Sermon Tone Analysis
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Song of Solomon 8:6, 7
Love as God Intended
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the Lord.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
all the wealth of his house,
he would be utterly despised.[1]
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s I watched television this past week, I became acutely aware of the common morality which was displayed rather prominently on one of my favourite shows.
One actor played the part of a young man who was taking some good-natured ribbing for breaking up with his girlfriend.
He bemoaned the fact that she was still phoning him.
Questioned by his co-workers, he admitted that he had slept with her before breaking-up, but he hastened to add that he only did so because she asked him to do so.
Agitated by the questions of his primary interlocutor, he asked when she had last slept with someone, and she replied that it had been two weeks prior.
What I found amazing was the casual nature with which these actors portrayed people who have reduced sex to a casual transaction and the utter absence of intimacy.
The instruction conveyed to anyone watching that particular action show is that love begins and ends with two sweaty bodies gratifying base instincts.
I am not a sexologist, nor do I particularly claim to be particularly well-versed in contemporary sexual techniques.
However, I do know something about love.
I doubt that the world can teach us who are Christians very much concerning love.
If you want to be romantic, if you will know intimacy, find a Christian to love.
If you really want to discover what love is all about, find a Christian to marry.
Why would I say that?
Precisely because the matter has been studied in considerable detail with the result that sociologists and other pseudoscientists are continually astonished at their findings.
In 1975, that great research magazine, Redbook, published the results of a survey of over 100,000 women.
The study found that strongly religious women are “more responsive” sexually than other women.
Furthermore, they are more likely to describe their current sex lives as “good” or “very good” than are moderately religious or non-religious women.
These results have been ratified in other studies as well (1993 Janus Report of Sexual Behavior and a 1992 survey of Christianity Today readers).[2]
Fellows, this is good news indeed.
Man, if you want a woman who will love you like you’ve never been loved before, find a Christian girl! Man, they’ll wheel you home in a wheelbarrow!
In the verses preceding our text, the young woman warns the choir watching the lovers not to stir up or awaken love until it pleases.
For herself, love was awakened under the apple tree, in the imagery of the ancient world, the sweetheart tree.[3]
Three times in this love poem, the young woman has pleaded not to awaken love [*Song of Solomon 2:7*; *3:5*; *8:4*].
What we are being told is that there is a right time for love to blossom.
Contemporary youth are taught techniques, but Christians are taught to wait for God’s time.
The time for romance is different for different people.
Romance is not restricted to youth; in fact, it may become most intense with those who are mature.
For the couple in the love poem, the *Song of Solomon*, love was born in pain and labour, just as the King himself was born in labour pains.
The young woman has experienced the pain of insecurity and inferiority which we witness as the poem progresses.
Just so, couples experience the pain of unworthiness as they begin to love one another.
It is normal as the courtship proceeds for the couple to experience the pain of longing and the fear of unfulfilled love when they are apart.
After marriage, the couple in the poem experiences the pain of separation during a time of conflict.
All this pain is but the fruitful pain of the birth of their romance.
Love is painful.
Those youth who rush into sex will never know the pain which accompanies the birth of romance, but neither can they know the satisfaction and joy which accompanies that romance.
Our culture has bought into the lie that technique is a substitute for romance—it is not true nor can it ever be so.
There is a sweetness which is unknown to the very young, a sweetness which comes only with shared lives.
This is the love which God intended.
That is the love which is described in these closing verses of this poem.
Love is Possessive.
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.
Keep in mind that this is a love poem.
Technically, it is a series of love poems, exulting in love expressed in the marriage relationship.
At this point in the poem, we are witnessing the Shulammite as she seeks to be possessed by the King.
It is as though the couple is on a second honeymoon and she is seeking his love.
How appropriate for a Valentine message!
The *fifth verse* is difficult to translate.
The words are clear, but the meaning is not.
What we have are words which may be taken as a double entendre.
Listen to the second strophe of the *fifth verse* as translated in the *New International Bible*.
/Under the apple tree I roused you;/
/there your mother conceived you,/
/there she who was in labour gave you birth/.
[*Song of Solomon** 8:5b*]
The choir asked who they saw coming up out of the wilderness, leaning on the breast of her beloved.
It may be of interest to you to note that this is the only time the verb which is translated leaning occurs in the Old Testament.
The use of this verb denotes intimacy and mutual dependence, alluding to what they have been doing in the wilderness.[4]
The woman answers, seeming to implicitly respond to the question.
However, her answer does not address the choir, but rather she speaks to her lover.
She connects the apple tree to the place of sexual excitement and arousal, as has been evident in other places in this poem [*Song of Solomon 2:3, 5*; *7:8*].
The verb translated awakened may denote any kind of arousal, including sexual excitement, the probable meaning here.[5]
She speaks of the man’s mother in an intimate manner.
The thrust of her words is that she stands in the tradition of his mother by making love to her man in the same erotic locale as his mother made love to his father.
The emphasis on the place of conception may imply that she hopes to become pregnant.
With this, she gushes out the words of our text to her lover, inviting him to possess her.
The seal in view is the seal of ownership and personal identification.
We have many such seals or signets from the ancient Middle East.
We understand how they were used.
Often these seals would be hung on a cord or chain worn around the neck.
There, it would be readily available to imprint the ownership to any item of importance.
Pressed into soft clay or onto wax, it would leave an imprint identifying two things about whatever was imprinted.
First, ownership would be evident as the seal would identify who owned the item, whether a jar or a tablet or even a house if the seal were imprinted on the door.
Second, if the seal was unbroken, it would indicate purity.
An unbroken seal on a jar containing wine would indicate that it was undiluted and thus pure.
An unbroken seal on a legal document would give confidence that it had not been altered.
You will understand, then, than a seal was a most precious possession for an individual.
Whoever held a seal would be able to act in behalf of the one to whom the seal belonged.
The seal both committed the owner as well as identified the owner.
In the Apocrypha is the book known as The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach.
It is also identified as Ecclesiasticus.
In that book occurs these words which speak of the value of a seal or a signet.
The alms of a man is as a signet with him, and he will keep the good deeds of man as the apple of the eye, and give repentance to his sons and daughters [*Ecclesiasticus 17:22*].
The saying speaks of God viewing the good deeds of an individual as His signet, the means of identifying that God is at work in that life.
I do not suggest that this is to be taken as a Scriptural principle, but I do suggest that we understand that it would have been received as a pious view of the Jewish people from ancient time.
These seals were so precious to individuals that they were often deposited in the tombs of those to whom they had belonged so that the deceased could take them to the afterworld.
You will no doubt recall that it was because of Tamar’s acquisition of her father-in-law’s seal that she was spared from being burned alive [*Genesis 38:18*].
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