40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Song of Solomon 7:6-8:14 (Episode 441)

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Chad and Daniel finish The Song of Solomon in this episode. This love is public love that is stronger than death and more fiery than hell. 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

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 to check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, Marcia, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing. Hey, head over to the events page. There's still a handful of tickets left for the national event and the regional event. Regional event is in northwest Arkansas, April 25th and 26th. Come hang out.

It's a great time. Chad and I will both be there. Grab tickets for that. Also, you can still grab tickets for the national event. Very few tickets for that left, but there are some. So you can grab those. That is next October. It's a good time. We'd love to see you.

Chad, we are in Song of Solomon, chapter 7, and we are going to wrap this thing up today, one way or another. That is the plan. We got through the first five verses, last episode of this chapter, and we ended sort of in the middle of the groom gushing about the bride. We haven't seen him maybe go on and on like this yet. This seems like, if you've been sort of tracking with the bride, she's got to be just loving this. Because she's said a lot of these kind of things about him, and his responses have been like,

well, you are gorgeous, or hey, don't worry about it, there's no one like you. Some one-liners and stuff, but he's putting together a long string of compliments here, and we ended sort of right in the middle of that. yeah he's gone full william shakespeare on her here he's pulled out the uh the poetry and began with her feet and sandals worked up to her thighs navel belly breast eyes nose head and yeah we left off with him talking about her blowing locks then in which a king is held captive so feet to hair yeah so he's uh he's taken in her her beauty from head to toe we talked about last time how when you think about the song in relation to Christ and the church, how every single member

of the body of Christ, whether they are at the top or bottom, somewhere in between, whichever part of the body you'd like to think of yourself, then in the eyes of the bridegroom, you're beautiful, you're perfect, you're covered in his righteousness. Now, picking up with verse 6, he's going to shift back. So he worked his way up to her, her tresses, her flowing locks. And now he's going to work his way back down to one of his favorite parts of the woman's body to talk about, and that is her breast. So let me read, finish out this section by reading six through nine. He says, how beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights. Your stature is like a palm tree and your breasts are like its clusters. I say, I will climb the palm

tree and lay hold of its fruit. Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine and the scent of your breath like apples and your mouth like the best wine. So I don't think I really need to unpack a lot of the imagery that's the climbing the palm tree and laying hold of if it's fruit here. I think that's probably pretty clear to, uh, to our listeners. Uh, so yeah, this is, this is picking up just more of, well, so this is a little bit different. This isn't just like describing through various kinds of metaphors, uh, what her body is like, even though there's some of that here, but this is, uh, almost shifting from the metaphorical to the literal. He basically wants to get his hands on her is what he's, what he's saying. He wants to

be uh be intimate with her to uh to kiss her to lay hold of her basically to uh to be her her lover as as she is his so we kind of have this um continuing theme not just of her beauty but of the intimacy between between him and and her now having that wrapped that up uh we're going to shift back to something that she says to him, it's almost get the impression that she interrupts him, not in a rude sort of way, but almost like put puts her finger to to his lips and says, OK, you know, I tell you what it this is her. It goes down smoothly for my beloved. She's picking up the image of the wine that he just talked about. You know, your your mouth is like the best wine. And she, as it were, interrupts him and says, oh yeah, yeah, in fact, let me tell

you, this wine goes down smoothly for my beloved, gliding over lips and teeth. And then I am my beloved's and his desire is for me, she says. So we've seen multiple times in the song how wine or intoxication or drinking wine is used as an image for basically love or love making, wants to become intoxicated by her love, wants to drink of her love. And here she says, yeah, you can drink as much as you like. It's going to blow smoothly. It's going to glide over your lips and your teeth. So basically enjoy yourself with the wine of love that I provide for you. And then she says, I am my beloved's. And she doesn't continue that by saying, and my beloved is mine. We've had that elsewhere in the song. But instead, she picks up a word here,

which I don't know how I would translate it. ESV has desire, which I guess is okay. But this is a really strong word. This is the word that is found only three times in the Old Testament. and the other two are in genesis 3 and 4 so back in genesis 3 16 this is where you have the woman's desire will be for her husband this is a much debated verse by the way back in genesis 3 as to how you should translate that some translated her desire will be against her husband some translated desire will be for her husband but kind of leaving that aside that's one one occurrence Genesis 4, the very next chapter, is where God says to Cain that sin's desire is for you. You know, they have this kind of beastly image of sin crouching by the door, and its desire is for you.

