2I slept but my heart was awake.
Listen! My lover is knocking:
“Open to me, my sister, my darling,
my dove, my flawless one.
My head is drenched with dew,
my hair with the dampness of the night.”
3I have taken off my robe—
must I put it on again?
I have washed my feet—
must I soil them again?
4My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening;
my heart began to pound for him.
5I arose to open for my lover,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with flowing myrrh,
on the handles of the lock.
6I opened for my lover,
but my lover had left; he was gone.
My heart sank at his departure.
I looked for him but did not find him.
I called him but he did not answer.
7The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
They beat me, they bruised me;
they took away my cloak,
those watchmen of the walls!
8O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—
if you find my lover,
what will you tell him?
Tell him I am faint with love.
9How is your beloved better than others,
most beautiful of women?
How is your beloved better than others,
that you charge us so?
10My lover is radiant and ruddy,
outstanding among ten thousand.
his hair is wavy
and black as a raven.
12His eyes are like doves
by the water streams,
washed in milk,
mounted like jewels.
13His cheeks are like beds of spice
yielding perfume.
His lips are like lilies
dripping with myrrh.
14His arms are rods of gold
set with chrysolite.
His body is like polished ivory
decorated with sapphires.
15His legs are pillars of marble
set on bases of pure gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
choice as its cedars.
16His mouth is sweetness itself;
he is altogether lovely.
This is my lover, this my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem.
6:1Where has your lover gone,
most beautiful of women?
Which way did your lover turn,
that we may look for him with you?
2My lover has gone down to his garden,
to the beds of spices,
to browse in the gardens
and to gather lilies.
3I am my lover’s and my lover is mine;
he browses among the lilies.
4You are beautiful, my darling, as Tirzah,
lovely as Jerusalem,
majestic as troops with banners.
5Turn your eyes from me;
they overwhelm me.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
descending from Gilead.
6Your teeth are like a flock of sheep
coming up from the washing.
Each has its twin,
not one of them is alone.
7Your temples behind your veil
are like the halves of a pomegranate.
8Sixty queens there may be,
and eighty concubines,
and virgins beyond number;
9but my dove, my perfect one, is unique,
the only daughter of her mother,
the favorite of the one who bore her.
The maidens saw her and called her blessed;
the queens and concubines praised her.
10Who is this that appears like the dawn,
fair as the moon, bright as the sun,
majestic as the stars in procession?
Original Meaning
THE AUTHOR OF Songs of Songs now reports a second dream, so that the man’s long affirmation of the woman in chapter 4 is bracketed between two accounts of loss and desire (3:1–5; 5:2–8). Among the interesting features of the second dream report, however, is the fact that the “vision” that follows it is not focused on the king but on the lover (5:9–16; cf. 3:6–11). That is, whereas 3:6–11 highlights the possessions of the king and has an impersonal atmosphere, 5:9–16 centers resolutely on the person of the beloved. It is a direct response to the man’s eulogy on the woman’s beauty in chapter 4. He has succeeded, as it were, in reminding her who she is in relationship with him. Thus, a more terrifying dream than the first does not prompt her to think of the king’s bedroom, but only of her beloved’s body, which she now anxiously seeks.
As the passage opens (5:2), the woman is asleep, even though her heart is “awake.”1 She hears her lover knocking at her door (as she previously heard him approaching across the mountains, 2:8). He begs her, in familiar language, to let him in (5:2; note “sister,” 4:9, 10, 12; 5:1; “darling,” 1:9, 15; 2:2, 10, 13; 4:1, 7; “dove,” 2:14; the allusion in “flawless one” to 4:7). He has come to her before daybreak, when the sun rises to dispel the dew. In the course of his journey to her he has become soaked through with it (cf. Gideon’s fleece in Judg. 6:38).
