40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Song of Solomon 1:1-4 (Episode 431)
Episode Date: September 3, 2024Chad and Daniel spend some time introducing the Song of Solomon and how it has been interpreted before jumping into the opening verses. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Po...dcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: · Junk Drawer Jesus by Matt Poppvits The Inklings: Apostles and Apologists of the Imagination with Sam Schuldheisz Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament by Chad Bird 30 Minutes in the NT on Youtube Remembering Rod Rosenbladt Encouragement for Motherhood Edited by Katie Koplin More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament.
40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast.
You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there.
And while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing.
All the academies, all the videos, all the other podcasts, the events, a lot of stuff going on over there.
Check it all out.
While you're over there also, if you want to support this show and just the work of 1517 in general,
you can, of course, do that by hitting the donate link up in that upper right-hand corner.
And you can become a supporter of the work.
And that is how we're able to do it.
That's why it's all free.
That's why you're not getting no ads or paywalls or any of that on this podcast.
You can still go back and listen to the very first episode.
You don't got to be a member or anything for that.
You can go do that, and that's why.
So if you have not joined up with us, we'd appreciate it if you would.
Chad, we are starting a new book today, a book unlike any other book.
I mean, there's only one book like this in the Bible, I can tell you that.
And that is the Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon, as some like to call it.
Yeah, in fact, the very reason we started this podcast 10 years ago was so that we could
eventually get to this book.
I mean, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but that is the truth.
10 years ago, you said, hey, I think we should really talk about the Song of Songs, but to
get there, we have to cover Genesis all the way through Ecclesiastes.
so we've been all it's been a long preparation just for this so i grew up with a lot of bible
reading plans and a lot of reading the bible through in a year and that kind of stuff and
did that a lot and this was like the only book that like and like would make me uncomfortable
like as like a 11 year old you know like you're like you're reading you know judges and there's
like all kinds of stuff that makes me uncomfortable now because like you're like oh it's so violent
and bloody and horrific and that didn't really bother me then you're just like oh well you know
people getting killed yeah whenever it came time to read this though you'd be like am i supposed
to read this should i be reading this this adult literature yeah yeah so uh i have to uh you know
respond with a quote from rabbi akiva and i don't care which commentary you open i guarantee you
they will have this quote, near the beginning. It's usually under the category of its place in
the canon. So here's the famous quote from Rabbi Akiva, and this was in the context of
the canonicity of the Song of Songs. He says, the whole world is not worth the day on which
the Song of Songs was given to Israel. All the writings are holy, and the Song of Songs is the
holy of holies oh wow so yeah so i mean that's a pretty big he liked it from this uh from this
first century late first century uh a.d rabbi he's one of the he's one of the he's one of the
few guys when you ask him what his favorite book of the bible is he's like song of songs
like obviously songs yeah you know what what is pretty amazing to me is that not only him but man
you you look at uh especially well early christianity for sure but when you get into
the medieval period and you start looking at the literature that's produced on the song of songs
it is phenomenal i mean phenomenal in the sense of just the extent of the literature
a bunch but there's some psychological stuff going on here but a bunch of monks uh
you know sitting around meditating upon the they really like this book uh on the song of songs and
So, I mean, you take Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, who was to some extent influential on Martin Luther.
And what was that number?
I just saw it the other day.
He preached like 85 sermons, not on the Song of Songs, on the first two chapters of the Song of Songs.
So, yeah, I remember probably two or three or four years ago, I was reading some of his sermons on this.
And the opening line, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.
I don't know.
He's got, I forget the number, five or six sermons on that alone.
Yeah, what was going on was, I mean, this was, as we'll talk about in a minute,
I want to talk about how you interpret the book.
