TEXT [Commentary]

  XX.   Twentieth Love Poem: Love More Powerful than Death (8:5-7)

Young Women of Jerusalem

5 Who is this sweeping in from the desert,

leaning on her lover?

Young Woman

I aroused you under the apple tree,

where your mother gave you birth,

where in great pain she delivered you.

6 Place me like a seal over your heart,

like a seal on your arm.

For love is as strong as death,

its jealousy[*] as enduring as the grave.[*]

Love flashes like fire,

the brightest kind of flame.

7 Many waters cannot quench love,

nor can rivers drown it.

If a man tried to buy love

with all his wealth,

his offer would be utterly scorned.

NOTES

8:5 gave you birth. The verb khabal [TH2254C, ZH2473] here translated “gave you birth” may rather mean “conceived you.” The ambiguity in the meaning of the verb is discussed in NIDOTTE 2:12. However, the parallelism (which typically intensifies the thought of the first colon, or poetic line) would suggest a progression from arousal (first colon) to conception (second colon) to birth (third colon). Such a picture lingers on the mother’s act of intimacy before moving to birth and thus heightens the romantic feeling of the image.

8:6 brightest kind of flame. The issue that surrounds the translation of this phrase is the particle yah [TH3050, ZH3363] at the end of the word for “flame.” Some see here a reference to the name of God, a shortened form of Yahweh. If this is the case, the translation would be “a flame of Yahweh.” The NLT is surely right, however—particularly in this book that does not mention the name of God—to take it as a superlative (cf. similar uses of God’s name in Gen 23:6; Isa 51:3; Jonah 3:3).

COMMENTARY [Text]

The chorus opens the poem with a question that is similar to an earlier passage. They ask for the identity of the woman who is leaning on her lover. The reference is certainly to the young woman, and she speaks for the remainder of the poem; but instead of speaking to the chorus, she speaks again to the man.

This poem is one of the most famous of the book because of its imagery and the intensity of its expression. She begins by reminding the man of her effect on him. She has aroused him under the apple tree. The apple tree has earlier been used as a location of lovemaking in the Song (see the appearance of the apple tree and its fruit in 2:3, 5; 7:8). The apple tree evokes the pastoral countryside setting, which, in the Song, is conducive to love. The fertility of this specific tree makes it particularly evocative of love, and the fragrance of its apples and buds also makes it a particularly happy locale for intimacy.

We are not to understand 8:5 as historically factual—that is, that there is a specific apple tree in view that was the place where the man was born. No, the image captures the idea that just as the young woman was trained by her mother in matters of love (see previous poem), so too the man follows in a tradition of lovemaking. This reference to giving birth, interestingly enough, is the only place where the reproductive consequences of lovemaking are made at all explicit. The emphasis throughout the poem is on the romantic nature of physical intimacy, not on its utilitarian consequences.

In 8:6-7 the woman expresses the strength of the emotion of her love toward the man. Again, up to this point in the Song, the emphasis has been on the physical expression of love. But here, we observe just how intense the emotion of love is. It is like a seal. The seal was a common way of ascribing the ownership of things in the ancient Near East. The most common type of seal in ancient Israel was the stamp seal. The stamp seal would have a symbol and often a name written on it. By pressing it firmly on wet clay, the seal would leave an impression that showed who owned an object like a jar or who was responsible for the writing of a letter (see Hallo 1985 and Hallo 1993).

Modern men and women sometimes find this image of “ownership” objectionable because it treats a man or a woman as an object. This is not the woman’s perspective. She rejoices in the thought that she might belong to the man, most likely because she understands that his desire is to be equally owned by her. That the seal would be pressed on heart and arm is surely a way of saying on his whole person, both inner and outer—thoughts and actions.

The woman then talks almost philosophically about love. Love, and certainly her love for him, is stronger than death, even more enduring than the grave (8:6). This is a very strong statement, considering just how powerful death is (Eccl 2:13-15; 3:19; 6:1-2). Indeed, in the ancient Near East, death was often personified as a god of great power. Here, the woman boldly asserts that her love is stronger than death. It is, in other words, irresistible, resolute, and unshakable.

But what about jealousy? Isn’t jealousy a negative emotion? Not always, at least in the Bible. Jealousy is the energy that propels a person to protect a relationship that is in danger. It is only appropriately expressed in a relationship that admits only one partner, like marriage, and it should only be expressed in positive and non-violent ways, but it is not to be condemned as always destructive or evil (see discussion of jealousy in Allender and Longman 1993:107-132).

The woman then compares love to another mighty force, namely fire. Fire symbolizes passion, and this is the brightest kind of flame. It is a flame that cannot be quenched by “many waters.” The deeper significance of the waters here is probably hidden from modern readers: The mythologies of the ancient Near East frequently represent the powers of chaos in the world as flood waters, often using the equivalent of the expression “mighty waters” to refer to these powers. Thus, she is saying that the power of love can stand up to even the mighty powers of chaos in the universe.

Finally, she states that love is so powerful that it cannot be demeaned by wealth. Just because someone has money, that does not mean they can buy another person’s love (8:7).