40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Song of Solomon 6:1-7:5 (Episode 440)

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

The people want to know where the groom has gone. The bride cannot help but end up where he is. And Christ floods His church with compliments and affection. Have a listen. Show Notes: ·       HWSS NWA ·       Support 1517 Podcast Network ·       1517 Podcasts ·       1517 on Youtube ·       1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts ·       1517 Events Schedule ·       1517 Academy - Free Theological Education   What's New from 1517: ·       Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi ·       Junk Drawer Jesus By Matt Popovits ·       Listen to 1517 Executive Director Scott Keith and Magnus Persson on the latest Re:Formera podcast ·       Signup For Free Advent Church Resources for 2024 ·       Clothed with Christ by Brian William Thomas   More from the hosts: ·       Daniel Emery Price ·       Chad Bird

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There's a little events bar, and you can hit that drop-down, check that out. Chad, we are in Song of Solomon, Chapter 6. You know, the bride woke up. She could hear someone clicking on the latch. Someone was trying to get in. yes it was uh it was the the groom but she kind of she kind of tarried a little bit to use an old testament term had to get some stuff together you know get you know get your slippers on get dressed go and then the person's not there and she goes and she looks for her beloved and doesn't

find him and the watchman find her and rough her up a little bit say why are you out here looking uh you gotta wait you gotta wait you gotta wait at home uh wait for him to return and uh we kind of ended with you know some other people saying hey uh you know these are assuming the daughters of jerusalem or other people saying where's hey where's your beloved gone when i read this uh there's a little bit of uh in the new testament you know when you have people saying is your savior gonna come back sometime where's he where's he at he seems to be taking a long time And I like this response that she has, because obviously she's kind of worried about this, and she speaks definitively, you know, he's gone to his garden and this kind of stuff,

but then says, in the words that we ended with, I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine, even though I don't have him right now. Which is kind of what the Church says, right? Yeah, that's what the Church—that's the Church's confession. he uh he is uh he's not here in the sense of we can't see him and yet he is he's ours i am my beloved and my beloved is is mine and then picking up a six four uh he is going to uh have a few things to say about about her i mean he's she's praised him and he has praised her in the past but uh here coming up he's going to go into a another description of her and uh some of it's going to

echo what we've heard before so it's going to be a little bit different but uh it's going to continue his praise of her in comparison with with cities with the animal world with the the fruits the the vineyards all kinds of beautiful stuff coming up so this is going to take us, uh, six, four through, uh, six, 10, something like that is going to be his description of her. And we start out with reference to a couple of cities. So six, four says you are beautiful as Tirzah, my love, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners, which is a probably not a metaphor or simile that we're accustomed to thinking about, but starting out here with these cities. So Tirzah in Jerusalem, uh, Jerusalem, of course, we're all familiar with

Tirzah, maybe not as familiar to us, but that was, uh, that was the capital of the, of the Northern kingdom, at least for the, for the first few reigns of the Kings who were there, you know, later became Samaria, but it was a capital of the Northern, Northern Israel, Northern kingdom, uh, from Jeroboam's reign to, um, to Omri's reign. There was a palace there. Uh, we had several kings who were who were reigning from there so you now this is if if we take solomonic authorship as a given then this would of course be before the divided kingdom but tears would have already existed and presumably if the northern kings made that their capital it was because it was pretty cool place i mean they're not going to choose some little you know spot on the corner of the

road to be their capital city it's going to be a place that is well known that has all the things that you're looking for in a capital city. So even in Solomon's time, Tirzah would have been probably a beautiful city and a perfect specimen for a capital after Solomon's death, and you have the division of the north and south. So she's beautiful as Tirzah,

and then she's lovely as Jerusalem. I was thinking just how fitting this is too when you look at the broader implications, meaning of the Song of Songs, because here we have the bride, the church, we would say, compared to Jerusalem, lovely as Jerusalem. Well, how fitting is that? Because in the Old Testament, Jerusalem and Zion are, of course, not just a city or geographical location, but they also become names for the people of God. It's where the temple is. It's

where, of course, the capital is. But it's beyond that. Jerusalem and Zion become names for the community of believers who are called and chosen by god and of course this just carries right over into the new testament you have paul talking about in galatians jerusalem above who is our mother she is our uh metropolis to take the uh you know the the literal meaning of that the the mother city and then you know as is well known the very end of revelation you have the new jerusalem coming down out of heaven, dressed as a what? Of course, as a bride. So the comparison of her to Jerusalem is very fitting, both in its Old Testament context and with its typology of Christ and his bride, the Church. You know, you would have thought that maybe