This was treated for centuries mainly as an allegory,
an allegory of the individual soul with Christ or with Christ in the church.
and so when you uh when you allegorize something you get hyper creative yeah on the way that you
know you're going to interpret these things oh and well what so you know what do what do the two
breasts represent on uh on the lover on on solomon's lover well that's got to be one is the
old testament one is a new testament you know and from these we draw the spiritual nourishment of
the word you know so i mean that's one example um of how where you end up when you allegorize
thing and i and i think that was one of the ways one of the reasons because of its you know it's
it's sensual nature of course it's romantic genre but also the the hyper allegorizing that took
place this was like a huge open door that people could walk through to exercise their creativity
coming up with you know it one of the problems when you allegorize is there's very few like
parameters right yeah so you know i say oh well the two fawns which are her two breasts represent
the old the new testament and and you come along maybe and say well no i really think it's a law
in the gospel and somebody else comes along and says actually i think it's paul's epistles and
the four gospels you know so it just it's wide open as to what people want to want to say about
these things so yeah it ended up being a huge hugely popular book for uh for for several
centuries but there is a keep elected to there is part of it too you know like as a especially
if you think about um you know this being translated if you were to go to like to the
the king james version of this right uh and you would read it and then you were to go read some
like shakespeare and you you i mean it's not hard to to see the uh that it it sounds similar right
like i mean this these sound like things that come out of the mouths of uh of like shakespearean
figures or whatever especially if you're reading it in like the king's english or whatever
and uh it so there is definitely like you could and obviously it far predates that stuff and so
that you can uh you can sort of see that influence there because it is the thing in the bible that
sounds like that yeah yeah that uh that kind of antiquated poetry with these highly metaphorical
figures most of which are i mean there's some that you know if we read it in some sort of
modern romance poetry we wouldn't blink you know sometimes uh like there's a line somewhere in here
about you know someone getting caught in the uh the the uh the trestles of her hair you know
something like that i don't think that would strike us as too strange but you know if i compare
her nose to a tower or her teeth to sheep then of course that's going to be really weird to us
but a lot of this yeah it does have this very kind of shakespearean feel and uh because i mean it's
it's it's kind of kind of strange to us uh but hopefully by the time we work our way through
some of the details it won't seem quite quite as strange uh you know there so i i've been reading
several commentaries getting ready for the start of this and uh it's amazing to me that yeah people
take this so many different directions yeah it's almost like you know you put song of songs beside
revelation and there's so many different takes on revelation uh almost of course the uh you know
the definitive one is the 30 minutes in the new testament one oh yeah so if you want to know like
the definitive revelation take uh you can go look that up yeah i mean that goes without saying yeah
yeah i said it anyway so you've got uh i mean i so i broke these down into i think
three or four different categories uh you got i've already mentioned one the allegorical
you know where you're it's kind of like if you so if you're not familiar with allegory just think of
Animal Farm, or if you're more familiar with Pilgrim's Progress, you know, both of those
allegories, they're, they're saying one thing, but what they're really teaching you is something
else. So one thing stands for something else. So I'm talking about A, but what I really mean is B,
and I'm talking about the Animal Farm, but I'm actually talking about, you know, the Russian
Revolution or communism, or I'm talking about Christian's progress through this world, but I'm
actually talking about the journey of the of every christian so there's that approach and it's it i
mean you'll still see you'll still see that today but it was very popular among a lot of the church
fathers and uh on up into the time of the reformation but there are also some people today
who uh you find isolated cases throughout church history like theodore mop swetsia he he held this
too that it's just it's a it's a love song and nothing more than a love song some people today
able to say, well, there's nothing religious about this. They'll argue that God's name is
never mentioned, even though most people would argue that it is. I think that's chapter 8,
verse 6. But even so, one mention of the Lord's name in the whole book. So this is nothing more
than just religious poetry. Well, yeah, my problem with that is that, number one, it's in the canon
itself, which immediately adds context to it. And Solomon's mentioned here, of course, who's
deeply rooted in the canonical story. And you've got plenty of other examples in the Old Testament
where the marriage of a man and a wife, particularly a man and wife, like the prophet
Hosea and Gomer, or even psalms like Psalm 45, which is a love song, really a wedding song about
the king and his marriage to a foreign princess.
