11I went down to the grove of nut trees
to look at the new growth in the valley,
to see if the vines had budded
or the pomegranates were in bloom.
12Before I realized it,
my desire set me among the royal chariots of my people.
13Come back, come back, O Shulammite;
come back, come back, that we may gaze on you!
Why would you gaze on the Shulammite
as on the dance of Mahanaim?
7:1How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince’s daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of a craftsman’s hands.
2Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies.
3Your breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.
4Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon
by the gate of Bath Rabbim.
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
looking toward Damascus.
5Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
Your hair is like royal tapestry;
the king is held captive by its tresses.
6How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
O love, with your delights!
7Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
8I said, “I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit.”
May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
9and your mouth like the best wine.
May the wine go straight to my lover,
flowing gently over lips and teeth.
10I belong to my lover,
and his desire is for me.
11Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside,
let us spend the night in the villages.
12Let us go early to the vineyards
to see if the vines have budded,
if their blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates are in bloom—
there I will give you my love.
13The mandrakes send out their fragrance,
and at our door is every delicacy,
both new and old,
that I have stored up for you, my lover.
Original Meaning
THE ADMIRING SONG of 6:4–10 has ended, and we find ourselves suddenly in a new section of the text in which it is not at first entirely clear who is speaking (6:11–12). Yet the first-person account of this person who “went down” (yrd) to a garden “grove” (ginna) corresponds to the third-person description by the woman in 6:2, when she tells her friends that her beloved has “gone down” (yrd) to his “garden” (gan). In all likelihood, then, the man is speaking in 6:11–12.
The plural speakers who interject in 6:13a are, as we will see, those other men who find the woman desirable. Their words now match the words of the broader community of women who have spoken in 6:10. Song of Songs 7:1–9a is in turn the renewed praise of the lover for his beloved, harking back to passages like 4:1–15 and 6:4–10; thus, 6:13b is also best taken as the words of the lover, introducing the speech of 7:1–9a. His affirmations of the woman lead in turn to her response to him in 7:9b–13, as she invites him (7:13) to accompany her back to the place in which he first lost his senses in her arms (6:11). Chapter 7 thus ends with their one-to-one relationship once again restored, after the brief interlude in which the man found himself only one among a number of men (6:12–13).
The garden the man visits in 6:11 is a fertile area bursting with the new growth of springtime. It is a valley or wadi, responding to the water that rushes in torrents through it in the aftermath of rain by producing lush vegetation. We have heard of vines and pomegranates in this connection before. The “nuts” (ʾ egoz) are, however, a new feature. The word is unique in the Old Testament but is found in postbiblical Hebrew, referring specifically to the walnut. In modern Arabic, in fact, Jerusalem’s Kidron Valley is known as Wadi al-Joz, “Walnut Valley.”
It is to a fertile place that the man goes, then—a place that produces fruit in abundance. The woman herself is again clearly in mind, and the imagery may be deliberately chosen (as in 4:12–15) to evoke the intimate parts of her body.1 Certainly the experience of “going down to the garden” has a profound effect on the man, even if it is a little difficult to be certain as to what exactly that effect is (6:12).
Song of Songs 6:12 is widely considered to be the most difficult verse in the book, and it is definitely challenging. It reads literally (with different possibilities noted, and without punctuation for the moment) “I did not know my soul she set [or ‘made’] me chariots of Ammi-Nadib [or ‘of my princely/willing people,’ or ‘of the princely/willing people’].” Yet it is not impossible to make sense of it. Our best lead as we make the attempt lies in the mention of “chariots” (markebot). This reminds us both of the chariots of Pharaoh in 1:9 (rekeb; recall that the woman was compared to a mare among chariots drawn by stallions, with potential for great disruption and distraction as she moved among men) and of the royal bed in 3:10 (merkab).
Chariots in the Song of Songs speak of male desire for a woman. In view of this reality, the Hebrew word nadib is best taken, not as part of a proper name or as a reference to nobility or royalty, but as a reference to the passion that the woman excites in men. By far the most common use of the root ndb in its various forms in the Old Testament is in fact the freewill offering, for service of some kind, of the self or of one’s possessions. In passages like Exodus 25:2; 35:21, 29, we are indeed told of the spirit or heart of a person moving or compelling that person to action. There is an interior disposition that results in movement out toward others, whether God or other human beings. The word nadib itself often means “willing, generous” (e.g., 35:5, 22).
