. Nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus—neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation—not unfaithful mates, not singleness, not losing a mate. This is the fulfillment of the type. Without the fulfillment the type has no meaning. Some forego the type straight to the fulfillment. All those who know Christ will lack nothing.

2. True Love must be Prepared for (8-12)

Solomon again set himself up as a foil to contrast those who view love as a commodity and those who see it as a priceless treasure. To avoid the pitfalls, the cheap imitations, and base flattery of Solomon’s type, love must be prepared for. There are so many obstacles in the way, not the least of which is self and pride.

A. Chastity and Beauty Must be Protected (8-9)

We are brought into a conversation that her brothers are having. It seems that in the OT the task of protecting the honor and chastity of their sisters was a role the brothers played (Gen 24:29-60; Judg 21:22). They are debating her potential for unchaste behavior.

We first met the brothers in 1:6 when she complains that they were angry with her and made her “keeper” of the vineyard. They put her in quarantine to protect her from herself and others. They understood what would make for a better future when she was much too young to appreciate what was at stake for her future.

They answer their own question. They reason if she is a wall—not subject to the advances of would be suitors—they will beautify and strengthen her with towers of silver. If she is a door—open to unchaste behavior—they will protect her by boarding the door up with cedar panels. The cedar panels would both beautify and protect (nail it shut). They want her to be a prize when the time comes.

Agreed. Their motives may not have been the best, but they understood they had to spend their sister’s childhood preparing her for the day of her wedding. Our culture is in no position to criticize their culture. The brothers represent the cultural and social conventions of how love is to be done. We live in a society that has lost all of its agreed upon conventions. No one knows what to reasonably expect.

Now we have books and blogs about to date or not, to kiss or not, how far can you go and not sin, is it ok to sleep together if you are not having sex, going on trips together which often means sleeping together but not having sex, do you talk to her father before you ask her out or not. Everybody is making up his or her on rules as they go based on something they have read or heard. This is just my critique, and I could be wrong, but we are in the most dishonest cultural position I’ve ever seen. Guys who are struggling with pornography are going off with girls on trips. This is like inviting a cannibal over for supper. Not a good idea. If you are asking if this or that is ok, the answer is no! If the shirt is dirty enough to question, it’s too dirty to wear.

We cannot simply expect our daughters and sisters to be discerning and make love decisions that are in their best interest. Within our families and within our church families, we need to protect our sisters. In some cases, we need to protect our brothers from making bad choices. In this area of love, people need someone to speak truth into and over their lives.

Some of you walk in wisdom. From the start you seek out counsel and try to walk carefully. Others plan the wedding before seeking counsel.

B. Personal Value Must be Realized (10)

Obviously, her raising created some hostility in the family. Against her protests, her brothers held fast. In time, she would see and assert her own value. At maturity, she could assert, “I was a wall.” Through restraint, she saw her self-worth. Through not acting impulsively and pursuing her desires at the first opportunity, she came to see herself as valuable. Maturity brought clarity. In her single-hearted devotion to her beloved, she found her purpose. She brought him “peace.” She completed him. There is a play on words in the Song with Shulammite, peace, and Solomon. All have a similar sound. The contrast is further drawn between the self-giving commitment of the couple and the indulgent, unsatisfying life of Solomon.

Honestly, I think some parents want to live vicariously through their children. It’s kind of like a chance to do life again the way you would have liked to have done it if you would not have made the decisions you made. We are afraid of upsetting our children. Children call the shots, set the tone, and determine the agenda of the family.

Children do not have the moral, mental, and emotional maturity to run a family. This is why God gives them parents. There is more than one way to provoke children to wrath—too overbearing or too lenient. We have to get this just right. We can provoke them by letting them have their way, letting them pit Mom and Dad against each other, and letting them experiment with love not having prepared them for it. As a parent, you need to always be able to say, “I told you so.” This is a much better position than hearing, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

C. Self-Giving not Self-Gratification must be Embraced (11-12)

In verses 11-12, a contrast is set up between the indulgent, self-gratifying life of Solomon and the simple, self-giving love of the couple. Baal-Hamon is a fictitious name with a range of meaning—“owner of wealth,” or “husband of a multitude.” Again Solomon sets himself up as a foil to contrast his self-indulgent life with the joy of the self-giving love of the faithful husband and wife. Solomon withheld from himself nothing his heart desired. In all of his indulgence, he found no satisfaction. His vineyard was such that he found no joy in it. Love is not a commodity that can be bought and sold. What is the point of having a vineyard that you can’t enjoy?

The female’s vineyard was hers to give. The simple, self-giving love she had was worth more than all Solomon possessed. Wealth and prestige are no substitutes for love.

3. True Love is Prophetic (13-14)

True love points to something beyond itself. It yearns for ultimate fulfillment. Love is a preacher. It stands over the life of every human and proclaims the need to live in covenant relation with God through Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us.

One would think the Song would end on a note of fulfillment, but it ends with yet another expression of one lover longing for the other. This is a much better expression of love in the real world than the fairytale expectation of “living happily ever after.” It ends with longing and the attempt to fulfill longing.

The woman now “dwells” is the garden. She indeed is the “daughter of pleasure” (7:6). He once again desires to “hear her voice” (c.f. 2:14). She is not just a sex object. He is convinced of her value as a person. When is the last time you desired to hear your wife’s voice? This is an issue of valuing. If the Song has done anything, it has exalted the value of womanhood. She has moved into his world (“companions” c.f. 1:7) and added value.

Conclusion:

Marriage is an odd and temporary reality. It has a purpose. It is a preacher of things to come. Because marriage is a source of pleasure, we might tend to idolize it. The prophetic nature of true love is to keep us from idolizing it. To keep us from idolizing it, true love, giving us unfulfilled longing, pain and heartbreak, and difficulty mixed with pleasure points us to God.

Love, our need for it and our need to give it, points to a greater reality. The longings of our hearts point to our need for Christ and the completion of our salvation that He will bring.

The Love Book