But you got plenty of other examples in the Bible where marriage or the love
between a man and a woman is iconic of the marriage between the Lord and
Israel or between Christ and the church.
So I don't,
I don't think really that the treating it just as a religious or as a,
as a love song,
a non-religious love song works.
So this is,
I don't know,
this is my take on it.
This is the way I approach,
approach the song of songs.
I see it as, you could call it, number one, analogical.
So an analogy where you have these two lovers, Solomon and the Shulamite.
And by analogy, the love that they share is also the love shared by Yahweh in Israel, Christ in his church.
and alongside that is uh kind of a typological approach where you see what's happening here
as a type or foreshadowing of the love between christ and and his church and for me that seems
to be seems to be the best approach because number one it takes seriously the fact that this is a
love song and so it's not an allegory it is a love song there's plenty of metaphors and symbols
and all that kind of stuff in it that you would expect of hebrew poetry but it's not just a love
song, because it's in the canon, and because of that, it's connected to all the other parts of
the salvation stories. So it's pointing by analogy or by typology to the relationship between Christ
and His bride, the Church. So anyway, that's the way that I approach it, and it seems to
fit best with, I think, our overall approach, if we read it that way.
i've i've kind of uh approached that this is a let's see don't turn this off the second i say
this uh listen to the the end of what i say okay so the initial thing i'm going to say first is
going to sound like oh don't say that when i read the song of solomon i read it uh as a little bit
of a fantasy and and what i mean by that is that it's not because it's not just like solomon writing
a love song to a person there's like a dialogue that's happening in this right like this is a
it'd be one thing if it was just like this is how i feel about this woman like okay sure that makes
that makes sense yeah you're really man you're you really got it bad for this this woman and
you're really gonna let the world know exactly how you feel about her and so easy enough uh but
this is actually you have like all you have different players within this this um this song
right so you have her words and his words and some other people's words you know like what other
people are saying and so and by and by fantasy i don't mean that in like this sort of like crude
way what i mean is that like uh as like an ideal right and so if you think about who solomon is
and i by the way feel free to like completely obliterate what i'm saying here uh you think
who Solomon is, he's a guy who's famous
for one thing most of all,
which is, this guy's
got, like,
how many wives does he end up with?
700 wives, 300 concubines.
Yeah, he's got like a thousand women.
Yeah, he's got a thousand women, let's put it that way.
Yeah, and it seems as though,
I mean, we just got done with Ecclesiastes,
this does not seem to have really
helped him at all. This does not
seem to have, like, filled the
void. He has not, like,
extracted uh all the necessary meaning for life from this endeavor like far from it like this is
not as this has not happened but that doesn't mean like that solomon's not like a lover i would
actually say like it's the opposite of that sometimes you get this idea of solomon that
he's just like a lust-filled maniac which maybe i mean he's a man and a sinner so sure but it's
also could be that he's also like maybe this like hopeless romantic that is like looking for like
this real thing right and so in this you have i feel like this this song and yet this like story
of like of what it would look like if you add like the real thing like if you like this is what uh
this is what you really need like that's what i mean by a fantasy it's the this is the ideal
and of course that i think this does then apply to christ and his church and like only god could
love a bride this way.
And so, yeah, I don't
know, that's been helpful to me,
to think of it sort of that way,
where you're almost like, man, if
love could be all that it
was supposed to be, like it would
sound like this, like
this is what she would say,
and these are the sorts of things that he would say,
and these are the sorts of things that other people
witnessing it would say,
and then you can
say, but this is sort of
you do have this in Christ and his church,
even though Solomon obviously couldn't find this
with any one of the thousand.
This is what it would be like if I ever found the thing.
The ideal woman, yeah.
Yeah, I think that argument holds water.