So this isn't just kind of a mild desire, but there's some fervency here, some ardent desire that's going on here. And of the three occurrences, this is the only one where you have the man. So his desire is for me, she says, just like sin's desire was for Cain, and just like the woman's desire was for her husband back in Genesis chapter 3. Isn't that word, it's almost involuntary? Imagine being obsessed with something, and you don't feel like you can control this obsession, right? You're like, I wish I didn't want this thing so much, but I just can't help it.

Like, it's not just, like, a, you know what I would really like right now? I could really go for, you know, a milkshake. A milkshake sounds good. I kind of desire that. No, no, no. This is more like, I couldn't shake this if I wanted to. Like, this is, like, this is in me. Yeah, it's almost an irresistible passion for something.

Yeah. Which, the thing that's cool about it, by the way, this, you know, six through nine, you can tell this is, like, some young love and stuff. Like, if you try to roll this off on your wife, she'd be like, stop it. If you've been married for any amount of time, you couldn't do it. You could get some eye rolls over this, for sure. But, yeah, so he does all that. And it is great, because this is something that is awesome, but also maybe, like, difficult to comprehend, that she's literally saying this.

And if you're thinking about this in the context of Christ and the Church, forget all the, you know, the sort of sexual imagery and all this kind of stuff. when you get down to the root of the matter, it's that you are Christ, and His desire, unbridled passion, the thing that He must have, is you. Yeah. Which is pretty awesome. I'm reminded of—and this is different languages and stuff, but I think the feeling's the same—there's these times in the new testament where jesus says that he must do things as if like he like he doesn't like it's it's not not doing it isn't it is not an option and one of my favorite divine necessity yeah and one of my favorite instances of that is with zacchaeus and uh when he's in the tree and then he says hey zacchaeus come down there and from that tree and he says i must have supper

with you. Not, I would like to come to your house and eat, but that I have to do this, right? And of course, he goes there, and then Zacchaeus just starts repenting all over the place. Jesus doesn't even preach a sermon or anything. He's just like Jesus in his house, and Zacchaeus is falling all over himself. And I get the same kind of thing from this, where you belong to Christ, and he must have you. Yeah. Yeah, I know we've said this more than once in covering this song, but I'm convinced more and more that there's probably no more powerful book that presents this unbridled passion, this just irresistible desire and love that Christ has for church than the Song of Songs. I mean, it's pretty hard to be on par with the descriptions that you have here. And you see it

reflected plenty of other places in in old and new testament this uh this driving love that won't stop on the part of god for israel christ for his church but man it's it's here in in bold unmissable in this description well it might be the case it might be the case that you could read the song songs hear all of this sort of stuff there's all this unbridled passion this is like this necessity of Christ having his church, and then all of a sudden when Jesus shows up to Nicodemus and says, God loved the world in this way, you start to understand it, where it's like, he loves the church, he loves his people so much that he was willing to do this. You get the impression in the Song of Psalms that this guy would die for her.