Thus, in the context of Song of Songs 6:12 we should understand that the lover finds himself “among the chariots of a willing people,”2 interpreting the “willingness for service” implied here in a sexual sense. By no means for the first time in the song, the lover sets his individual attraction for the woman within a much broader, more general context. All men, when they see his beloved, are ready to offer themselves to her; that is the effect she has on men. With the second part of the verse thus clarified, the remainder falls into place, although its precise sense remains beyond us. There are two possibilities:
• “Before I realized it, my desire [a sense often belonging to Heb. nepeš] set me among the chariots of a willing people.”
• “I did not know myself [Heb. nepeš referring to the whole self, as often in the Old Testament]; she set me among the chariots of a willing people.”
In both alternatives the man is pictured as out of control, either caught by surprise by the speed with which he joins the herd of “stallions” straining after the beloved or disconcerted by it and not quite recognizing himself in his own behavior. He begins his journey to the nut grove in possession of himself; he ends it possessed by the object of his desire.
With this interpretation of 6:11–12 in mind, it is now perhaps easier to understand 6:13, which begins with words spoken by a group and ends with a response to this group by the lover. The mere fact that the group is referred to in 6:13b with a masculine plural verb (“Why would you gaze?”) does not inevitably mean that it is a male group; the use of gender in the Song of Songs is certainly not sufficiently precise to allow such a conclusion. Yet on this occasion the group is most naturally understood as that same group of males whose presence is implied in verse 12—those many men who wish to “gaze on [the woman]” (6:13a).
The woman has her back turned to them or perhaps is moving away from them to escape their attention. Thus, they plead with her to “come back,” or perhaps simply to “turn around” (šwb), so that they may view her beauty. The lover, in turn, objects to the attention that his beloved is receiving from this broader group of men, comparing what is happening to what occurs on the occasion of “the dance of Mahanaim.” We have no idea which particular dance is being referred to in this phrase,3 but it is not the particularity of the dance that is important. The main point of the comparison is that these men are looking for the woman to present herself before them for their pleasure and entertainment, in the same way that a woman might dance before an audience. The lover objects to this. He may find himself in the company of these men as they pursue the woman, but he does not accept their right to view his beloved in the same way he has viewed her hitherto in this song.
A further detail touching on the identity of the woman is provided in this exchange—that she is “a Shulammite.” This is an opaque term, however. It may refer to the girl’s hometown of Shunem, associated with at least one famous beauty in Israel’s history (1 Kings 1:3). It could also be an allusion to Sulmanitu, a Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, used here to conjure up the idea of the divinity of the woman’s beauty. Or the term might contain an allusion to Solomon, reminding us once more of the way in which kings in particular can command the presence of dancing girls (as well as other girls) for their pleasure. Certainty is beyond us.4
It is not the woman’s identity as “Shulammite” that is in any case important in what follows in 7:1–9a, but the idea that she is being viewed as a dancer. That is why, as the lover once again launches out in a song of praise to his beloved, he begins with her feet and moves up to her head, in contrast to the movement of his eyes in both 4:1–7 and 6:4–10 (from the head downward). It is the feet of the dancer that first occupy his attention as he leaves behind him the “willing people” (ʿammi-nadib) of 6:12 and contemplates instead the “willing/generous daughter” (bat-nadib, 7:1; not “prince’s daughter,” as in NIV) who is his true love and offers herself to him. It is, after all, her desire for him that interests him, and not their desire for her.
He marvels at this woman whose beautiful feet are revealed by her open sandals and whose thighs are so wondrously curved or rounded (v. 1)5—the work of an artist. He is astonished by that most intimate place between her legs, which reminds him of a bowl or cup filled with wine.6 He is also amazed by her belly,7 which is “a mound of wheat encircled by lilies” (v. 2)—a reference both to shape and to color. The breasts, which are elsewhere said to browse upon these lilies, come next (v. 3; cf. 4:5), followed by the neck, eyes, and nose (7:4).