She seems at first resistant to his pleas, as in 2:15. She has in her dream already removed her everyday clothing and washed her feet and has apparently settled down in bed for the night (v. 3). She is reluctant to get up again and prepare herself to receive him. Her response is a curious one, given the amorous purposes for which the lover has no doubt made his journey (why does she need a robe?), and we detect in it that same playfulness evident in the response of 2:15. As in that earlier chapter, indeed, the woman’s resistance does not last long.
It is not entirely clear what happens at the beginning of 5:4, where we are told that the lover (lit.) “sent his hand from the hole”;2 whatever it is, it makes the woman’s “heart” pound. The Hebrew behind the NIV’s “heart” is meʿim, which is used in the Old Testament to refer to various aspects (both external and internal) of the lower part of the body in the area of the stomach and the womb and is frequently seen as the abode of deep emotion. The verb hmh (“pound”) refers elsewhere to such things as groaning in distress, the roaring of the sea, and general commotion and turbulence (e.g., Jer. 4:19; 31:20). A better translation might therefore be, “my insides seethed,” understanding that the deep emotion in view here is love. Her passion has been excited by her lover’s actions,3 so she gets up to do what he asked of her—to “open” the locked door (v. 5; cf. v. 2). As she does so, her wetness responds to his; her hands drip with myrrh, either dropping from the hands onto the door or picked up by the hands from the door (where the lover has left it; cf. 5:13).
But she is too late! By the time her hands come into contact with the door and the myrrh “flows” (ʿbr, v. 5) over both, he has already “gone” (ʿbr, v. 6). She is once again bereft, as in 3:1–3. A new search now ensues, which probably already begins immediately in verse 6b, where we should translate “I went out when he spoke” (Heb. nepeš, NIV “heart,” often being best understood simply as a way of referring to the whole self).4 The thought is that she wastes little time. She goes to the door in response to his words (albeit pausing briefly to make her reply in 5:3), and, finding him already gone, she goes out immediately in search of him.
Her search, however, uncovers no trace of her beloved man. In fact, it produces a similar result to the one in 3:1–5. She does not “find” (mṣʾ, 5:6) him, but the city watchmen do find (mṣʾ, v. 7; cf. 3:2–3) her. On this occasion they are not nearly as passive in their response to her. They inflict violence on her and take away her cloak (5:7).5 Perhaps we are to think that it is this beating and the theft that leaves her exposed to the cold night that bring the search to an end, for whereas in chapter 3 the search continues after the encounter with the watchmen and results in the finding of the man and renewed intimacy with him, there is no such happy ending in chapter 5. In fact, the beating is followed only by a plea that others should help in bringing the lovers back together again (5:8; contrast the “charge” in 3:5).
Here the dream and the reality merge into each other. She has only dreamt of the loss, yet now, in an anxious state, she seeks her absent lover in reality and urges the daughters of Jerusalem to tell the man, should they see him, that his beloved is lovesick (cf. 2:5). It is their response to this request in 5:9—which is essentially to ask her why she is so desperate for this particular man, among all the many men who might admire her beauty—that leads to the woman’s description of her beloved in 5:10–16 with its conclusion: “This is my lover, this my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem” (v. 16).
What are we to make of these opening verses of chapter 5? The imagery of verses 2–5 is plainly erotic and speaks to us of sexual intimacy. What is at one level a dream about the opening (or not) of a “door” is in fact at another level a dream about the consummation (or not) of the lovers’ physical relationship. This is perhaps most clearly seen in the reference to the man’s “hand” that lingers in the region of the “hole” in the door, causing his beloved’s insides to seethe (v. 4). The implication of intimacy is already apparent even before one realizes that the Hebrew word yad (hand) can also be used as a euphemism for “penis,” as in Isaiah 57:8–10 (although obscured there by the NIV in both verse 8, where yad is rendered “nakedness,” and verse 10, where “renewal of your strength [hand],” ḥayyat yadek, probably refers to sexual potency).6
The “feet” (raglayim) can also be used euphemistically of genitals, as in 2 Samuel 11:8, where Uriah is commanded by David (who hopes to cover up his sin with Bathsheba) to “go down to your house and wash your feet” (his own or Bathsheba’s?). There may therefore also be a playful double entendre in Song of Songs 5:3, when the woman “complains” that if she lets her lover in, she will have to wash her “feet” all over again. She lies naked in bed as he, wet with dew (surely an image of sexual arousal here), presses his attentions upon her. She feigns disinterest, and he hesitates, even as she herself is aroused and moves to unbar the door. The moment is lost, however, and consummation never occurs. It is a dream about deep and mutual sexual desire and yet about misunderstanding, loss, and separation.