Yeah, and you know, I think it's helpful too, because we have this divine love presented in different sorts of ways in the scriptures in terms of like relationships i think of you know as a as a father has compassion on his children so the lord has compassion those who fear him and so you have you have the uh just kind of broaden it not just kind of fatherly but just we might say parental love for children as one of the ways in which we can try to at least partially imagine the immensity of God's love for us. Now, if you're a mother or father, you know how much you love your kids. Well, there is just a taste, as it were, of how much God loves us. So from our perspective as parents, that is an insight

into the love of God. But also then if you're a spouse and you know how much you love your wife and your wife loves you, or your husband loves you, and you love your husband, then that gives you an insight, too, into the divine love. So it's great how the scriptures present this from different perspectives. You know, you have the same thing with friend to friend. I mean, there's all kinds of human relationships that are emblematic of the relationship between God and his people. And of course, in here, in song, it's focusing upon two lovers or two spouses. but the scriptures have all these different ways of just trying to get us to open our eyes and see the uh the immensity of divine love that god has for us and yeah all of these just are

holding us more and more into the orbit of what this love looks like yeah all right so uh that's through 10 so let me read the 11 through 13 this is gonna wrap up chapter 7 come my beloved so this is her her talking come my beloved let us go out into the fields and lodge in the the villages let us go early let's go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded whether the great blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom there i will give you my love the mandrakes give forth fragrance and beside our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved. So just a couple of things as far as the details go, depending on which translation you're following, the end of verse

11 is going to say, let us go out to the fields and lodge in either the villages or the henna blossoms. Now you might be saying, oh, that's quite a stretch. It doesn't seem to be a matter of just kind of a word choice. Well, that's because you have homonyms that are going on here. So you got two words that basically spell the same in Hebrew, but they have different meanings. So the word and just the spelling,

the simple spelling could mean, could refer to henna blossoms, which is a pretty strong argument in favor of that because we have had henna blossoms referred to elsewhere in Song of Songs, but it can also mean villages. So either way, they're wanting to kind of go out into the country. whether you translate that villages or kind of in nature,

we might say, among these henna blossoms. So that's one difference. One of the things that I think that is reoccurring in this, because when you read something like this, you're like, okay, what's the deal? So he's like, I've got to have you. She's like, oh, yeah, I can tell you've got to have me. And then so you could easily, and we've had moments like this

where she's like, we're going to go into the chambers or whatever. But a lot of these other times, it's like, Like, I'm going to be out here in the fields, and I'm going to be in the villages and stuff. And you're like, what is the deal with that? And one of the things that strikes me as you get towards the end is there is no desire at all to keep this love a secret, right? And not just in a way that, like, why would you keep it a secret? I don't mean that there's something to keep a secret. But what I mean is that almost as though—and you see this in the way that there's, you know, whether it's the Daughters of Jerusalem or the other people or whatever it is, that there is a—it seems that there is a belief that it is a benefit to others for this love to be on display, right?

So that this love is like a public love. And so you want me, but we're going to go into the villages, and we're going to go into these fields, and I'm going to tell other people about this, and then they're going to respond. And it's not just in this – I don't think it's as simple as like if, you know, if you are newly, madly in love with somebody, of course you're going to talk about them and stuff,

and your friends are going to get very, you know, annoyed. They're going to get tired of hearing about it. Yeah, they're going to be like, could you please – Like, we get it. Like, could you please talk about something else? There's obviously that component to it. But I also think that there's something about it that says, like, no, it's actually a benefit to the world, right? To the people around us for them to witness this, for them to know about it.

Because it seems pretty clear that the implication here is that this is the real deal. This is, like, what it really looks like. and it would be good for you to know what, like, real love looks like. And I think that that, of course, is the case with Christ and the Church, and that we would be doing the same thing, where you would— this is why you would extol, you know, the beauties of Christ and how wonderful He is and all this stuff. The Church isn't, like, necessarily called just to, like, kind of cluster up

and be like, man, isn't Jesus great? And, like, we love Him so much. I hear on Sunday morning, we just love Him. That's all good. that may be going into the quarters. Maybe that's what it is. But there's also a going into the villages and the fields where it's like, no, actually the world needs to know

about this relationship, and obviously in our context because they too can be brought into this relationship. But it is kind of a weird thing. It doesn't feel like these people are just spectators. There are participants in it almost the way that – this is going to be a bad example – but almost the way that, like, if you go to a sporting event, some people have this idea that fans are merely, like, spectators, but they're not. Like, the reason I get the home court advantage or the home field advantage as a thing is because they're a participant in it, and they're, like, part of what's going on. And I get that impression from the people around and stuff, too, that they are involved in this in that way. And I don't know.