The imagery of the “ivory tower” suggests an elegant, long neck with a smooth appearance (cf. 4:4 and comments on the “tower of David”). “The pools of Heshbon” (another famous biblical city, Num. 21:25–30, although “the gate of Bath Rabbim” is unknown) suggest depth and the reflection of light; the lover could, as it were, drown in her eyes. Her nose is also attractive to the man in its length and prominence, although the “tower of Lebanon” to which it is compared is unknown. Some have suggested a mountain (e.g., Mount Hermon, “looking toward Damascus”), just as the head is compared in 7:5 to Mount Carmel in all its glory.
There is possibly a play on words in this last reference between the Hebrew karmel and karmil (the color purple or crimson), for “purple” (ʾargaman) appears later in verse 5 of the woman’s hair, which has evidently been dyed.8 This purple dye was expensive and in early times became an emblem of royalty (cf. 3:10, where it appears in the description of the royal bed). It is no doubt this association that leads on to the comment about the effect of her “tresses”9 on royalty, although it is not clear that on this occasion a particular king is meant in the first instance (since Heb. melek has no definite article, unlike 1:4, 12). It is just that the woman has the kind of hair that would captivate a king.
It is not a king who now addresses her, however, and we are immediately reminded of this in the summary statement by the lover in 7:6 as he takes up language first addressed to him by his beloved and now uses it of her (yph, nʿm, “beautiful . . . pleasing,” as in 1:16, where the NIV translates “handsome . . . charming”).10 She is the altogether lovely one, who brings with her “delights” (taʿ anugim). It is these delights that the man would like to sample (7:7–8), “climbing” up her tall and slender frame (which is pictured as a “palm” tree) and “taking hold” of her breasts (which are its “fruit”—clusters of date palms). The man’s eyes have moved up from his beloved’s feet to her head (vv. 1–6); now his body wishes to follow. He hopes that his arrival at his destination will lead him to the enjoyment of the aforementioned fruit (now described as grapes in v. 8, developing the metaphor of the vineyard we have encountered in verses like 1:6). He also looks forward to tasting the “apples” (cf. 2:3, 5 for the identity of the fruit), which are to be found still higher up this amazing, multifaceted tree, at the site of the beloved’s mouth and nose.11 The man eagerly anticipates drinking the wine that flows there (7:9a; cf. 5:16 for her desire for his mouth).
The woman’s attention has been engaged by this fine speech, so that she is no longer a dancer observed but a lover aroused. No sooner has the man expressed his own wish to taste her wine than she responds with the fervent hope that he will indeed enjoy it (7:9b), that it will in fact flow over the lips of both the lovers as they lie together (cf. NIV note12). She willingly gives herself over to him in his “desire” (tešuqa, 7:10) of her, in the context of their mutual love for each other (cf. the similar “my lover is mine and I am his” in 2:16; and “I am my lover’s and my lover is mine” in 6:3). She invites him (7:11–13) to go with her to those fertile regions of the countryside where his own desire for her was first kindled (cf. 6:11 and 7:12, with their references to budding vines and blooming pomegranates), so that they may consummate their love. She wishes for the two of them to “spend the night” (lyn) among the henna bushes (NIV note13), just as he has previously spent the night (lyn, 1:13; NIV “resting”) between her scented breasts; she then wishes to rise early in the morning to come together once again in the vineyards (“there I will give you my love,” 7:12).
The “mandrakes” of 7:13 are plants with aphrodisiac qualities (note the interesting similarity between Heb. dudaʾim, “mandrakes,” and Heb. dodim, “love”),14 which are pictured as growing in this locale where lovemaking will take place. The “locale” is, of course, as much the woman herself as a “place” to which both lovers go, as it was in 6:11 (cf. also 4:12–15). This is particularly clear in the remainder of 7:13, which speaks of a “door” (petaḥ) giving access to “every delicacy” that has been stored up for the man—an opening already hinted at in the opening (also ptḥ) of the blossoms in 7:12.
We are reminded of 5:6 (see comments) and the double entendres of the dream there as the woman opens (also ptḥ) the door to the man. His own desire had been aroused previously by the sight of the vines budding and the pomegranates blooming (6:11); she now speaks to him in 7:12 of an additional reality of spring (the opening of blossoms), as a prelude to inviting him to her “door” to taste her own delicious fruits (cf. megadim; NIV “delicacy,” also in 4:13, 16, where it appears with Heb. peri and is translated “choice fruits”). It is an invitation to sexual bliss, involving both things familiar to the man and things he has not yet experienced (“new and old,” 7:13).
