Scripture Daily

Context No. 2567 of 4322 · Song of Solomon

Context · Reflection

Song of Solomon 8:6-14: in context

6Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death. Jealousy is as cruel as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a very flame of the LORD. 7Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned. 8We have a little sister. She has no breasts. What shall we do for our sister in the day when she is to be spoken for? 9If she is a wall, we will build on her a turret of silver. If she is a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar. 10I am a wall, and my breasts like towers, then I was in his eyes like one who found peace. 11Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon. He leased out the vineyard to keepers. Each was to bring a thousand shekels of silver for its fruit. 12My own vineyard is before me. The thousand are for you, Solomon, two hundred for those who tend its fruit. 13You who dwell in the gardens, with friends in attendance, let me hear your voice! 14Come away, my beloved! Be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices!

Near the close of the Song, the beloved asks to be bound to her lover permanently: set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm. And she gives the reason in words that have echoed ever since: love is strong as death, its jealousy fierce as the grave; its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can floods drown it, and no one could buy it with all the wealth of his house.

This is love as it truly is: unquenchable and unpurchasable. Floods cannot put it out; money cannot buy it; it is as unyielding as death itself. The phrase the flame of the LORD hints that such love is a spark of something divine, a reflection of the way God loves. Human love at its best reaches for this steadfastness, a devotion that many waters cannot drown. And behind it stands the love of God for us, which no flood of trouble has ever quenched and no price could ever buy. To be loved like that, and to love like that, is to touch the flame of the LORD.

Do I love, and let myself be loved by God, with the steadfast, unquenchable love the Song describes, or with something thinner and more easily put out?

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