I think that's an interesting thing from this, that it's not just sort of this—you have both things going on. Like, oh, yes, I'm going to come steal you away and sneak up into your house in the middle of the night. But also, we're going to do some very, very public things. And this is also how the life of the Church works, where you have your intimate settings within the Church, but you also have this call to have this sort of public witness to the world. Yeah, you know, I was thinking when you were describing that, I was thinking about examples in our culture of how fascinated people get with relationships between people, especially famous people. Yeah. It's like they have an investment in this relationship. I think, yeah, there's a lot of just kind of, you know, base curiosity going on, you know, who's with who and, you know, are they dating? Are they going to get married? All that kind of stuff.

But I think it's I think beyond that, it's just a it's a fascination with love, fascination with either two people that are in a relationship or they're married. And they really kind of become like you're describing, not just spectators, but fans who are involved in that relationship. And same thing's going on here. Same thing applies broadly, theologically speaking, when you have the church shouting from the rooftops about the love and the beauty of Christ. there's an attractiveness uh kind of an almost magnetic attractiveness to that that draws people in make them think man i gotta i need to figure out more about this you know this is a pretty pretty awesome thing that i need to learn more about um only other thing i'd mentioned at the at the end here verse 13 the mandrakes uh is uh mandrakes give forth fragrance if you remember

way back in Genesis, you have the mandrakes mentioned between Rachel and Leah. Mandrakes were held in the ancient world to be aphrodisiacs. So kind of that is in the background here, where you have these mandrakes giving forth a fragrance, filling the air, as it were, with love and romance. And here they're pictured as beside the doors, the opening in which they are entering in order to to be with each other i think that's all i got on on chapter seven anything else i think that's it man let's uh we're gonna move on to the finale we are halfway through 40 minutes so we gotta gonna wrap this up all right we're gonna shift here to something which uh beginning chapter eight might seem a little bit well yeah don't try it as long as

it's been weird but if my wife rolled this out on me one morning i'd be like yo what Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely not, you won't find this on any, you know, Valentine's Day cards or anything. Stacey didn't give you this one for Valentine's Day? She didn't say this to you? Yeah, and strangely, she did not. I did not open it up and read these words. Chad, oh, that you were like a brother to me, who nursed at my mother's breast. Yeah, pretty strange to us, but I think we can make sense of it. Even it might still be odd, but I think I can explain it to where it kind of makes sense. So this is, let me just read one through four.

Oh, that you were like a brother to me who nursed in my mother's breast. If I found you outside, I would kiss you and none would despise me. I would lead you and bring you into the house of my mother. She who used to teach me. I would give you spiced wine to drink the juice of my pomegranate. His left hand is under my head and his right hand embraces me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. Okay, so you got to understand what's going on culturally here.

So we don't think anything about a boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife kissing in public. I mean, that's, you know, maybe we don't want them like really sloppy kissing, making out. But, you know, it's nothing to us if a man kisses his wife or if a girlfriend kisses her boyfriend. But not so in the ancient world. If you kiss in public, then the person that you kissed was a close family member, like sister and brother, or a parent kissing their child. So the reason she says, I wish you were like my brother, is because in public, she can kiss her brother in this family affectionate sort of way, like some cultures still do to this day. We don't really do that in the American culture, but a lot of cultures do kiss on the cheek or whatever it might be. So she's saying I basically to translate this into our culture, she's saying, I wish that I could make out with you in public or I wish I could at least kiss you in public.