The other, I don't even,
this is not contradictory to what you said,
I think another way of taking this would be to,
that he's speaking about at least a woman
that he's found who is as close to ideal yeah as he can imagine uh and there so there's some who
argue that this is uh this kind of sounds funny because people will talk about the the young
luther and the old luther we've read we've read the old solomon yeah so this is like the young
solomon he's just become king and uh he's just fallen head over heels with this uh this gal
who's only named in one place in chapter 6 verse 13 as the it's not even her name just where she's
from the shulamite so the shulamite is this this lover and she is just yeah he's stricken i mean
his head over heels in love with her and so some people take you got old solomon ecclesiastes
young solomon song of songs and i don't know i it kind of fits for me that this sounds like
a guy who's not quite as old and jaded as Ecclesiastes is.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, imagine—you can imagine this easily.
So both these things can be true at once.
This is probably not a recounting of the conversations he's having with her
and what other people are saying.
But if you—so if you meet somebody, if you meet the Shulamite,
and man she's something and uh you you go and and you're having a wonderful time with her and
then you go back and you put pen to paper you might project a little bit uh about like what
you think this could be right you're like i mean this feels like this yeah this is it yeah that's
what i'm talking about is like where you're like man oh man and whether it's an actual person that
you're putting this on or or an idea of a person or whatever it is but you're saying you're you're
feeling it man and like and i think that the truth though of the whole thing is that actually
chad you and i are both married uh i love my wife she's great you love your wife she's great
better than either of us deserve for sure but you know like i mean this doesn't like describe
our conversations uh like you know it doesn't sound like our this doesn't sound like our pillow
talk no and just and just like you know your affections aren't this i don't know yeah like
it's just it's just not like that but uh there's a pure it's weird because like yeah it is kind of
like sensual and stuff but there's also like sort of a a naivety and like a innocence to it where
you're like which you only get like obviously with like a like a pure love between like christ and
his and his bride yeah yeah and i think that that actually fits with another point i wanted to make
about this that I can't remember where I saw this quote, but somebody said the Song of Songs is
basically an extensive commentary on that closing verse of Genesis 2 where the man and his wife were
both naked and were not ashamed. I mean, there's a very Edenic quality to this. I mean, both in the
sense of kind of an idealistic state of love between a man and a woman, but also, I mean,
this thing is full of all kinds of sensual imagery both you know all the senses are hit here taste
and sight and smell and feeling i mean everything is there so it does have kind of this paradise
quality to it which would again fit with kind of the theme of innocence and yeah yeah and the
the youthfulness of love and you know unpolluted by all the stuff that happens well he's excited
about things that in our world yeah well man dude he like he's excited about things that you just
don't get excited about and you're as you're older like there's there's there's things that he says
here that you're that it doesn't you're like what like what are you like 15 like like what like what
is going on here like it's like you uh you know your hand accidentally brushed up against someone
else's hand and then you read way too much into it you know you're like what's happening here man
yeah and i mean him and her this is reciprocal that's one of the uh that is one of the things
that you'll that was surprising to me actually is that i'll forget the stats but one one scholar
uh quoted somebody saying basically that of the speeches of the woman they comprise like 53 or
54 percent of the book and the speech and then you have the chorus this other group daughters
of jerusalem or whatever you want to call them uh but the the the man solomon speaking here is just
like 30 something so that's that is one of the uniquenesses of the book is she's speaking these
words to him and he's speaking these words back to her and occasionally you'll have this group
this chorus as we're singing along but it's dominated by her voice which is it's pretty
remarkable that if you and i do believe solomon wrote this book i mean that's highly disputed by
in the scholarship but uh i i take it as it as it stands i mean solomon is makes sense to me that
would be the author of something like this well well also dude you might i mean if you're if you're
idealizing something in your head too and you're like oh man i just met whether you just met
somebody or whatever um yeah part of this is like how would you want to be loved i mean it's like