Even when this is understood, however, the significance of the beating and the theft in verse 7 is still not entirely clear.7 We may speculate, however (and it would be only that), that it perhaps has something to do with the woman’s sense of the overwhelming obstacles that lie in the way of ongoing intimacy with her man. The watchmen are, interestingly, described in the last line of verse 7 as “watchmen of the walls,” which may seem redundant after the introduction to them in the first line of the verse. The only other use of Hebrew ḥoma (wall) in the Song of Songs is in 8:9–10, where the woman herself is described as a “wall.” The function of these watchmen, therefore, may not be so much to keep an eye on the outside world from the city walls as to ensure that the “walls” (i.e., the women) within the city are not “breached.” If it was unclear in 3:1–5 that they are actively interested in what occurs in love under their jurisdiction, it is now plain that they represent powers intent on keeping the lovers apart.
The woman’s description of the man now follows, as she tries to communicate to her inquisitors and helpers the outstanding beauty of her lover, which marks him out from others. He is “radiant and ruddy,” like the princes of Israel described in Lamentations 4:7—a conventional way, apparently, of referring to those of a clear and healthy complexion (cf. David in 1 Sam. 16:12; 17:42).
Yet he is a particularly striking man, one who stands out from the crowd.8 His head (already mentioned in 5:2) is like that of a precious statue, constructed of “purest gold” (ketem paz); he has an imperial, even a godlike visage (cf. Dan. 2:32 with 3:1, where Nebuchadnezzar seems to take his lead from Daniel’s words in constructing the image of gold that must be worshiped; note also 10:5, where the figure in Daniel’s vision is said to wear a belt of finest gold, ketem ʾupaz). His hair (likewise mentioned in 5:2) is the color of a young and healthy man—the black of a raven or crow—rather than the white of an old man, and it is (probably) “wavy.”9
From the head and the hair the woman turns to her lover’s eyes, which are compared (like her own) to doves (cf. 1:15; 4:1). These doves are not hiding away behind a veil, however, but are “by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels” (v. 12). The final phrase is (lit.) “sitting in fullness,” probably rightly interpreted by the NIV as partly evoking inlaid jewels (cf. the Heb. root mlʾ also in v. 14a), but it is also an allusion to doves bathing in ample water. The imagery overall suggests glistening, beautiful pupils set in the midst of clear, white eyeballs.
From the eyes attention switches to the cheeks (or the jaw), which are like a bed of spice and (following the vocalization of MT) “towers of ointment.”10 The thought is perhaps of a beard, perfumed with oil as it descends from the area of the face (Ps. 133:2); it could be that the myrrh that drips (Heb. ʿbr, as in 5:5) from the lips is also to be explained in this way. The lips have already been associated with lilies on a couple of occasions in this song (2:16; 4:5), and here they are described as lilies, perhaps with a red flower in mind (5:13).
The lower part of the body next comes under consideration. Here the statue-like nature of the description is especially evident. The beloved’s arms (lit., “hands,” which conceivably refer here to fingers) are rods or cylinders of gold, studded with gems of some kind (v. 14).11 His “body” (according to the NIV) is like polished ivory (lit., “tooth”), decorated with sapphires. The word “body” is, however, meʿim (as in v. 4) and is therefore better understood as the lower part of the body below the chest (“belly, loins”; see Dan. 2:32–33, where we progress in the description of the statue from the head of gold to the silver chest and arms, to the bronze thighs [meʿaʾ, the Aram. equivalent of Heb. meʿim], and finally to the iron legs).
