Song of Solomon 8:5–14
Shortly after the release of the first Rocky movie, actor Sylvester Stallone was asked whether he thought boxing was good for physical conditioning. He said, “Boxing is a wonderful sport for conditioning as long as you can holler, ‘Cut.’”
That’s the way some people seem to approach marriage. They think it’s a wonderful state of being as long as you can quickly call it quits if any pain arises.
From 1900 to the present time, the divorce rate in the United States has risen more than 700 percent. In our world today, four out of every ten children born since the 1970s have grown up partially or fully in a single-family home.
I once said to my older son, Benjamin, “When I was growing up, we guys would ask other guys, ‘What does your father do?’ What do you kids ask each other today?”
He replied, “We ask, ‘Are your parents still together?’”
We’ve come a long way when we no longer wonder what a dad does, but where a dad lives.
When I first began conducting weddings more than twenty years ago, I had no problem at the wedding rehearsals in knowing where the groom’s parents and bride’s parents were to sit. Today, it’s a rare wedding if I have two sets of parents who have not been through a divorce. Trying to figure out where the former spouses and sometimes several stepfathers and stepmothers are to sit can be a real juggling act.
That’s not what God intended for marriage. His plan was one spouse for all of life. I sometimes say to future grooms in a premarital counseling session, “When you get married, you get measured for your tux and your coffin at the same time.” In other words, you are marrying for life, until you are parted by death.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible to use in premarital counseling is not one you would probably call to mind quickly: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain” (Ex. 20:7). The reason for this verse? This verse relates not to cursing, as many people seem to think, but to the seriousness of vows that we make in the name of the Lord. When a person in Moses’ day took an oath by the name of the Lord, he was evoking God’s presence as a party and witness to the vow. It was very serious business to invite God to witness a vow and be party to a covenant and then change one’s mind. To do so was to publicly lessen the holiness of the vow.
Any person who enters marriage without a full intent to be faithful to his or her spouse for the rest of his or her life, and to remain married regardless of circumstances—“for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health”—should not marry. Marriage is not a temporary driving permit for a spin down life’s highway. It is a permanent state of being.
GOD’S OPINION ON DIVORCE
If you want to know God’s opinion about divorce, turn to Malachi 2:13–16:
You cover the altar of the LORD with tears,
With weeping and crying;
So He does not regard the offering anymore,
Nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.
Yet you say, “For what reason?”
Because the LORD has been witness
Between you and the wife of your youth,
With whom you have dealt treacherously;
Yet she is your companion
And your wife by covenant.
But did He not make them one,
Having a remnant of the Spirit?
And why one?
He seeks godly offspring.
Therefore take heed to your spirit,
And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.
“For the LORD God of Israel says
That He hates divorce,
For it covers one’s garment with violence,”
Says the LORD of hosts.
“Therefore take heed to your spirit,
That you do not deal treacherously.”
The people in Malachi’s time were upset that the Lord didn’t seem to be responding to their tears or their offerings—their acts of religious service—and the reason cited was that they had not been faithful to their wives. Notice that the Lord is always a witness to how you treat your spouse. He was present at your wedding ceremony, and He continues to be an ongoing witness to your vows every day of your married life. God does not desire that you profess fidelity and faithfulness to Him and then deal “treacherously”—in an unfaithful and disloyal manner— with your spouse. That’s blatant hypocrisy in God’s eyes. God desires a faithful commitment through all the years of a marriage.
A ONENESS OF IDENTITY
The Song of Solomon ends as you would imagine—with faithfulness to the end of life. In the Song of Solomon are several aspects of faithful commitment. The first is a oneness of identity. The question is asked, “Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” (Song 8:5).
Solomon’s wife was unrecognizable as being distinguished from Solomon. They were one in the flesh and one in their place in society. Nobody perceived them as being apart from each other. That does not mean that Solomon’s wife lost all of her identity as a person; it meant that nobody would dream of inviting Solomon to a social engagement without also inviting Solomon’s beloved wife, and nobody would think of flirting with Solomon because Solomon was committed to his wife and she to him.
We have all known couples who seem to go their separate ways even though they are still technically married. He does his thing, she does her thing, and the two of them rarely do the same thing.
That is not faithful commitment. Marriage calls a person to a oneness of identity with another person.
Paul urged, “Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church. . . . Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies” (Eph. 5:25, 28). This type of love is very personal. It requires a certain loss of self to take another person so completely into your life that you make the other’s concerns equal to your own. That is faithful commitment.