Bridging Contexts
THE BIBLE IS a book in which fertile gardens with their abundant vegetation play a central role.15 The biblical story begins in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2)—an original perfection where human beings enjoyed intimacy with God and with each other and all creation worked in harmony together. It ends with the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21)—a city that nevertheless has at its center a river of life lined with trees providing food and healing leaves.
The route from one to the other runs through two other crucially important gardens. One is the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32), which was the location of a human decision that reversed the course of human history (since it was a decision to obey, rather than to disobey, the Father). The other is the garden that is the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection (John 19:41; 20:15), which means that human beings may die and be buried like a seed in the ground but have the possibility of breaking through the soil once again to new life.
Also located in the wondrous yet risky space between Eden and the new Jerusalem are the gardens of the Song of Songs, which tells us of a blossoming love that recaptures something of Eden and foreshadows something of Jerusalem, even though touched by sin and darkness. These are the gardens of human love—places of seclusion, intimacy, and security, even though the desert may encroach on them and seek to swallow them up (Song 3:6; 8:5), and even though the darkness of fear and loss may threaten to engulf them. The threats are real, and the Song of Songs itself provides us with no certainty that in the end they can be overcome.
It is only the Bible as a whole, which tells us of the gardens of the Passion and Resurrection, that provides us with a firm hope that human passion will endure and find its own fulfillment in resurrection. Indeed, this whole Bible enables us to understand more fully what human love is and how it contributes to the redemptive process in which the God who has created all things is engaged. What we are called to in love is to demonstrate something of God’s original purposes for human beings, male and female, and to hint at something of God’s future.
We have already noted on numerous occasions in our reflections thus far how the Song of Songs evokes Genesis 1–2 and calls us to refuse to accept the inevitability of living out in our relationships the fallenness of Genesis 3–11 (and indeed the rest of the Old Testament). The woman who in Genesis 3:1–6 took the initiative and introduced alienation into relationships becomes in the Song of Songs the woman who, in taking initiative, draws the man into intimacy. The man and the woman together restore in their love what was fractured in the Fall—a world in which man and woman, made in God’s image and jointly commissioned to the task of exercising dominion over the earth, meet face to face as equals, their commonality and harmony stressed in the language of “bone of bones . . . flesh of flesh . . . one flesh” in Genesis 2:23–24 and in their nakedness without shame in 2:25. There is a fervent wooing of the unique other, employing frank language, as here in Song of Songs 6:11–7:13, and there is eager, enthusiastic response to this expression of “desire” (7:10).
The Hebrew word for “desire” (tešuqa) itself reminds us of the fractured world of Genesis 3 and the following chapters, for we find the same word used in Genesis 3:16 of a female desire for the male. In the Genesis context it does not connote straightforward sexual desire, of course, which is bound up with Creation rather than with Fall; human beings are, after all, sexual beings right from the beginning (Gen. 1:28–30; 2:23–25). In spite of long-standing Christian interpretation of Genesis 1–3 along these lines, therefore, sexual desire itself cannot be understood as an aspect only of the fallen world. More careful exegesis makes clear that what happens in the Fall is that sex is wedded in unholy matrimony to power. This is already suggested by Genesis 3:16, where the female desire is met with male power and control (he “will rule” [mšl] over her). Genesis 4:7 confirms this impression, for here the word tešuqa is used of sin’s desire to possess Cain, to which he must also respond by seeking to “master” (mšl) it. This implies that the female “desire” referred to in 3:16 is at least in part a desire for power over the man, to which he responds with his own force.
Insofar as we have had occasion thus far in this commentary to emphasize male power in regard to sex (see, e.g., comments on 3:6–11), then, in reflecting on the way in which sex and power are all too often bound up with each other in the fallen world of our experience, it is important to recognize here that it is not only men who are fallen beings, but also women. A woman, too, can use sex as a means to her private ends (e.g., security, status, wealth) rather than embracing it as an expression of mutual and self-sacrificing love. Sexual expression thus can become, in the hands of women, as manipulative and abusive (and as little liberating and affirming) as it can be in the hands of men.