The legs also follow the arms and loins here in 5:15, where we read of “pillars of marble” (ʿammud, cf. 3:10) set on bases or pedestals of gold. His overall appearance is akin to that of majestic Lebanon, with all its mighty cedars. Yet it is to his mouth that the woman returns, once the description is complete and the man’s total desirability is affirmed (v. 16)—that locus of “sweetness” (4:11) with which she so much desires to make contact once again, if only she could find her beloved, who is also her “friend” or “neighbor” (reaʿ, as in Ex. 20:17; Lev. 19:18).
As chapter 5 closes, then, the man is still separated from the woman. But the daughters of Jerusalem at least have a description of him and an answer to their question about why the search is so important. As chapter 6 opens, we find the theme of separation briefly continued. The daughters of Jerusalem are all set for the search and require only some hints from the woman as to where the search should be focused (6:1). They want to “look” for her lover in reality as she “looked for him” in her dream (bqš in 5:6; 6:1).
Yet now it transpires that the search is unnecessary and the fears that have come to expression in the dream are groundless. The woman knows where her lover is. He was never really lost to her. He is to be found in his own garden (6:2)12—that female “place” where he is accustomed to spend his time (4:12; 5:1) and whose fragrances are complementary to his own (cf. “beds of spice[s]” in 5:13 and 6:2). He has returned to his characteristic activity of “browsing” there, especially among the lilies (6:2–3; cf. 2:16). All is as it was before—the lovers caught up with each other and committed to each other (“I am my lover’s and my lover is mine,” 6:3; cf. 2:16).
The union of the two now permits yet another direct address by the man to the woman in 6:4–10, as in chapter 4, in contrast to the third-person description by the woman of the man in 5:10–16. This address repeats some of the language and imagery of his previous one (cf. 6:5b–7 with 4:2–4) but also builds on and extends it, especially in respect of the beloved’s uniqueness. He begins with general praise of her beauty and loveliness, as in 4:1 (cf. also 1:15), comparing her to two famous Israelite cities, Tirzah and Jerusalem.
The beauty of Jerusalem is lauded elsewhere in the Old Testament (e.g., Jer. 6:2; Lam. 2:15), and the very name Tirzah (Jeroboam’s capital city in 1 Kings 14:17) derives from the verb rṣh, “to be pleasing” (and was translated in this way in the ancient versions, whose authors did not see a proper name here). To compare female beauty to fortified cities is perhaps itself to imply, of course, a beauty that is awe-inspiring and inaccessible.
The final line of 6:4 draws this facet out explicitly, for the woman is “majestic as troops with banners” (NIV)—or better, as “awe-inspiring as regiments drawn up for battle” (ʾ ayumma kannidgalot). The Heb. adjective ʾayom appears elsewhere in the Old Testament only in Habakkuk 1:7 of the intimidating Babylonians on the march towards Palestine; the related noun ʾeyma means “terror, dread.” The participle nidgalot comes from the root dgl (see comments on Song 2:4; 5:10), which has clear military connotations (even if its precise meaning remains uncertain). The phrase ʾ ayumma kannidgalot itself reappears in 6:10, in a context that emphasizes its military overtones (although the NIV’s “majestic as the stars in procession” somewhat obscures the point); the allusion there is to the heavenly “host” or “army”—the sun, moon, and stars, pictured as part of the divine army that fights under the command of the “LORD of hosts,” who is the living God himself (cf., e.g., Deut. 4:19; 1 Kings 22:19).
There is wondrous beauty in all of this, but it is beauty with an edge—an awesome loveliness that induces trembling as well as devotion. It is this aspect of the woman’s beauty that is perhaps picked up also at the beginning of 6:5, where her eyes are said to “overwhelm” the man (although what this means precisely is unclear).13 He can hardly bear to look into them, so unsettling does he find them to be.