MADE JUST FOR EACH OTHER
Solomon said to his wife, “I awakened you under the apple tree. There your mother brought you forth; there she who bore you brought you forth” (Song 8:5).
Several images are very strong in this verse. The fig tree is a symbol of the entire nation of Israel in the Scriptures; it is also a place of meditation. The apple tree, in contrast, is the tree of love. The imagery of this verse sent the message, “Your mother conceived and birthed you in love just for me.” There was a sense of destiny about the love and relationship that Solomon’s bride had with Solomon. She saw their relationship as not only God-blessed, but also God-ordained or God-authored. She held the opinion, “Nobody could ever have been more right for me. God selected you to be my husband from your birth.”
In a faithful, committed marriage, this idea should take root and grow. If you do not believe that God has brought you together as a couple, and that God engineered all of the circumstances and situations that caused you to meet, fall in love, and grow in your love, then you should not marry. If you cannot look back at your life, and the life of your beloved, and see how God has uniquely prepared you for each other, you should not marry.
Those who are faithfully committed to each other in marriage have a sense that God is in control of every aspect of their lives, and that God has as much concern about who they marry and when they marry as they do.
When I look back over my life, I have a strong feeling that God planned from the time Teresa and I were born that we should be together. There is something divine, holy, supernatural about the joining of our lives. I have the feeling that Adam must have had, knowing that God had prepared
Eve especially for him and then brought Eve to him. Indeed, “what God hath joined, let no man put asunder.”
A man commented to me, “God gave me the wife I needed to have. It hasn’t always been easy, but God knew I needed just this kind of woman to bring about some changes and growth in me.” If you ever question whether you married the right person, adopt that man’s attitude. God knows you better than you know yourself, and your spouse may be God’s chosen tool for bringing out the very best that He put into you.
SEALED TOGETHER PERMANENTLY
Having a faithful commitment to marriage is like having a permanent seal affixed to each person’s life. Solomon’s bride declared, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm” (Song 8:6). Seals in Bible times were marks of ownership, of possession, of affiliation. Tamar asked Judah for his seal so that there would be no dispute that he was the father of her child. (See Gen. 38.)
Solomon’s bride desired that he be sealed to her in his heart—that he feel inseparably linked to her in his attitude and devotion. She also desired that he be sealed to her on his arm—that there was to be no doubt in the public’s mind that Solomon was her man. The seal was twofold: inner feelings and outer behavior. She didn’t want any other woman to catch her husband’s attention, and she didn’t want her husband to be looking at any other woman.
Once you are married, your flirting days are over, except when you flirt with your spouse. There is no taking off your wedding ring so you can pretend to be single for a day, a weekend, or a two-day business trip. I sometimes take off my wedding ring when I work out at the gym because I don’t want to scratch it on the weight machines. I have been well trained by my wife to put that ring back on my finger the minute my workout is over! She doesn’t want any woman to be confused in her thinking that I might be available or looking for a relationship, and neither do I.
Let me say a word to you men about pornography. There is no place for it in the life of a Christian. Looking at a woman’s body on the pages of a magazine for the purpose of your sexual titillation is lust, and lusting after any woman other than your wife is adultery or fornication. Leviticus 18 speaks of adultery as looking on the nakedness of another man’s wife. A woman’s body is meant only for her husband’s eyes. No man is ever to see the naked body of a woman other than his wife.
Don’t start the practice of using pornography. It produces nothing good in a marriage. Few things can be more destructive to a wife than to realize that her husband has images of a fantasy woman in his mind and that she is subject to a highly unfair comparison. Nothing is more demeaning to a woman.
Many men think of pornography as an innocent pastime. They can’t understand why their wives become upset by this practice. But when I ask them to turn the tables around and imagine how they would feel if their wives spent hours staring at nude pictures of men and wondering what it would be like to have sex with them, they suddenly don’t like that idea at all!
Set the seal of your spouse on both your heart and your arm, and don’t allow anything or anyone to pry off those seals.
A GOOD TYPE OF JEALOUSY
We often think of jealousy as a negative emotion, but that is probably because many people confuse envy and jealousy. Envy is wanting something that belongs to another person— you covet a possession or are envious that he won a particular award, owns a certain item, or is married to a certain type of person. Jealousy is wanting what is rightfully yours. Jealousy includes a strong desire to keep others from taking away what you have been given by God.
