OTHERS
1. Where has your beloved gone,
O most beautiful among women?
Where has your beloved turned,
that we may seek him with you?
Together in the Garden of Love
SHE
2. My beloved has gone down to his garden
to the beds of spices,
to graze in the gardens
and to gather lilies.
3. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine;
he grazes among the lilies.
It is so important for the reader of Song of Songs to remember that each time they read the book that this is a Hebrew poem, a song. Like all songs/poems it can be at times literal and at times metaphorical. The three verses from the above passage seem to be metaphorical of the married couples consummation of their marriage. The writer seems to really mix up the imagery. If we combine it with chapter five, it is actually quite confusing to determine what the poem means. In verse one we seem to read that the bride is looking for her husband out in the community. Chapter 5 unfolds that same imagery, as the bride seems to awake and can’t find her husband. Yet, in verse two of the above verses we read she knows exactly where he is. She uses a metaphor of a garden to speak to their entanglement of love making. That is consummated by verse three that they are completely given to each other in love. He to her and her to him. They are completely enraptured with each other’s love and each other’s bodies. God does not hold back His pen in describing their love for each other or love making. He created man and woman to love each other. In the confines of this marriage, the couple are finding pleasure in each other. This is not to be an embarrassment to write about and to praise God about. God created our sexual feelings and has given them to us as a gift. We are not sure what the “others” at the beginning of this chapter are all about. She certainly is not stopping the consummation of their marriage to talk to others in the community about their act of consummation. It is best understood that she is overflowing with delight and that delight is coming forth in praise to all that would listen. She is not speaking to her maidens of what happened in her bedroom. But she is proclaiming the delight she has found in the arms of her man. God intended the act of marriage to bring joy to our hearts. It would be wrong to reveal the privacy of the bedroom to the community in the living room. But it is never wrong to tell how satisfied and committed a couple is to each other. This is a praise poem to God for His gift of love to their lives. They proclaim it loudly.
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