The lover’s attention thus turns from the woman’s awesome beauty in general and from her disturbing eyes in particular to more familiar and comforting territory—her hair, teeth, and face (6:5b–7; see comments on 4:1–7). Yet he does not on this occasion linger in his detailed description of her wonderful body—it has all been said before. His main concern on this occasion is to emphasize again his beloved’s uniqueness, as she has already emphasized his (5:9–16). The force of the comparison in 6:8–9a, which establishes this, is not captured by the NIV, but by this more literal translation:
Sixty are they who are queens,
and eighty concubines,
and girls beyond number.
One is she who is my dove, my perfect one;
one is she to her mother;
a shining light14 to the woman who bore her.
The contrast is between the one precious love of the lover and the many beautiful women of the royal harem15 and (beyond these) the multitude of young girls in general (ʿ alamot)—those said in 1:3 to love the man speaking here. It is a contrast between one who is intimately known and treasured as an individual, whether by the lover or by her mother, and others known only as members of a group or scarcely at all (they have no identity other than “young girls”). A king may replace one of his harem on a rotation basis and hardly notice, for what matters about the queen or concubine is not that she is a person but that she is a woman. “Girls beyond number” are, by definition, girls without specific identities.
A mother knows her child as that specific child, however—one who is irreplaceable and for whom there is no substitute. Likewise, a man who truly loves a woman knows that woman as a specific person, whose identity cannot simply be collapsed into her gender and is certainly not summed up only in her sexuality and in her sexual relationship with him. She is not simply a woman but the woman. This uniqueness, it is claimed in verse 10, has even been grasped by the other women who have been mentioned (since this verse is best taken as representing their words). The man’s perspective is attributed to them, no doubt because he cannot think but that it is obviously the only possible perspective.
In the same way, we recall, the woman in the Song of Songs is convinced that her man is universally admired (1:3–4). Of course everyone thinks (as the women themselves say in 6:10) that the beloved is “like the dawn, fair as the moon [lit., ‘the white one’], bright as the sun [lit., ‘the hot one’]”—as awesome as the heavenly host, arrayed in all its glory. Of course everyone holds her to be a radiant beauty. How could it be otherwise? No other judgment can be contemplated, because she is the only woman for him.
It now appears that this second speech by the lover to his beloved (and its immediate aftermath) has a similar function to the first speech in 4:1–15 (which also followed a dream), for the vision of the royal bedchamber in 3:6–11 still informs it and shapes it. The lover still seeks to assure the beloved of her secure place in his affections, where she is the one and only true love. The queens and concubines are a stark reminder of the very different reality of the royal court, where one man has access to 140 women and can bring each in turn to his opulent bedchamber. It is a potentially overwhelming reality, which might cause the beloved to lose any sense of who she is. The poem here is intended to remind the woman of her identity as far as those who truly love her are concerned; even the royal harem is found to be in agreement with this description.
Bridging Contexts
DREAMS AND VISIONS are a not uncommon occurrence in the Bible. When Joseph finds himself in prison as a result of the wicked behavior of Potiphar’s wife, it is the dreams of Pharaoh (following on the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker) that provide his escape route, as he is able to tell Pharaoh what they mean in terms of the real world of Egypt (Gen. 40–41). Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, likewise, provide the opportunity for Daniel (who is able to describe and interpret them) to ascend the ladder of success in Babylon and to participate at the same time in Nebuchadnezzar’s encounter with God (Dan. 2, 4). Daniel himself later has dreams and visions that speak to him of future times (Dan. 7–12). The apostle Paul is summoned to Macedonia in a vision (Acts 16:9–10), and John’s account of the end of all things is generated also by a vision (Rev. 1:1–11).