this is uh this is of course like she's gonna do a lot of talking you're like these are the words
that i know i i'm gonna tell you how i feel about it oh but i would like this surely sure like if i
could have anything it would be for you to feel this way about me yes yeah yeah so i mean it's um
it's it's gonna be a i think it's gonna be interesting book it's a it's a little bit
difficult to find uh where the sections begin and end and how to how to structure because it's not
like some people compare it to a play and i i understand that uh because it does kind of feel
like you got you got the male actor you got the female actor you kind of got this like a um almost
like a greek chorus over here singing sometimes you got that going on but you know a play has like
it's laid out got this act then following into this act and that that act and that that's pretty
difficult for me to to discern i mean there are some that break it down that way the the typical
jewish reading of this is that this is sort of a uh a historical allegory depicting the various
stages of israel's history and that's one of the reasons they for instance they so this is part
song of songs is part of uh what i call the the megaloth uh which this means five scrolls and
there are certain certain biblical books scrolls that are read at the annual festivals and so song
of songs is always read at Passover because it's interpreted to mean that this is what happened
when Israel was in captivity and then they were brought out and they had the whole exodus and so
on and so forth. So that's one of the reasons that it's read at that time is because this is part of
the Jewish understanding of the song. But it doesn't really have, in my opinion, that well
laid out structure you kind of go from scene to scene and some of them are about anticipation
some of them are about being together and some of them are about a temporary separation than a
reunion and some of them are about a longer separation so it seems to me that it's just
kind of a constellation of the various experiences that that these two lovers have as they're either
together or anticipating being together or apart for a time and the way it works is she speaks and
he speaks and sometimes other people speak so you got several different actors but mainly the man
the woman and then this we these daughters of jerusalem who occasionally will step in and
have their their little say yeah and that makes sense i mean they i think i think like christ and
the church as his bride, like, helps
this a lot. For the Jewish
understanding of it, when you're like, this is about,
you know, God and
Israel, you're like,
well, Christ and his
bride, like, helps this feel
like a little more
direct, because you do have
a man and, like,
his bride, the people of God,
the church. But, you know,
even God, when he speaks to Israel,
as we've gone over many
times, when they are straying away from him, he does speak about them like a wife, in the
sense that he calls them, like, adulterers.
It's always in a negative sense, like they're a bad wife, you know, like they're whores
and adulterers.
But there is still that sort of language.
It's not as, like, direct, there's Christ and his bride, the Church.
And so, on one hand, I think that that sort of Jewish interpretation is right, as far
I was like, yeah, sure, could this apply in a way to God and His people at all times and places? Sure.
But man, having the person of Christ and His bride, the Church, come along really makes this a lot easier, I think.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, oh, yeah, you kind of read the Song of Songs with one eye cast to Ephesians 5, right?
where you have this beautiful description of what christ has done for his church
and even you know verses like uh second corinthians 11 where paul says he says i betrothed you to one
husband to present you as a pure virgin to christ so he sees his role as an apostle of kind of a
i don't know a matchmaker i suppose like he's betrothal agent he's bringing together this pure
virgin pure virgin of the church to christ he's going to betroth those together so yeah i mean
certainly the old testament but more explicitly in the new testament you have this image of the
bride of christ the corporate body of believers as being his his beloved yeah when he's cleansed
and made his own and this just happens to be the the old testament very expansive sensual
description of this love, which is pretty remarkable. I mean, I don't know how many
people preach like this when they're talking about the love of Christ for His bride.
Yeah. It might make the congregation a little bit uncomfortable, understandably so. But, you know,
this is, again, this is the ideal love. So if you were to take a man and a woman,
put them together
without any issues
any problems
just two people madly
passionately in love
with each other
both giving and receiving
then this is what this
would sound like at least this is what
would sound like in the style
of Hebrew poetry
should we get into a verse?
we should get into a verse
it's been 29 minutes
About a 30-minute introduction to this, but hopefully that was helpful as we start our way through this.