God is jealous for us. We rightfully belong to Him, not to Satan. He responds with strength against anything and anyone who would try to woo us away from Him or entice us to align ourselves with evil. In that vein Solomon’s wife stated,
Love is as strong as death,
Jealousy as cruel as the grave;
Its flames are flames of fire,
A most vehement flame. (Song 8:6)
That is, just as death does not give up its people, so true love does not quit.
Godly jealousy does not result in smothering another person or manipulating him, limiting his freedom, or imposing false guilt upon him. Godly jealousy means that you do your utmost to keep your spouse’s attention focused on you. In as many ways as possible, you protect your spouse from any temptation to be unfaithful.
Glen Campbell once released a song with the message, “These are the dreams of the everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me.” Jealousy for your spouse does not mean that you insist that your mate give up all interests in order to do solely what you like to do. It does mean that you find areas of mutuality so that most of your activities are things you can do together and enjoy together. My wife has lots of interests, and through the years I’ve purchased camera equipment, easels and paints, and a wide variety of tools for her. I don’t share her passion for taking photos, painting, or building things. But I have gone on trips with Teresa and stood by her side when she took photos. We have gone away on retreats together, during which I read quietly or watched old movies while she painted. As much as possible, I find a way to share the time she spends in her special interests, without feeling any need to engage in those activities.
One person I know has a wife who loves to give dinner parties for her women friends. The parties include playing the game of bridge. This man doesn’t enjoy playing cards, and he doesn’t particularly like to cook. To share this interest with his wife, he plays host for the dinner party, greeting the guests, making sure they have all they need in the way of food and beverage, and working with his wife to clean up the kitchen and house after the party is over. He enjoys the social aspect of these evenings, plus all the compliments he gets about being such a helpful husband! There is a certain degree of jealousy at work. He has no intent of losing his wife to a phantom lover called bridge parties.
Jealousy doesn’t mean that you never give a friendly shoulder hug to another person or that you can’t talk to a person of the opposite sex at a public gathering. It does mean that you avoid being alone with a person of the opposite sex and that disclosure of your feelings, dreams, and desires is reserved for your spouse alone. Don’t confide in others of the opposite sex (unless you are in a professional counseling session and your counselor happens to be of the opposite sex). Don’t eat alone with a person of the opposite sex. Eating together is one of the most intimate things two people can do. You are inviting disaster if you make this a practice.
In converse, make sure that you have a willingness to listen to your spouse’s confidences, secrets, dreams, desires, plans, and goals, and that you keep this deeper level of sharing with your spouse confidential within your marriage. Make sure you are available to your spouse for the times when your mate wants to be alone with you or to have dinner with just you.
Be possessive about your marriage relationship. Marriage was meant to be shared by two people, and no more than two people.
AN UNQUENCHABLE PERSEVERANCE
Solomon’s wife pointed to yet another aspect of faithful commitment: “Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it” (Song 8:7). No matter what happens, no matter how high the tide of calamity rises, no matter what circumstance or situation hits your marriage, choose to persevere through it. Love is meant to be an eternal flame.
Marriage is intended to be an anchor that holds. Just as nothing separates us from the love of Christ, so nothing should separate us from the commitment we make to a spouse. (See Rom. 8:35–38.)
I know a young couple who encountered all kinds of tragedy shortly after they married. They experienced deaths in their extended family, the company for whom the husband worked had serious financial difficulties, and so forth. The good news was that they clung to each other in the midst of the difficult times rather than withdrew into themselves or turned outside their marriage to others. They cared for each other. And their marriage emerged from the season of trouble stronger and more mature than that of many couples who have been married for many years.
Choose to turn toward each other when tragedy or trouble strikes at your family. Choose to comfort each other and to help each other through the crises.
Certainly circumstances can quench a loving relationship. A man who is a philanderer and brings home AIDS can’t be trusted in a marriage. A woman who totally abandons her family and disappears into oblivion is not a person with whom a man can live out a marriage relationship. But such cases are extremely rare. In the vast majority of cases—99.99999 percent, I’d estimate—a marriage can survive incredibly bad times if both people are faithfully committed to each other. The problem in our society is that people aren’t committed to making a marriage work. They don’t expect to do what it takes to make a marriage last. They expect instant and automatic gratification without any effort, any patience, any difficulty. A truly faithful commitment endures and endures and endures all types of trouble, trial, and trauma.