But I can't I can't display my love for you in this physical sort of way out in public the way that I could if you were my my brother. Now, that still might shock us as weird, but it at least explains why she is making this comparison. She understands that This relationship needs to be on public display Yeah She doesn't want to keep anything secret About this She wishes that they could walk

Arm in arm, hand in hand That they could kiss as much as they want to Just go for it But she knows It's not socially acceptable Basically To do this So that is the reason you have this

to us, odd expression. Wish you were like a brother to me who nourished him in the mother's breast. So, and continuing with this, the same imagery, she said that, you know, if that were the case, I'd take you home. I would lead you and bring you into the house of my house and my mother. I'd make sure that you were with me and that way we could, we could be together and we could shower affections upon each other inside and outside the house. The mother's referred to is she who used to teach me there's quite a bit of literature that's that's behind this uh trying to explain this and most most come into the let's come to the conclusion that what's being talked about here is that the mother is the teacher in the sense that she's the one who kind of introduces

her daughter into uh how you how you love your your husband so you know teaching her not just kind of the birds and the bees but this is how you you are a lover to to the man who's going to come into your life and so this is uh at least most commentators will lean in that direction so she bring you to the house of her mother the mother who not only brought her into the world but also taught her how to be a wife and then she continues by saying once i had you here what would i do i would give you spiced wine to drink so wine with spices which was pretty common in ancient israel not just wine but spiced wine give that to drink the juice of my pomegranate i'm guessing there's probably a metaphor that's involved here she's not going to like just

squeeze some pomegranate juice for him and put it in his hand in the glass this is probably a more uh sensual uh possibly sexual imagery that's being used here because we have of course all many times her body is and parts of our body are are used in um are are described in this metaphorical way by using various fruits to to do that now verse three uh is quite literal his left hand is under my head and his right hand embraces me so they're they are together uh not just hand and hand or arm and arm but with each other in in a bodily sort of way and then she wraps up with something we've seen i don't know three times maybe in the in the song of songs this reference of the daughters of Jerusalem, not stirring up or awakening love until it pleases. So don't rush

things. Don't get in the way. Basically, let us have our time together and don't interrupt us. Let us be with each other as lover and beloved. Then we have verse five. Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree, I awakened you. There your mother was in labor with you. And there she who bore you was in labor. This is more of the family imagery. It's kind of a, I can't quite wrap my mind around it, but what seems to be implied here is that first of all, we have the image of coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved. So it's the idea they're approaching. We've had the image of her coming up from the wilderness before. so they're together and then we have the apple tree introduced so they're under the apple tree

she wakes him up and she says here your mother was in labor with you and she who bore you was in labor what seems to be implied here is there's almost kind of a a cyclical nature to this so your own mother this has to be translated not just in labor but conceived that verb which is repeated twice could be translated either conceived or in labor, or even both maybe is implied here. Like here you were conceived and here you came into this world. But what seems to be suggested is there's almost a cycle. So here your mother conceived you, she bore you, and here you are now my husband. And here we will be together and we will perpetuate this conception and birth bringing forth children into the world so that's the best that i can make of that is this

idea that as it was for you so now it is going to be between you and me in this ongoing family uh perpetuating relationship yeah and it's i don't know maybe it's hard for us to wrap our minds rather it's not that hard for me to wrap my mind around it but depending on like how high of a priority uh you know uh you know having having uh more people is to you uh the more this makes sense in other words hey the the end uh as in like part of the goal of this relationship is to produce children right and uh that's what your mother did and that's what i'm gonna do yeah Yeah. So she, I think at that point, it's going to kind of end a lot of the family images that have been introduced with her brother and her mother. And now in verse six and seven,

she's going to switch to a little bit different focus. She's going to address him and she begins this way. She says, set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm for love as strong as death. Jealousy is fierce as Sheol. ESV has grave, but in Hebrew it's Sheol, which could be a reference to the grave, but literally it's jealousy or probably better translated passion here. It can mean jealousy, but given the context, I think what's being implied is something like an art of passion. Passion is fierce as shoal. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither

can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised. So begin here with a seal. Of course, in each world you had clay seals that were kind of your way of identifying your property or if you had a garment not a garment but a if you had a uh a document that you rolled up and you wanted to seal you would put soft clay on that and you would roll your seal upon that when you did that it would impress upon that clay seal uh that belonged to you you know maybe would have uh the hebrew for you know belonging to chad belonging to dan

belonging to whoever. And then that would dry, and that would be the way that you mark something as your official document or your official property. Now here, what she's saying is, I want you to roll your seal upon my heart. That is to imprint upon my very being the fact that I belong to you and to no one else. And then we have a couple of great lines, love as strong as death, and jealousy or passion is as fierce as the grave. You've got to just translate this literally. You've got to go, love as strong as death, passion as fiery as hell. Yeah.

That's what you want. That's what you want. You're going with this passion fiery as hell. Come on, translators. Just go all the way with it. Yeah, because when you do it that way, i mean you don't even have to really explain it right it's done yeah yes it's done yeah and i i love the image because first of all it's a bit strength because of yeah it's it's it's

unforgettable but also man when you think about the metaphor in the bigger picture of scripture with the resurrection and the destruction of death all because of the love of christ who gave himself into death then it it even it deepens even more in its implications so you think death is strong uh you think you think uh sheol or the grave or hell is strong nothing compared to the love of god nothing compared to his passion for us yeah you could say um you think you think the grave uh is strong well you don't know about the love of christ and if you think hell is hot you don't know anything about the passion of christ like it burns way hotter than that and that's that's pretty good it's pretty good it's pretty good and then to make it explicit

it goes on with this image of sheol by saying it's flashes are there or or with the the burning passion we might say it's flashes of the flashes of fire the very flame of the lord there's a lot of discussion over the translation of the lord hebrew it's the end of that word is is yah which is a shortened form of yahweh some take it to be just kind of a superlative you know the hottest flame uh pretty strong case can be made though that this is the only explicit reference to god or to yahweh in the entire book of song of songs so we'll go with the very flame of the lord which cannot be quenched floods can't drown it in fact uh there is nothing in the world worth love the man offered everything he had for love he would be utterly despised because people would

realize that he is offering that of really no worth in comparison with that which is of inestimable worth which is this love of the beloved for his lover we got uh we got a few more verses if we had just ended with where we just were yeah like verse seven be like amen but we don't so this uh let me do this eight and nine this is others speaking which i think in this case are the brothers which we heard about already back i heard about way back in chapter one now they they show up again we have a little sister they say and she has no breast what shall we do with our for our sister on the day when she is spoken for if she's a wall we will build on her about amount of silver but if she is a door we will enclose her with boards of cedar so a couple

things that is happening here if these are her her brothers then they're saying they're first of all referring back to her might say prepubescent years when she was that little sister okay she had not physically developed yet but now okay she's spoken for she's uh she's grown up and she is betrothed to someone so how are we going to protect her uh her virginity how are we going to make sure that she saves herself and they say a couple things they say well first of all if she's a wall that is to say if she is protected uh from anyone who might want to go too far with her then we're just going to strengthen that we're going to build on this wall a battlement of silver. We're going to make it even stronger to protect her. But if she's a door, that is,

if she might be tempted to give in to these advances, well, then we'll remedy that. We'll enclose her with boards of cedar. We're going to nail up that door, as it were. So what seems to be implied here is that the brothers are wanting to protect their sister to make sure that she saves herself until the wedding day and so if she's a wall if that is if she's strong to make even stronger but if she's not if she's weak then they will do what they need to do to strengthen her to make sure that she's protected until she's ready to enter into this marriage covenant with uh with the groom or it works for me that works for you okay all right so he i love how she responds of she uh she's kind of toy almost like toying with them because she picks up their images and

then and takes a little bit different direction she does oh i was a wall she says oh yeah well i was a wall yeah you you're worried about me being adorbed no i was a wall and let me tell you about my wall that wall had towers on it she says my my breasts were like towers uh so uh you got these towers which project forth from the wall and she uh you know picks up on that with with her breast uh so yeah it was a wall and that wall had towers on it uh two towers to to be precise and then she says then i was in his eyes as one who finds peace uh talking here about the one to whom her heart was given so she welcomed him in let's put it that way he entered into She was a wall, but the castle door opened, and he came in.