coming out of the sky you might see the new Lebanon, but no. It's not anything else. It's got to be Jerusalem, right? It can't be a new anything else. And, you know, you kind of catch on to this pretty early on as a Christian. I mean, if you spend any time in church, Jerusalem's a pretty big deal. And of course, it's a big deal because it's the city that Jesus sets His eyes, like, you know, He sets His face like a flint towards Jerusalem, right? I mean, that Jerusalem is...it's always important, it's important in the Old Testament, but it's made It's important in the Old Testament because of what's going to be done there, and what's going to be done there is your salvation is going to be won there.

And, you know, this is the place of the death of God for the life of the world, is Jerusalem. It's not just any old place. Yeah, yeah. There's so many layers to Jerusalem. I mean, literally, of course, but figuratively, too. I mean, it can stand for all sorts of positive and negative images, but the overall dominant image is that of this is the place where God dwells, this is where he works salvation, and ultimately this is the place, like you said, where he dies to win salvation for the world, for sure, but in particular for his bride, who receives the benefits of that. I'm not sure what to do with awesome as an army with banners that could be translated. I think armies with banners are awesome.

I mean, you ever watch a movie and, like, you see, you know, there's, like, here's the bad guys and it looks like they've won and then all of a sudden you see all these banners come popping up over this hill and you see an army and, you know, I mean, you don't want them not to have banners. I mean, the banners are, like, the first thing you see. You see, like, these things crest over the hill and you're like, oh, no, is that a lot of banners?

Because I think there's a lot of guys with those banners. Those banners aren't floating up there on their own. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. It is awesome, and I think that's probably a good translation. I mean, the word itself has connotations of fear or even terror, like terrifying is an army with banners.

That's true, too. Yeah. It depends. Especially if they're coming for you. Yeah. But even, I mean, in the older meaning of awesome, we take awesome to mean, oh, like, super cool, right? That's the way we typically use awesome today.

But, I mean, literally, that which strikes awe in someone. And awe, at least in its older meaning, did have this connotation of kind of a holy fear. You're awestruck is maybe the way that we would say it today. So awesome, fearful, terrifying is an army with banners. You do get this sense on occasion in the Song of Songs where he's just like, his love is so great, it's almost intimidating. you know or he's he's confused at times or just overwhelmed by her uh because he is just enraptured with her love and i think that's you know part of what's going on here she's conquered him we might say with uh with her love like an army with banners is setting out to conquer yeah well you

know we've recently had not we chad but in the country we live in had a couple of hurricanes you know of down the east coast and we would not describe those as awesome um but the bible would right bible certainly would yeah strike an awe into those who see them coming and see the even on video you uh i can i'm not i've not lived through a hurricane but even in video yeah that's awesome in the sense of it strikes you with awe because of the sheer hour of the of the storms yeah then uh this idea of that i was just communicating about you know how she overwhelms him at times that's picked up in the very first he basically says quit looking at me you know turn your eyes away from me for they they overwhelm me those is when she when she looks

at him he's just kind of sees with this uh power or force in which he feels just you know taken over overwhelmed by her uh just too much for him to stand being in her in her presence so i mean we're we're talking about love but this is not puppy love this isn't your teenage romantic love i mean this is just as powerful a force as you can imagine that has taken hold of him and her together which is just it it amazes me because of this this picture of christ and his bride I mean, there's plenty of talk everywhere in the Bible about God's love for his people, but it's pretty hard to come close to the overwhelming language, the powerful language you have in the Song of Songs about God's ferocious love for his bride.

I mean, this is pretty hard to top here. So he's described all this, and then he's going to get down to particulars. So he's compared her to Tirzah, to Jerusalem, army with banners. And now he's going to actually in these next couple of verses, he's going to rehearse what he's already said before. I believe it's back in chapter four about her. He's going to talk about her hair, her teeth and her cheeks. And when he does this here, he is just echoing what he's already said about her. So he goes on.

Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of ewes that have come up from the washing. All of them bear twins. Not one among them has lost its young. And then verse seven, your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. So all of that we've heard before. The hair kind of flowing down like a flock of goats would flow down or leap down or run down these slopes. The teeth are talking about the whiteness of her teeth. They're shining white like these flock of ewes that have been washed none of her teeth are missing they all bear twins got all their teeth they're beautiful got a beautiful smile is what we would say in kind

of a prosaic sort of way and then her cheeks are are uh kind of blush we might say red like the of a pomegranate behind behind her veil we talked about that in a in a previous previous episode but He's continuing that here as he describes her physical beauty. And then having done that, he's going to introduce a little bit of new language. He says, this is verse 8. There are 60 queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only one of her mother, pure to her who bore her. so what's going on here is you have all kinds of comparisons with um with others so you've got

a comparison with queens with concubines with other virgins and then even with uh any other children that her mother would have born i think when it says here the only one of her mother this is not this is not saying that she's an only child it's simply saying that even her own mother has placed her affections predominantly upon her in comparison to the affections that she has for all of her other children. The mother couldn't help it. She just, she's her favorite, huh?

Yeah, she's just her favorite. She's like, I've had some kids, but this is obviously the best one. Yeah, pretty much. That's what's going on here, which, you know, works great in poetry. Maybe not so great in real life. Yeah, that's not advice.

That's just like a statement of fact. Yes. Yeah. Don't, don't take this as a parental advice to show favoritism to one child over another. We, uh, we see in the case of Jacob and Joseph that didn't work out so well. Uh, so, uh, yeah, I don't go down that road. Another kind of cool thing here, which I realized this morning when I was doing my prep work that, uh, verse eight has, uh, ascending and descending kind of comparisons. So it says there are 60 Queens and 80 concubines and virgins without number so you have you have queens and then concubines and then virgins and of course that's descending rank right the queens would be at the top and then the concubines are uh of course

part of that part of the harem of a king and they don't have the status of a full wife we might say are a queen for sure, but they are certainly connected to the king. And then you have at the lowest rank, just virgins, just maidens, those who are of maritable age. So you go from queens down to virgins. So you go descending. But then when you get to the numbers, you go ascending. So 60 queens, 80 concubines and virgins without number. So you go from low to high and then from high to low. So it's kind of a cool thing that the Hebrew does there by working in both directions at the same time. And of course, the interpretation of this is that, yeah, you can have all these queens and all these concubines and all these virgins, and yet none of them stand a chance

beside her because she is the best of all of these, no matter who she's compared to, no matter how many she might be compared to she is the best of the best and then verse 9 picks up on this same kind of comparison to talk about my dove my perfect one we've seen that uh those terms of endearment used before and he is her only one just like she is the only one the chosen one of her mother pure to her who who bore her and then not done goes on to talk about how other people view her. So we've heard about these virgins and queens and concubines, and here we have the young women. The young women saw her and called her blessed. The queens and concubines also, and they praised her, which probably doesn't happen in real life very often. When you have the most

beautiful woman among a group, then I would assume, I'm a guy, so I don't know this for sure, But I would assume the common thing would not be for all the other women to look at her and say, wow, you are definitely the most beautiful among us. Maybe that does happen. I don't know. It seemed like jealousy would be more of the standard approach than praise. Yeah, I mean, when this plays itself out in real life, it seems like all these women might realize it. It seems that women are pretty perceptive that way. They might realize it if someone just walks in the room

and they're the most stunning person in the room, but they immediately start looking for their husbands. That's what they do. They don't start adoring this person and just piling up the compliments and stuff. They're like, grab my husband. We got to get out of here. yeah which is why any any wise husband knows that if he ever hears his wife talking about

how beautiful another woman is the only appropriate response is to say to her yeah well she doesn't stand a chance next to you that's way more beautiful than she is yeah any wise husband would uh would know that is the appropriate you don't sit there and go like yeah yeah yeah you do not agree with her yeah that any young husbands out there might be tempted to do that do not Yeah, if your wife's like, isn't so-and-so gorgeous? You're like, I don't know. I guess she's okay. I don't know.

Not really mine. Yeah. So here we have all kinds of comparisons with the other women from queens on down to just ordinarily young girls of marital age. And none of them is anything compared to her. Even her own mother knows that she is the best. And so all end up turning to her and calling her blessed. It could be translated happy as well, but I like the terminology of blessed. And they praise her.

Reminded me, by the way, of, this is not talking about the Virgin Mary, but you hear the same kind of language in Luke 1, 48, for behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed. Same kind of terminology used there. In fact, the Septuagint uses the same Greek word there that is used in Luke's gospel. But this is talking about the bride of Christ, the church, the one who is blessed and praised by all. So then having said all that, he draws another couple of comparisons. Now he's moving toward the celestial bodies.