The woman of the Song of Songs has, however, given up all “desire” of this kind. She only welcomes the desire of her lover for her. The Genesis 3 reality is thus rejected in favor of the Genesis 1–2 ideal. The abrupt halt that is thus brought to the ever-expanding circle of alienation in Genesis 3–4 is suggested not only by the use of the word tešuqa in Song of Songs 7:10 but also by the phrasing of 7:11, as the woman offers an invitation to her lover: “Let us go to the countryside” (neṣeʾ haśśadeh). Her purpose in inviting him outside is that they should spend the night (and indeed the morning) in making passionate love to each other. It is intriguing to note, however, that this is the very invitation offered to Abel by Cain at the beginning of Genesis 4:8—an invitation now missing in the Masoretic text but preserved in the Versions. Cain’s purpose in issuing the invitation was to get Abel to a quiet spot so that he could murder him. He thus demonstrated that he had not been able to master sin, rather that sin’s power had grasped hold of him. The woman’s initiative in the Song of Songs, in welcoming her lover’s desire and leading him out to the countryside, leads to a very different outcome.
Human love that thus lays down power and looks, rather, to be welcomed into intimacy reflects divine love. It is the love of the God who, having banished his creatures from a garden, quietly entered gardens of suffering and death in order to woo his beloved back to him and have her welcome him eagerly into her arms. It is the love of the God who, like the woman in 7:10 (“I belong to my lover”), binds himself to his people in marriage covenant and promises to be devoted to them: “I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people” (Lev. 26:12). The final wedding may be some time coming, but it will assuredly happen (Matt. 25:1–13; Rev. 19:7).
Contemporary Significance
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind, in purer
lives thy service find,
In deeper reverence praise.16
It is a fine hymn. It is difficult to suppress a smile, however, when it is chosen by couples as the hymn sung just before they take their marriage vows, for in that context a request for “reclothing in our rightful mind” suggests the recognition of prior insanity, only now (and almost too late) discovered. Perhaps we only hear it that way because many of us inhabit cultures that hold marriage in such low esteem and regard it as having little to do with romance and lasting love. If it could previously be sung that “love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage,” it is not something widely believed now, particularly by those multitudes who have experienced the breakdown of their own marriages or who have witnessed such a breakdown from close quarters.
Marriage has become instead the target of bitter humor and the focus of widespread suspicion, even as men and women still crave ongoing and committed intimacy. It is an institution in which we may find ourselves imprisoned, it is felt, if we succumb to the insanity of love long enough to take us to the altar (or its secular equivalents) and beyond. It is a dark pit into which we will certainly fall unless we, like the prodigal son, “come to our senses” in sufficient time (Luke 15:17).
Perhaps the real problem with marriage, however, is not that we come to our senses too late but that we come to our senses at all. Love has drawn us out of ourselves and enabled us for a while and to an extent to behave unselfishly. It has even led us to a place in which we find ourselves making promises to another person about commitment. There is in the idea of “recovery” from the sickness that led us in such directions the idea also of withdrawal. We suffer hurt perhaps, or disappointment, as we give ourselves in vulnerability to the other. We draw back, ashamed that we were so naïve and trusting in the first place. Now we are being realistic, we claim; now we see the matter clearly. We will not make that mistake again.
Thus, by degrees, a romance that altered our perception of reality and in so doing changed us is suffocated by an insistence that reality is truly otherwise and that all claims to the contrary are false. Self-protection becomes the driving concern and is indeed the compelling force in many marriages. Intimacy, a frail plant that requires constant attention from those who tend the garden, cannot survive in such a harsh and self-focused climate.
God never “comes to his senses” in his love affair with us, withdrawing from us out of a desire for self-protection. The wounds that still mark Jesus’ hands and side witness to his ongoing vulnerability and indeed to the true nature of “reality,” in spite of mortal claims to the contrary. “Reality” is self-giving Love. It is those who insist otherwise who dwell in unreality.