She welcomed her lover in peace. Okay, now, you can't say this in English, but there's a great wordplay here when you go from as one who finds peace, and then verse 11 begins with Solomon, because Solomon's name is a form of the word for peace. So we go from Shalom to Shlomo, which is the Hebrew pronunciation of Solomon's name. So Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon. He led out the vineyard to keepers. Each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver.

That's a pretty pricey fruit. Then she says, my vineyard, and remember that her vineyard has been a metaphor for her love and for her body throughout the Song of Songs. my vineyard my very own is before me you oh Solomon may have the thousand and the keepers of the fruit 200 so there she refers to Solomon as having a literal vineyard at Belhaimon and he basically rented it out to these people who were supposed to bring him money for the produce and she says oh I've got a vineyard the vineyard she's talking here is not of course a literal vineyard with fruit but instead her very body that she welcomes solomon to uh to have so continuing

the same fruit imagery that we've seen multiple places all right then wrapping things up this is the last two verses he says oh you who dwell in the gardens with companions listening for your voice let me hear it so everybody wants to listen to you everyone's listening for your voice you've got companions who want to hear you talk. They want to be around you. And then he says, let me hear it. I want to be the one who hears your voice. And she responds by basically saying, well, hurry up. Make haste is the closing line. Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices. So you want to hear my voice? You want to enter my in my vineyard. You want to, uh, be inside the castle walls. You want to be mine and have me

and let us enjoy the love and the marriage and the reciprocal, uh, union that we, that we desire so fervently, then hurry up, uh, run like a deer and, uh, come upon the mountains of, of spices. So enter into this love with me, and let us enjoy that love now and forever. So, I mean, I do like the way it ends. The little part in between with the brothers and the wall and the door is a bit strange. But in the end, she's basically saying, in the words of the Church, Come, Lord Jesus. It does sort of end with a, like, a Come, Lord Jesus thing,

which is great, because that's been a reoccurring theme, right? of you have him, but you don't always have him. It's pretty explicit that this is your beloved, he is yours, you are his, but yet there's still, even though you are together, and this is of course the case with Christ and his church, there's still this also longing to be together, and this seems like these paradoxical both-and kind of things going on, but anyone who's been a Christian for any amount of time knows what it is, like, of course, I have Christ, and Christ has me, but I also am like, hey, you should come. The Song of Songs really puts that on display pretty well, I think.

Yeah, back and forth throughout the book, really, you have this, I want to be together, now we're together, now we're not, I want to be together again, so the now and not yet theme is pretty prominent there. And yeah, that's it. I mean, I've, you know, coming into this book, looking at it uh before we actually started it i didn't quite know what to expect but i have to tell you now that we have finished it i'm uh i'm very happy that we we did this verse by verse walk through it i learned a lot and more than that i mean it just really has opened up my eyes more and more to the the prominent theme of that passionate love not just that christ has for his church but that the church has for for christ as well so it's been a blessing to me hey man you

know there's some books that you get excited about and you know and then you're you're like yeah that was really good what is this true what is true is that even the books you're like we will see how this goes yet another example of uh hey this book is better than i thought it was there's not been a book yet where i was like you know that book was worse than i remember no no not a single not a single one and we know uh that the next book will definitely be incredible because we're about to step foot into a big book isaiah we're gonna be there a while we are gonna be there there for a while so buckle up we're in for a uh you know long journey hey man it's about time it's about it's about time that we got our prophet on i mean we've we've dealt with some

prophets in some narrative form but we're about to get into get into the writings of the of a pretty big uh capital p prophet here yep we can jump in with with both feet so join us next time for isaiah all right all right man we'll see you then I'll see you next time.