So he says, who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, and now picking up the refrain with which he began this, awesome as an army with banners. So there's some, in the Hebrew here, we have a couple of different words that are used for sun and moon. These are not your typical nouns that are employed. So beautiful as the moon. Moon, the word that's used here, labanah, is more like the white or the shining one, which is, you know, it fits with the moon, especially if you're thinking about a full moon. And then the word that's used here for sun is like the hot one. So you might say beautiful as the white one and bright as the hot one.

And the reason I think that is maybe going on is because you remember way back in chapter one, she says i am dark but lovely and maybe part of what's going on here by calling her beautiful as the moon is his way of saying yeah you may have been uh your skin may have been tan because your brothers made you work in the vineyard but you're actually beautiful as the white and bright and milky shining moon in the sky maybe that's part of what's happening here and then she complains about being out in the heat, and he says, well, actually, you're bright as the sun, bright as that hot one in the sky. So maybe an allusion back to chapter one.

But then he wraps it up with this repetition of awesome as an army with banners, or just overwhelming, we might say. You strike awe in those who see you just like an army marching with its banners. In typical dude fashion, you see that he has to reload the compliments. You know, he's only got so many, and so he's got to go back. He's got to recycle these. Yeah. Did I talk about your eyes yet?

I talked about the pomegranates. I told you that? Okay. Still true. Your teeth. Did I mention your teeth before? They're very white, and you're not missing any of them, which is super, super attractive. Yeah.

Yeah, typical dude fashion there. I mean, there's a limit to our creativity, you know, so cut us some slack. We do what we can do. Now, she's going to pick up. He's done for a moment anyway. And she's going to pick up here with a couple of verses, verse 11 and 12. And here's what she says. I went down to the nut orchard, some orchard.

I mean, this is the only place this word occurs, this Hebrew word occurs in the Old Testament. so your translations will vary here it's probably just nut is the best way some some people say it's a walnut others you know some of the nut but nut orchard is probably best went down to the nut orchard to look at the blossoms of the valley to see whether the vines had budded whether the pomegranates were in bloom okay so she's going on a little journey here she's checking out nature orchards, vineyards, uh, where the pomegranates grow, all of that. And then we get to verse 12 and, uh, I'm always, uh, I find it humorous. Every book that we cover, there's at least one verse in every book where I'll be reading the commentaries and they'll say,

this is the most difficult verse in the entire book to translate and interpret. And, uh, this is the one that they say, uh, is, is the most difficult because it's, uh, you know, the Hebrew is uncertain or it's just difficult to put your finger on what exactly has been communicated, but I'll just read the ESV here. It says, before I was aware, my desire set me among the chariots of my kinsman, a prince. So we'll just, we'll stick with that and not get into all the details as to what this may or may not mean. So he praises her and then she, she goes on a walk she's going to explore the orchards and the the valleys and where the pomegranates grow and you kind of get the impression that as she's on this trip on this journey before she

knows what's happening then all of a sudden she is in this chariot she's among the chariots of my kinsman a prince at least that's one way you can translate that and i don't know exactly what to do with this my best guess is what's happening is she all of a sudden finds herself in his presence the presence of of her of her lover in his chariot along with with him but if you have other ideas jump in there dan because that's a it's the best i can make out of this no that's exactly what i think it is i think it's it's like uh imagine you're like okay i'm gonna go do something other than obsess over this person i'm gonna go check on the nut orchard and see if there's any you know ripe pomegranates down there i'm gonna go for a walk and uh you know these all

seem like pretty cool things you know you're gonna go down there to you know go into the the orchards and the vineyards and you're gonna go you know examine that stuff but uh as i went to do that that's not where i ended up imagine you uh there's a place you really wanted to go or someone you really wanted to see but you're like i'm not doing that i'm gonna go to this place instead and you start walking and sure enough you just end up at their front door right um it's like well i tried but i failed and i just ended up here i am again here i am yeah yeah that seems to be the best way to take this uh anyone who's interested can read the the dozen commentaries which uh try and dissect all the details of that but i mean they're they're

just our verses especially in the old testament we have a lot more we have a lot more greek evidence to to check out what words might mean than we do hebrew and there just are times where we have to say and this is the best that we could probably do with with this verse so that's where she's at that's verse 11 12 so just to wrap up the the chapter here and this is this seems to me to be a bad one of these bad ill-chosen chapter divisions but uh we'll just kind of finish it off and pick it up in chapter 7, but in verse 13, at least the first half of verse 13, we have these others. Maybe it's the daughters of Jerusalem, maybe it's a choir, we're not told who says this, but here's what they say. Return, return, O Shulamite, return, return. So there's a