There is throughout the Bible, in other words, a deep conviction that God reveals truth to people through dreams and visions, although it is not always easy to understand what he is saying. The truth is often veiled and requires interpretation, whether by characters in the dream/vision (as in Dan. 8:15–27, where the vision is “beyond understanding,” v. 27) or by human beings who possess sufficient insight and wisdom to see through the veil to the truth (as in Gen. 41:39–40, where Joseph’s God-given wisdom is acknowledged by Pharaoh). There is a sense in which all dreams are in fact allegories, which require interpretation if their significance for the real, waking world is to be discovered.
The significance of the dream of Song of Songs 5:2–7 is first to be found in what it has to say about the human love of which we have been reading throughout the book. It is, to use the language of Freudian psychiatry, an “anxiety dream,” in which there is a pronounced note of frustration and repression (by others) of desire.16 The desire expressed in the dream is almost tangible and is underlined by the address to the daughters of Jerusalem that follows in 5:10–16, but the dominating notes of the whole section are those of misunderstanding and missed opportunity. It is the fumbling, anxious side of male-female relationships that is in view here as the lovers fail to connect with each other and alienation enters their relationship. Absence, not presence, is the reality with which the dream-passage ends, and longing, not fulfillment, is the governing theme.
The wooing has on this occasion resulted in no consummation. We confront here, then, an aspect of the darker side of love hinted at already in 2:7 and 3:5 (of which the form of 5:8 inevitably reminds us, even while differing in its content). Love, when stirred up, will involve wonderful moments of intimacy and passion. It will also involve moments, however, of vulnerability, insecurity, fear, and loss. As C. S. Lewis puts it (albeit speaking of agape rather than eros; see Contemporary Significance on 4:1–5:1):
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no-one . . . Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.17
The self-giving that human love thus involves is, of course, only a reflection of the self-giving love of God, whose non-coercive, non-controlling wooing of us leads him to the vulnerability, insecurity, fear, and loss of the Incarnation and later of the Cross. The very nature of the universe as a place suited in every respect to human life and fine-tuned so as to enable that life to flourish, often described by scientists as the “anthropic issue” or “anthropic principle,” itself speaks powerfully of the divine self-giving in love, as well as underlining our own calling to love in the same way:
The (apparent) fine-tuning of the cosmological constants to produce a life-bearing universe (the anthropic issue) seems to call for explanation. A theistic explanation allows for a more coherent account of reality . . . than does a non-theistic account. However, not all accounts of the divine nature are consistent with the patterns of divine action we seem to perceive in the natural world. God appears to work in concert with nature, never overriding or violating the very processes that God has created. This account of the character of divine action as refusal to do violence to creation, whatever the cost to God, has direct implications for human morality; it implies a “kenosis” or self-renunciatory ethic, according to which one must renounce self-interest for the sake of the other, no matter what the cost to oneself.18
God enters into vulnerable relationship with his creatures. Like the lover who stands at the beloved’s door, he too (in another, quite different dream) stands at the door and knocks, desirous of entry (Rev. 3:20). That he knocks is, however, no guarantee of a happy outcome to the visit, whether in the short term or even in the long term, for there must be a hearing and an opening of the door. Love is a risky business, which is often bound up with an agonizing sense of absence (as in Ps. 22, e.g., which represents both the pain of one abandoned by God and the pain of God incarnate, abandoned on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) and with desperate longing (as in Ps. 42: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”).
Intimate union is not the constant experience of men and women committed to each other in love and marriage; neither is it the constant experience of men and women committed to God, or of God committed to us. The complete union of God and church—and of God and individual creature—is a reality of the future, not of present experience (Rev. 19:7). All human unions, in both their intimacy and their alienation, themselves point us toward that future. The longing for union and the connection between human and divine-human unions are beautifully captured in Song-like language in a poem by Luci Shaw:19
I gave this day to God when I got up, and look,
look what it birthed! There was the apple tree,
bronze leaves, its fallen apples spilling richly
down the slope, the way God spilled his seed
into Mary, into us. In her the holy promise
came to rest in generous soil after a long
fall. How often it ends in gravel, or dry dust.
