What Is Love Doing in My Bible?

Scripture: Song of Solomon 8:6 – “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.” (NRSVUE)

I learned a new word today: antilegomena. It is applied to books from the Bible that people debated about including in the canon. We like to imagine an obvious distinction between canonical and non-canonical books, but the reality is that someone had to make a judgment call at some point.

The result of this is that sometimes we read a book of the Bible and wonder, “Why is this here?” And there is no book that most demands that question than the Song of Songs, also know as the Song of Solomon. This is not a book of commandments, narrative history, prophecy, temple hymns, philosophy, or pithy wisdom. It is love poetry, more likely to make the reader blush than to praise God. When we read descriptions of the beauty of the human body and characters running off for forbidden trysts, we ask ourselves, “Why is this here? What does this have to do with God?”

Even from ancient times, people have seen the Song of Songs as a metaphor. They say it is really about the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and the Church or the Holy Spirit and the soul. But I think it is really about the power of love.

We all kind of know what love is, but like God, the more we try to define it, the less we can describe it. So, when we read a passage like “…love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave,” it resonates with us. Love can be pleasant and comforting, but love can also overwhelm us or make us crazy. Most of us have felt this feeling at some point in our lives.

Now what do we do with this emotion? We can silence it, hide in it the depths of our being, share it with the object of our love, or shout it from the rooftops. How many of your favorite songs do that last one? We can use it to understand how our brains and heart work, and knowing the truth of how love affects us, we can see how the power of love can shape the rest of our lives.

How does our understanding of love shape our relationships with those we are not “in love” with? How to we apply it to our job, a hobby, nature, or God? Do we stifle our love for God, or pray in secret, or witness to it in all we do? Song of Songs invites us to wrestle with the questions in an indirect but extremely powerful way, certainly more so than a dry philosophical description.

How has love shaped your life? How has it driven you crazy or inspired you to acts of courage? How has it transformed your faith in God? Take a moment this morning to think about how you love God. What about God makes you brave and compassionate and what about God makes you feel out of control? Love is not simple, and neither is faith. But both can be the greatest power imaginable.

Prayer: God, let me know your love and let it transform me. Amen.

Image credit: PickPik.