Throughout the Scriptures we are admonished repeatedly to love as God loves. His love is chesed in nature—“steadfast lovingkindness.” It is love that is loyal and unwavering. It is unconditional and lasting. Ask God to give you a bit of His love for your spouse. Such love is priceless and can never be purchased; it can only be given freely and received gratefully.
A TREASURED POSSESSION
Those who are faithfully committed in marriage regard their marriage as their most priceless possession—a genuine treasure. As Solomon’s wife said, “If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised” (Song 8:7). In other words, no amount of money could purchase the love you feel for your spouse or be worth destroying your marriage.
This is an important concept to consider when it comes to the work each partner chooses to do. No job is worth losing your wife, no career is worth losing your husband, regardless of what the world may say to you.
No fling or affair is worth destroying your marriage. No special interest or pursuit is worth damaging your relationship with your spouse.
Those who have lost their marriages nearly always confess to me later, “What I was pursuing wasn’t nearly as satisfying as the marriage I gave up.”
There are some lessons you don’t need or want to learn in your life, and one of them is to know what it means to love and be loved and then to lose that love through negligence, willful disobedience, or wandering lust.
Hold tightly to the precious gift you have been given. Don’t allow yourself to become casual or nonchalant about your marriage.
A FOUNDATION FOR
FAITHFUL COMMITMENT
When is a single person ready for marriage? This next passage gives the Bible’s clearest answer. It relates to the matter of premarital promiscuity. Solomon’s wife recalled the protectiveness of her brothers who watched over her:
We have a little sister,
And she has no breasts.
What shall we do for our sister
In the day when she is spoken for?
If she is a wall,
We will build upon her
A battlement of silver;
And if she is a door,
We will enclose her
With boards of cedar.
I am a wall,
And my breasts like towers;
Then I became in his eyes
As one who found peace. (Song 8:8–10)
The idea in this passage is this: if a young woman (or a young man, for that matter) is a wall—shut off to any sexual experience prior to marriage, a closed door to all men, a virgin— then she is worthy to be exalted. She is acknowledged as being capable of becoming the foundation for a strong, beautiful, and valuable marriage. On the other hand, if a woman is a door—swinging herself wide open to any man who might come along—then she should be shut up with boards of cedar. Virginity until marriage is not a divine preference. It is a divine commandment. We fool ourselves when we think otherwise.
The man who marries a virgin goes into marriage with significant trust and faith in his wife. The husband of a virgin can’t help reasoning, even subconsciously, “She saved herself for me. If she has that kind of personal discipline and righteousness before marriage, she no doubt will have that kind of personal discipline and righteousness after the wedding is over. She is a woman who will stay faithful to me.”
Solomon’s wife made a proud claim: “I was a wall. My breasts were towers of defense. I was a virgin. I didn’t allow any man to so much as touch me sexually.” And what was the result? Solomon saw her as the woman he was to wed. She became to her husband, Solomon, a source of peace. He could trust her completely. He didn’t have a moment’s worry concerning the possibility she might be unfaithful.
Faithful commitment is much easier if there is strong evidence of both faithfulness and kept commitments in a person’s past. If the person you are dating or courting has no strong evidence of faithfulness to others in the past— including honesty, ethical business dealings, and kept promises—reconsider your relationship. Such a person may have trouble keeping the commitments and promises he makes, and enduring in a relationship over time. The last person you want to marry is a fair-weather friend, one who stays around only when things are going his way and all is well. Her brothers’ logic was simple: “If you are mature enough to be moral, you are mature enough to be married.”
There is a small play on words in this final statement by Solomon’s wife, that she “became in his eyes as one who found peace.” Solomon’s name means “peace”—shalom, wholeness, total peace in one’s life. She was saying, “He found his inner peace in me; he found his very soul in me.”
When will a woman find a husband? God brought Solomon to the woman when she was willing to be single forever rather than sacrifice her purity before God. When she was at that point of willingness, she said, “Then I became in his eyes as one who found peace.”
What a wonderful feeling, to feel totally at ease and without any doubt about your marriage relationship and the fidelity of your spouse. Truly, it is peace of mind and heart.
The point is that a person is to be what God commands in purity and holiness, and when God is so pleased, then the right person can be brought to him or her.
A friend of mine worked with a young woman in a particular ministry. She often came to him, asking what he thought of a particular guy she was about to date or asking for advice about how she should dress on a date or what she should do in a relationship. One day, this man woke up and asked himself, “What am I looking for in a wife?” He started listing various traits, and the more traits he listed, the more he thought about the young woman. He realized that the girl of his dreams had been right under his nose for months! He proposed to her within a week. For her part, she had loved him in her heart for months and had been waiting patiently for him to wake up and see her with new eyes.