Blackberry patches thorny with distraction. Oh,
I pray my soul will welcome always that small
seed. That I will hail it when it enters me.
I don’t mind being grit, soil, dirt, mud-brown,
laced with the rot of old leaves, if only the seed
can find me, find a home and bear a fruit
sweet, flushed, full-fleshed—a glory apple.
Contemporary Significance
I love the child. But she is afraid of me. Then how can I come to her, to feed and heal her by my love? Knock on the door? Enter the common way? No. She holds her breath at a gentle tap, pretending that she is not home; she feels unworthy of polite society. And loud imperious bangings would only send her into shivering tears, for police and bill collectors have troubled her in the past. And should I break down the door? Or should I show my face at the window? Oh, what terrors I’d cause then. These have happened before. She’s suffered the rapings of kindless men, and therefore she hangs her head. . . . I am none of these, to be sure. But if I came the way that they have come, she would not know me different. She would not receive my love, but might likely die of a failed heart.20
We have reflected before on the playfulness of love and sexual intimacy, and we have been confronted directly with the tremendous passion that is rightly expressed between lovers and intimates. Both are also on display in our current passage (5:2–16; 6:2–3), and we could no doubt spend more time thinking about them in the context of contemporary faith and life. It is to the less satisfactory aspects of relationships that we return instead—whether between mortals, or between mortals and God—and beyond that to the question of redemption and renewal.
It is a fact of human experience that men and women, albeit that they have committed themselves in lifelong relationships to each other, are not thereby immune from problems in these relationships. Some of these have to do with the different ways in which men and women are “wired”—something that all of us are prone to forget or underestimate. We simply assume our spouse thinks and feels more or less as we do, and we fail to remember that “men are from Mars, women are from Venus.”21
Some of the problems come from previously unhelpful or abusive relationships, whether in families or elsewhere, leaving us with deep scars that make trust and openness in the present difficult. Some of our difficulties are created by our own lack of love and care for a spouse or the spouse’s lack of love and care for us. There are multiple reasons why marriage might be or become difficult for us and why sexual intimacy might be or become problematic. Most marriages at some point go through entire periods in which there is a staleness in the air and far too much routine on the ground. Some couples struggle their entire married lives with the consequences of previous sexual abuse, which makes self-giving (esp. physical) love a challenge for one or both parties.
We can all relate to the frustration and anxiety of which Song of Songs 5:2–16 speaks. We all know of misunderstanding, fear, and insecurity, and even of loss—whether the loss of the beloved is more emotional than physical (we pass like ships in the night, even while sharing the same ocean) or whether we have known the tragedy of physical abandonment. We recognize in the ideal relationship that the Song of Songs presents to us the intimacy that we ourselves crave. But we are perhaps glad for the recognition in this song itself that real relationships only approximate at certain times and in some ways to the ideal.
It is no different in our relationship with God. The fact that we may have committed ourselves in a lifelong relationship to him does not make us immune from problems in this relationship too. The problems may, indeed, have the same roots as the problems in our marriages. We forget that God is not like us (which God sometimes feels compelled to remind us of, as in Hos. 11:9: “For I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you”); we bring the baggage of previous unhelpful or abusive relationships to God, which shapes our understanding of our friendship with God; we act or think selfishly in respect of God and at least perceive a lack of love and care on his part for us. Intimacy becomes problematic.
Historically this problem has been exacerbated among Christians where the transcendence of God has been emphasized and God has become in the process an imperious, holy figure who stands at a great distance from his creatures and with whom intimacy is all but inconceivable. The transcendent God evokes awe and reverence, certainly, but many have found it difficult truly to love such a person. The persistent human craving for intimacy with God has then been met in the creation of all kinds of intermediaries between God and mortal beings, who supply the close relationality that is lacking. In the Christian tradition one such famous intermediary has been Jesus’ mother, Mary, who fills with her maternal devotion the void left by the distant and emotionally detached Father.