The vision of the ongoing and committed man-woman relationship presented to us in the Song of Songs, likewise, knows of no decision, after due consideration, to conserve the self and gain distance from the other. The man who first lost his senses in pursuing the woman is indeed encouraged by her to return to the place in which it happened and to experience still fresh delights in doing so (6:11–12; 7:11–13). Ongoing unselfconsciousness marks this relationship, in fact, paralleling the unselfconsciousness of the Garden of Eden. The lovers are so caught up in each other that the boundaries around the self are simply not recognized, even if each does understand that there are boundaries around the other. The idea that it might be a good thing that they should each “come to their senses” is nowhere in evidence. Senselessness is positively embraced by these intoxicated lovers.
The real problem with marriage is not that we come to our senses too late but that we come to our senses at all. We give up on the “insanity” of self-giving love and embrace the deadly “common sense” of self-possession. Into the spaces freed up by this “common sense” come all kinds of “little foxes” (2:15), which wreak their own special havoc on our lives. Liberated from their “bondage” to one beloved spouse who takes up our whole horizon, our erotic impulses redirect themselves elsewhere. They play out in our sexual fantasies about other men and women who, we imagine, might better meet our needs, whether these are people genuinely accessible to us or simply those who inhabit TV and movie screens, magazines, or websites.
It is not uncommon in troubled marriages to find that while the physical act of love is with the spouse, the emotional and mental act is with someone else entirely. These impulses may even play out in actual sexual encounters with those who are not our spouses, whether money changes hands or not. The advantage that all these avenues of sexual expression share is that none of them requires any self-giving at all. They are entirely self-focused and bound up with manipulation, abuse, and power. They are all of them, therefore, necessarily destructive to self and to others, but that is a truth that is never fully acknowledged by those who indulge in them. It is an aspect of the lostness of our souls, rather, that we are constantly to be found calling what is right and good “insane” and that which is wicked and destructive “normal.”
Jesus, who was himself described as a madman (John 10:20), calls us to a higher vision. He insists that we learn what commitment means, and he defines that commitment as a matter of thought and imagination as well as a matter of action (Matt. 5:27–28, 31–32):
You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. . . .
It has been said, ‘ “Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.” But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
The Song of Songs expands on what this kind of relationship involves and how good it is. It involves the filling of the whole horizon of the imagination with the beloved one, so that there is constant meditation on one’s uniqueness and beauty and on one’s desirability. It involves constant renewal of the springs of our love, as each reminds the other of his or her uniqueness and beauty in frank and straightforward terms, and both return to the beginning of infatuation to remember the context in which the relationship first blossomed. Communication, which can also be called intercourse, is centrally important to this renewal.
It involves, finally, generosity—not just in words but also in all our self-giving to each other. Generosity in the giving of our bodies is one aspect of this, as enthusiastic wooing meets its reciprocation in enthusiastic response (see how the lovers in 7:6–13 tell each other how much they want each other!) and in ever-new experiences of sexual bliss. It is in this “senseless” abandonment to one another that we will find it easier to be erotically insensible to others, whether in thought or in deed. It is in the wholehearted focusing of eros on our one life-partner and friend that we will find ourselves more able to see clearly just how truly insane is the culture’s view of sexual expression. It is herein that the power of the “little foxes” of life to bite and to spoil our vineyard will be diminished.
It turns out, therefore, that it is by no means inappropriate to sing, as we prepare to make our marriage vows (or as we renew them daily), “Forgive our foolish ways; reclothe us in our rightful mind.” The reclothing of our mind is precisely what we require as we begin married life and also as we proceed each day on the journey, for to understand and live out Christian marriage is to embrace one of the ways in which we “in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence praise.” Some of us need to be reclothed so that we understand that radical commitment is good, for we have lived in a world that knows little about commitment. Others need to be reclothed in order to understand what purity of thought and action regarding a husband and wife means, for they have lived too long in a semiadulterous condition, with the loyalty of heart and mind fragmented, an attitude so widely believed to be normal that they have not even noticed.
Others need to be reclothed in their mind, frankly, in order that they can with greater enthusiasm and joy get unclothed in their body, for they have inhabited a world in which sexual expression is not entirely compatible with Christian virtue and where duty has been more important than joy. In resisting what they consider evil and in failing to give themselves wholeheartedly to wife or husband, they do not understand just how wide they are opening the door to temptation and sin. We all need reclothing, every day, in this matter of love, sex, and marriage, for we are all, to some extent, naked and ashamed.
All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Gal. 3:27)
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom. 12:1–2)