So I should note that depending on the Bible that you're using, sometimes these will be, you'll have like designations in here.
Like I'm looking at the ESV, which not only will give a title for this section, which they say, The Bride Confesses Her Love.
but throughout this it'll say it'll have a she and then it'll say others and then she and then he
so go back and forth and if your bible has those keep in mind that's not part of the original
right you won't find these kind of designations in the hebrew although i will point out that some
of the earliest greek manuscripts we have of the old testament like codex sinaiticus
already then in the early centuries of the church they were designating the speakers like in the
margin so this goes way back this is just a it's supposed to be helpful for uh for people to
understand who's speaking because if you're reading in english you can't always tell hebrew
has a way like a lot of languages have a way like they have gender with nouns so masculine nouns
feminine nouns and you can tell when you're reading in the original if it's a man speaking
or if it's a woman speaking or if it's if it's a group speaking you can't always tell that in
translation so that's one of the reasons that in many bibles today they'll actually have the
sections labeled she he or or they so let's let's see let's see what she uh what she says you start
out here with uh the heading of the entire thing it's called uh the song of songs which is
solomons in hebrew that's uh the song of songs is shir hasherim and this is the uh
the hebrew superlative so that's the we would say the best of songs but just like you know the holy
of holies is the most holy place or the king of kings is the greatest king so the shir hasherim
the song of songs is the finest or the best of the songs which is solomons and of course this
is where we get the title also, The Song of Solomon. So after the title, here's what she says.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. Your anointing
oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore, virgins love you. Draw me after you.
let us run the king has brought me into his chambers so i mean where there's no like lead
into this she she jumps she jumps right in uh and this is probably probably best uh rendered
something like uh let him smother me with kisses let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth and
why we do this doesn't work so well in our culture because when you think about a kiss
of course we always think about a kiss where one person's mouth is touching another person's mouth
but we do have evidence in the uh in the ancient near east that sometimes there were nose kisses
which are you know still happen in some cultures today so she's saying i don't want i don't want
like a peck on the cheek or i don't want a nose kiss i want the real thing i want your lips on
my lips and not just once but i want you to as it were smother me with kisses so let him kiss me
with the kisses of his mouth. And then she transitions from that to say that his love
is better than wine. Now, depending on the translations you're looking at, many of them
will just say love. This is actually, this is a plural, dodeem. Doed is the singular, dodeem is
the plural here. And a pretty strong case can be made from the other occurrences of the plural
of this word throughout the rest of the Old Testament, that it's not just love, but it's
love-making that's being talked about here. So sometimes you'll read it translated as caresses,
but I would translate it love-making. Your love-making is better than wine. In other words,
you know, wine's good, tastes good, it's intoxicating if you have plenty of it. Well,
More intoxicating, better than that, is the relationship that we have together, the lovemaking that we are enjoying.
So it doesn't take long.
You're all the way in with a song of songs.
Yeah, yeah.
And not only that, but you smell good, too.
Yeah, definitely smell good.
Because your anointing oils are fragrant.
all right and and i like this this is uh yeah you are jumping right in but you are like
intoxicated is like the right word that this person this is somebody who is like love drunk
right like this person is uh is fully intoxicated with this other person to the point where you're
like i love the way you smell i like the way your name sounds like i mean i just i i just say your
name over and over again, and I just love it. In fact, I think everybody loves it, because you
have this, therefore virgins love you, this kind of thing. Who couldn't love you? I mean, look at
you. I mean, smell you. Say your name. Everything about you is incredible. Of course everyone loves
you. Yeah, she's speaking to Solomon. The Church is talking to Christ. And what you'll notice
as when she speaks she's hitting all the senses you know i love your taste i love your smell
i love the way you feel i love the way you sound all of this and that when the guy speaks almost
without exception he just talks about how she looks yeah in that i mean solomon you know master
of wisdom also understood kind of the two ways that the two sexes operate to mean guys tend to
be all about the eyes right yeah uh so when he talks he talks over and over about oh you're
really beautiful and he'll describe her beauty in any number of ways but she hits all the senses
he's mainly focused upon sight and you're right i mean she she smells he smells good to her uh his
name is like oil poured out uh and then she said when she says virgins love you she's basically
saying, man, there is not
a woman in sight of
meritable age who is not attracted
to you, obviously.