you know a real uh desire here uh you know this uh this repetition for four different times in intensity here return return return return oh shulamite that we may look upon you i mean she's so unbelievably gorgeous i mean she outranks miss universe here i mean she is the best of the best most beautiful one ever so come back oh shulamite and i'll i'll talk about the shulamite just a second and then the second half of verse 13 which really belongs to the first few verses of chapter seven begins this way and this is him talking about her really talking up not to her yet but talking about her and he starts out by saying why should you look upon the shulamite as upon a dance between two armies or that could also be translated between two two camps okay so this is this is the

first time that we've had any mention of a title or a name or maybe a nickname or a pet name in the Song of Songs. And it's mentioned twice here, the Oshulamite. This is a difficult one to figure out exactly what it means. So let me just give you a rundown of the various options that people put out up there for who this is could be a proper name probably not though uh this is not like sarah or rebecca or whatever i mean just it's the hebrew doesn't lend itself toward being a proper name so probably not that one attractive option is that in the hebrew this is a this might be like a feminine form of solomon's name so you have solomon and then you have the the shulamite being the solomoness is the way it sometimes is rendered so it's possible i kind of like that

especially when you think about christ and christian you have solomon you have the solomoness so maybe that's what's going on here another option is that it means it can actually be translated into something like a complete one or perfect one that's a that's one other option that's put out there and then one that's pretty common although i don't know that really stands of the scrutiny is that this is a description of where she's from. So, uh, the only town that somewhat matches the Hebrew would be a place called Shunem, which is, uh, up near Mount Tabor. And it's, it's known, uh, for one reason, really only one reason in particular. And this is where, uh, old David's beautiful young virgin bed warmer, uh, Abishag, that's where her hometown was.

This actually led some commentators—I think this is what Mitchell does in his massive Song of Songs commentary. He actually thinks that the woman being talked about here throughout this is Abishag, that she later becomes— Solomon's obsession? Yeah, that she becomes Solomon's obsession. And if you remember, going back to the opening chapters of 1 Kings, I mean, if that were the case, and it's just theory, of course, but if that were the case, it would explain why when Solomon's brother tried to get Bathsheba to convince Solomon to give Abishag to him as a wife, why Solomon acted so angrily to the suggestion and actually had his brother executed as a result of that. It's like, you dare approach my mom to try and get this woman that I am totally infatuated with to be your wife? I mean, it would fit with historical narrative, but it's a stretch.

Anyway, but that's one explanation for her name. So however you want to take it, probably best is to do what most translations do, and that is to transliterate it, not really explain it or anything like that. This is just what she's called. She's called the Shulamite. Twice, in fact. So come back, that we may look upon you. And then he says, why do you want to look upon her as a dance between two armies? The two armies here is, i'm guessing this is probably the name of an ancient dance that has been lost to us this is i don't think this should be taken literally like there's some sort of military dance that's going on here this is probably some sort of name to an ancient dance that had just been lost to us i mean

the hebrew is hebrew makes sense i mean the hebrew we know from back in like in genesis 32 when jacob sees the the the angels he played he names a place mahanayim which means two camps so we know the name uh but what it means here is a bit ambiguous it's probably like a lot of those you know a lot of beginnings of the psalms will say like a psalm of david uh according to blank and it'll give you some ancient tune name that we really don't know what it means i'm guessing this would be like you know the ancient equivalent of the the waltz or the foxtrot or the whatever whatever dance that you might want to to name so that's the way that's way he starts out uh now that's the way he ends chapter six and the way he starts out what he's

going to continue in in chapter seven the thing that's interesting about this is so like everybody all these others and maybe this is daughters of jerusalem or whatever um they have it seems that they've conceded that like she's it so they're like hey come on back like we want to gawk at you a little bit apparently um so come on we're gonna we're gonna look at you and he's like hey you don't need to be looking at her that's there's almost like a little jealousy like popping up

there right like hey that's not for you to look at it's for me to look at like and then but it's I think what's funny and you miss it if you were just like reading one chapter one day and then you pick up the next chapter is that at the end of six he's like why would you why would you want to look at her and then

and then in chapter seven he starts and you're like well I'm pretty sure that's why dude like are you gonna give us like this whole body look at her yeah yeah if he's being protective well he should have kept his mouth shut and not gone on in chapter seven to talk about everything from her feet to her to her hair yeah yeah yeah you're right it's kind of funny you know why are you looking at her oh yeah that's why let me uh let me unpack this a little bit for you so in one of the earlier chapters he skipped some body parts like he began with her hair