It seemed as if this man made a sudden decision regarding the young woman. In reality, he merely awoke to the fullness of his feelings for her. And that was the message of Solomon’s wife—it was as if Solomon suddenly awoke to all that he already felt and was as a man. She completed him and made him realize who he was as a person. He found the very meaning of his name in her.
Become the person God commands you to be, and let Him handle the timing.
MAKING YOURSELF TOTALLY AVAILABLE
Finally, faithful commitment means that you make yourself totally available to your spouse. You don’t make plans without taking your spouse into consideration. You don’t dream dreams that exclude your spouse. You don’t make major decisions without accommodating the needs of your spouse. Solomon’s wife announced,
Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon;
He leased the vineyard to keepers;
Everyone was to bring for its fruit
A thousand silver coins.
My own vineyard is before me.
You, O Solomon, may have a thousand,
And those who tend its fruit two hundred.
You who dwell in the gardens,
The companions listen for your voice—
Let me hear it! (Song 8:11–13)
She was describing her life in terms of property. Solomon had vineyards he let out for hire. Her brothers were to watch over Solomon’s property and bring its fruits to Solomon. The woman, however, had a sense of ownership over her body. She had her own “vineyard.” She said to her husband, “You could have any woman of your choice, but I have only myself to give to you. I have saved myself for you. I can now give myself completely to you, with nothing held back from you and no part of me ever given to another.” That was total availability!
And who took care of her vineyard, or body? Those brothers whom she thought were angry with her for making her work (Song 1:6) and for setting such firm rules of morality (Song 8:8–9). In the blessedness of marriage, she was deeply appreciative of their efforts. To a young person, a protective parent may seem to hold a harsh stance toward premarital sex, but later in life, if the parent’s counsel is followed, that advice will crown the young person with happiness and beauty. Your body will be a worthy vineyard. Incidentally, the vineyard she submitted to work just happened to be Solomon’s. Her submission and obedience to what she thought was harsh was a preparation for God’s perfect plan.
Furthermore, she longed to hear his voice in her garden. She looked forward to the rewards that would come with loving only one man sexually all her life. She trusted him to be her all in all sexually, and she made herself available to him in the same way. She gave him all that she had, not merely a “tax” or a portion of what she had. She was “old-fashioned.” Marriage to her was a total, permanent, giving union.
Not only did she give herself completely in sexual intimacy, but she gave herself completely in all parts of her life. One of the tenderest scenes I have ever witnessed was that of an older woman in my church who sat by her husband’s hospital bed and held his hand and stroked it gently until he died. She was there fully, gently and tenderly, until her vow was fulfilled, “until death do us part.” She withheld nothing from him, including her time and her devotion.
HURRY HOME, HONEY!
How does this wonderful picture of faithful commitment end? Solomon states, “You who dwell in the gardens, the companions listen for your voice—let me hear it!” He longs to hear his wife call to him to come to her. He longs to love her. He is wanting to drop everything when summoned. Solomon’s wife responds,
Make haste, my beloved,
And be like a gazelle
Or a young stag
On the mountains of spices. (Song 8:14)
“Run to me,” she said, “swift as a gazelle and strong as a young buck.” In other words, “Hurry home to me, Honey! I’m waiting for you, and I’m worth waiting for and running to!” What are the “mountains of spices”? The same, I believe, as twice mentioned previously in this book, the breasts of his wife. Who wouldn’t run?
A husband or wife who is faithfully committed to a mate and to the marriage is worthy of running home to embrace. Such a person is a joy to live with and a delight to know in every aspect of “knowing.” My wife once read that every husband should have a ten-second kiss upon returning home from work. Praise God for Christian books that give such good advice!
Faithful commitment is not drudgery or an emotional prison cell. It is a release to enjoy the fullness of love and joy in a relationship. With faithful commitment come emotional strength, healing, growth, and peace.
What a wonderful destination point for marriage—to have a hurry-up, I’ve-got-to-get-home-to-my-beloved attitude toward your spouse, all the days of your life!
May it be so for your marriage—now and always.
Questions to Think About or Discuss
1. Do both you and your beloved have a long track record in your lives of faithfulness and friendship?
2. Do you have a strong sense of destiny that God brought you and your beloved together?
3. In what specific ways do you believe you and your beloved complement each other?