Even without the exacerbation of the problem, however, it remains the case that the Christian life is not a life of uninterrupted intimacy with God, but it also knows something of the frustration and anxiety of which Song of Songs 5:2–16 speaks, and something of its misunderstanding, fear, and insecurity. We know of divine absence as well as divine presence.
The truth about God, of course, is that he is not only transcendent but also very near; and not only near, but absolutely committed to his creatures; and not only committed, but proactive in wooing them. This is a general truth, but it is also a particular truth, revealed in the Incarnation. It is beautifully and powerfully articulated in Walter Wangerin’s “Advent Monologue,” a portion of which was cited at the head of this section. Wangerin envisages a beloved child, starving, neglected, and damaged, sitting alone in a room with her knees tucked tight against her breasts, her arms around these and her head down. The narrator wants to rescue her and heal her, but he recognizes that in this case even a knocking at the door will not signify a free choice, but a coercion. The challenge is to find an entrance that will not frighten or kill his beloved:
By what door can love arrive after all, truly to nurture her, to take the loneliness away, to make her beautiful, as lovely as my moon at night, my sun come morning?22
The solution is to have the woman herself become the door, so that the narrator becomes the baby in her womb. In the tender love of mother and child she will become transfigured; thus later, when the baby takes his “trumpet voice” again, all fear will have been dispelled. The name of the baby is, of course, Immanuel—God with us. God enters his world in this gentle, healing way at Christmastime and woos us into relationship with himself, helping us to see that his holiness and love are by no means incompatible. There is no need of intermediaries. God is himself the intermediary and the road that leads to himself.
With this God of wonderful grace, who is not like us but becomes like us, it is possible to be intimate. With this God, who is not only with us but for us, it is possible to have a love relationship. Learning each day more of this God’s true nature and character, we are able gradually to leave behind the baggage of previous unhelpful or abusive relationships, to trust him even when we think we see a lack of love and care on his part for us and to begin to think and act unselfishly in respect of him by offering our worship and very selves to him. Slowly misunderstanding, fear, and insecurity dissipate, even if frustration sometimes remains. Slowly we learn to deal constructively with a sense of divine absence, even as we yearn for a renewed sense of divine presence.
It is this gentle but constant self-giving nature of God, which draws us into relationship with him, that provides us with both the resources and the model for loving our spouses, even when things are not going well in our marriages. For the commitment we make to each other in marriage is not a cold, legal commitment, which can be met simply by staying together and avoiding divorce. It is not the kind of commitment a lawyer holds up before a man looking for a divorce when, having described to him a horrendous, destructive marriage breakdown, he advises his client that he can either risk similar pain or “get up and go home and try to find some shred of what you saw in the sweetheart of your youth.”23 That is marriage as avoidance of something worse.
The commitment we make in marriage, rather, is a warm, passionate commitment, which cannot rest content with anything less than intimacy and which therefore works hard at problems even while recognizing the limitations that all of us face in resolving some of them. The foundation of this hard work must always be self-giving love—the love that drives us to seek to understand this differently gendered and mysterious creature whom God has given us as friend and companion; that constantly desires communication and understanding; that seeks to heal, through patience and kindness, the scars of abuse; that will not allow routine to dominate the relationship and extinguish romance.
The love we have in mind here is well pictured in Song of Songs 5:2–16. It is a love that, when misunderstanding occurs and our friend is lost to us, wastes no time in weeping but runs immediately out into the streets and pursues him or her, even at great personal risk. The Gospels give us a different picture—of a shepherd who will not rest until the sheep is safely in his arms (Matt. 18:12–14). True love, whether human or divine, never gives up. It pursues the beloved until the end. It hopes always for the renewal of relationship that is described in Song of Songs 6:1–10, as the lovers know once more the wonder of being unique to the other and lie contentedly in each others arms in their “garden.”
If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31)
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)