Who
wouldn't love you?
And then I'm going to straight up run
into your bedroom, as also was
suggested.
Precisely, that's what's happened.
It's a perfect follow-up
actually, when she says, virgins love you.
So she's saying, I'm going to get you away from all
of those. So, verse 4,
draw me after you. In fact,
yeah let's let's run run not to just get away from everybody but she says the king has brought me
into his into his chambers that may not there's a plural in hebrew uh can can mean a variety of
things but uh given the context and given what she's saying then probably would translate it
just as bedroom here that's where she wants him to take her and notice the two there i mean you
switch back and forth so between like how she addresses him so she starts out in third person
let him kiss me let him smother me with kisses but then she switches to to speak of him directly
you know your anointing oils are are fragrant but then in verse four she switches again to third
person and she refers to him as a king so the king has brought me into into his chambers now
that seems kind of jarring to you well that's just that's just the way the hebrew poetry works it's
I'll be jumping back and forth between direct address and third-person address.
That's not unusual for this kind of poetry.
That's just the way it works.
The thing that's maybe the most uncomfortable is that, you know,
as two guys sitting here breaking this down,
is that obviously we are supposed to play the role of the she here,
because obviously we're part of the Bride of Christ,
so this is how we would speak of Christ.
and then it gets even weirder when this is how Christ speaks of us.
But, you know, if you're able to get out, like, let that be,
this is like, you do see someone who is completely enraptured
with this other person, and of course this is the way that the Church
at least ought to be with Christ, right?
Where it's like, yeah, he's the best.
I mean, everything about Him is everything I need.
Not desiring Him is insanity to you.
Yeah, and I think that can be extremely helpful to remind us—let me put it this way.
There is a tendency to speak more abstractly about, you know, doctrine or creeds or teachings or whatever it is,
and to lose the focus upon the person of Jesus.
Yeah.
It's very easy to talk about the things that Jesus gives to us,
the things that Jesus teaches us,
and I'm not denigrating the importance of that.
But as one hymn puts it,
Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus, can my heartfelt longings still.
So it's all about him.
And this song has a way of reminding us of that,
that Christianity is not about, it's not a philosophy,
it's not just a body of doctrine,
And it's all about Christ and his love for us, his, as the Song of Songs will describe it, his passionate, sensual, all-in kind of love for us.
And then the way that we respond to that also reciprocally, where he loves us and we love him.
And basically you get to the point where you can't get enough of being in the other's presence.
so that is one of the beauties
and I think one of the strong messages
of the Song of Songs
that it's all about Christ
it's all about our love for Him
and His love for us
and so that's going to be
a dominating feature of the Song of Songs
I think we're
we're done
we didn't get very far today
we got through four and a half verses
but that's okay
we got a good lead in
we can jump in
I can tease you with this
so you got the four verses
we're going to hear from the others
as the ESV
but one of the things I do like
and we'll get into this next week
is that if you think about
this is a bride
and she's letting you know how great
the groom is
and one thing that happens over and over again
is man everybody agrees
and that's sort of how
it's supposed to be
if you think about
How you would talk about Christ to other people, you would talk about Him in such a way that everyone else would also be like, well, yeah, that sounds like the best.
Sounds like the best. Yeah, yeah. Great, great point.
Yeah, and you're going to see that happen a lot, where everyone's like, we agree. In fact, we're like, no lies detected, right?
So we'll get into some of that next episode.
All right, Chad, I'll see you then.
See you then.