and he worked his way down to her breast like two fawns twin fawns this this this time he's going to go the other direction but he's going to add more he's going to go uh whole body look here so i'm just going to read through these first few verses uh and you can that way you can capture all of it at once. So he says, this is chapter seven, verse one. How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O noble daughter. Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat encircled with lilies your two breasts are like two fawns twins of a gazelle your neck is like an ivory tower your eyes are pools and heshbon by the gate of bath rabim your nose is like a tower of lebanon

which looks toward damascus your head crowns you like caramel and your flowing locks are like purple. A king is held captive in the tresses. Pause there for a second. He's going to go on to talk more about her breast in just a minute. So it starts with her feet, and then he works his way upward. We have feet, thighs, navel, belly, breast, neck, eyes, nose, head, and then the locks of her hair. He's going to take it all in. And, you know, without being too explicit here. Some of these, some of these terms in Hebrew are not quite as anatomically specific as they would be in English. Let's kind of put it that way. So, uh, for instance, when he talks about, uh, the belly, well, that that's more of kind of the region between from the rib cage down

to the thighs. That's, you know, that general part of her, of her body. Uh, and the, uh, you know some of the other parts like the thighs i could also refer to the areas around the hips so our our terminology for human anatomy is much more specific than a lot of the bibles uh sometimes the bible use terms that are much more general i don't know anyway i don't know if your belly is a heap of wheat is like a compliment that translates no i was thinking about that and one suggestion which kind of made sense to me is, I mean, when I hear that, I think in terms of shape, obviously, you know, heap of wheat, but some things have suggested it's more in terms of like wheat colored skin is what he's getting at there. So maybe, maybe that's the case. Although,

you know, things are different culture to culture, you know, in a lot of ancient cultures, uh what we think of like in 2024 modern america western culture uh the you know the ideal body type you have a you know we'll say 20 year old female who has the bikini bikini body that would not have been as as attractive in ancient cultures as a woman with how to put it a little more meat on her bones i suppose uh because thinness was equated with a lack of food and poverty yeah where a person with more body weight was uh connected with someone who was rich someone had plenty of plenty of food so maybe that's what's going on here the one that kind of throws me usually is the nose like the tower of lebanon you know big noses tower noses is not something

that we uh usually usually associate with beauty uh again some people suggest here maybe uh maybe you know what I'm talking about here is not so much the size but rather the uh the shape or the uh so maybe something connected with with color who knows uh presumably in this culture these kind of compliments would have been well received otherwise you know you wouldn't have these in a in a love song such as this so I do love the way it starts because you know you have this how beautiful are your feet and sandals and you know yeah this takes you right to uh how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news, and if you are talking about the church, which of course he is, this is the church's main mandate. I mean, this is the thing that's been given to the church

to do, is to preach the good news, and so long before the church, you have this sort of type of Christ in the church, and Christ saying, man, I tell you what I like, is I like how beautiful your feet are yeah yeah i was thinking too when we uh when we read the song of songs in light of of the church in christ this is actually uh it's quite beautiful too because when you paul uses the language of we're all members of the body of christ you know and some of us are one member and some of us are or another member and because he goes through all the various parts of her body for literally from head to toe and praises all of these various parts of the body in antiquated ways, of course, but in ways of which are all designed to accent her attractiveness,

her beauty, the way that she has just taken his heart captive, then, I mean, what a beautiful application to individual Christians, because it doesn't matter which part of the body of Christ you are, whether you're in the feet or the thighs, the navel or the breast or the neck or eyes or Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whatever place in the body that Christ has put you, you're beautiful. You're just the way that he wants you to be because he has beautified you with his love and with his grace and with his righteousness. And so all these individual parts of the body actually breaks down into a beautiful preaching of Christ's love for all the members of the body of Christ. no matter where you are no matter what part of the body that you comprise you are beautiful in his eyes because you are beautified by his love and his making you part of his bride yeah that

was exactly it i mean we've heard like a million times that beauty is in the eye of the beholder but this is uh this is has a lot more weight to it when the when the eyes of the beholder happens to be God. So if God beholds you as beautiful, then that is what you are. That is indeed what you are. And we are indeed at the end

of 40 minutes. For all our listeners, one more episode, and we're done. We're committed. We're going to finish Song of Songs next time, and then we will leap into Isaiah. Oh, yeah. We'll be there for a minute. Yeah, we will be.

yeah alright Chad well I'll see you next episode alright see you then