Song of Solomon 8:5

The bride asks her beloved to fix her on himself as surely as a seal. The word chôwthâm is a signet, a seal ring or stamp that a man used to make his own mark. In Israel a seal stamped documents, secured property and gave decrees their authority, and its impression was binding and personal. It marked a thing as belonging to its owner. So the bride is asking for a lasting mark of belonging, a bond that holds and that others can see.

She names two places for it. The heart, lêb, is the seat of thought, will and feeling, the whole inner person. The arm, zᵉrôwaʻ, stands for strength, action and protection, the part of a man’s life that others see. She wants to be at the centre of what he thinks, feels and chooses, and of what he does and how he is known. The commitment she asks for takes in the whole person, inside and out, the same wholeness the LORD asks of our love for him when he commands us to love him with all our heart (Deuteronomy 6:5). God uses a picture close to this one for his own people: “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16).

This is married love as God means it to be, exclusive, joyful and faithful, the love Proverbs commends when it tells a man to rejoice with the wife of his youth (Proverbs 5:18–19). The request follows the bride’s longing, in Song of Solomon 8:1–4, for a love that could be shown openly, and a seal on the arm is a love that everyone can see. Verses 6 and 7 are the high point of the whole Song, and the verses that close the book (Song of Solomon 8:8–14) go on to the guarding of purity within the family and the lasting bond of the two lovers.

The word “for” gives the reason for the bride’s request. Love here is ʼahăbâh, the ordinary Hebrew word for love or affection, used of good love and of bad, and the verse itself tells us how strong this love is. Death, mâveth, comes to every person, and every person yields to it. Love holds with that same strength. It shapes the course of a life, endures every trial and prevails against whatever opposes it.

The next line says the same of jealousy, which is “cruel as the grave”. The grave is shᵉʼôwl, Sheol, the place of the dead, which takes everything and gives nothing back. The jealousy of love is as unyielding as that, and it asks for a loyalty that is whole and kept for the beloved alone.

Paul says of love that it endures all things and lasts on when everything else passes (1 Corinthians 13:7–8). For God’s people this line points to the cross, where the love of God in Christ met death itself and broke its hold, so that nothing can separate us from that love (Romans 8:38–39).

Fire goes out when water is poured on it, and verse 7 says that this fire outlasts every flood. The verb kâbâh means to go out, or to put out, and it is used of fire, of a lamp and of anger. “Many waters” is rab mayim, water in abundance, and “the floods” are nâhâr, streams or rivers. The verb shâṭaph, to gush, overflow and sweep away with force, gives the picture of a river in flood. Israel lived by its water and knew both sides of it, since rivers brought fertile fields and also brought ruin when they rose. The waters can pour over this love, and it keeps burning.

So true love holds through the storms that come to every marriage and every close bond: disagreement, hardship, pressure from outside and our own failings. It is a steady anchor in all weathers. God’s love for his people is this kind of love. Their failures, the world’s hostility and the forces of evil all pour against it, and it keeps burning. Paul says it plainly: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Our sin, and even the cross, left that love burning.

The second half of verse 7 turns from love’s strength to its worth. “A man”, ʼîysh, is any person at all, and to give, nâthan, is one of the widest verbs in Hebrew, used for giving, putting and setting. “The substance”, hôwn, is wealth, what a man has, and “his house”, bayith, is his house and household. So the picture is a man offering everything his household owns in exchange for love. The answer is bûwz, to despise or hold in contempt. The Hebrew puts the verb twice, which the KJV gives as “utterly be contemned”. The offer would be met with scorn, because it treats love as a thing for sale, when love is a bond that can only be freely given.

In a time when marriages were often arranged and dowries changed hands, this was a bold thing to say, and it sets the love of the Song above any bargain between families. The same holds for every deep bond. Affection and loyalty that are bought with gifts, favours or status are cheapened by the buying.

The verse also shows us how God gives his own love. Isaiah calls the thirsty to come and buy “without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1), and Paul says that we are saved by grace through faith, as the gift of God and apart from works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8–9). All our good works, religious efforts and wealth together could never purchase his favour, and he gives it freely in Christ.

The question comes from onlookers, most likely the daughters of Jerusalem or the bride’s companions, who have followed the lovers through the Song and now watch with wonder as the two come home together. The Song has asked this before (Song of Solomon 3:6), and now the bride comes up with her beloved at her side, after the longing and the trials of the chapters between.

She is “leaning upon her beloved”. The verb râphaq means to recline or lean, and her posture is one of trust, closeness and rest. She has come through the journey, and she leans her weight on him, strong and yet wholly dependent. Proverbs calls us to trust in the LORD with all our heart in the same way (Proverbs 3:5–6).

The wilderness, midbâr, is the wilderness or desert. In Scripture it is often a place of solitude, danger and judgment, and it is also where God formed and tested his people and met with them. He led Israel through it on the way out of Egypt (Exodus 13:17), he promises to bring his people into the wilderness and speak comfortably to them there (Hosea 2:14–15), and the way of the LORD is prepared in it (Isaiah 40:3–4). Here it is the season of testing in which the couple’s love has grown, and they come up out of it stronger and more closely bound. The wilderness is behind them, and its hardship has done its work.

The love of these verses is first the love of a husband and wife, and Scripture also shows it to us in Christ’s love for his church, the bride who will sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7–9). Each line of the passage finds its fullest meaning there.

The church comes up through the wilderness of this world, with its sin and its trials, leaning on Christ for strength, guidance and everything she needs. He calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him and find rest (Matthew 11:28–30). He raised us up from spiritual death to new life, and the birth remembered under the apple tree speaks of the new birth of water and of the Spirit (John 3:5–8). The love behind it all is the love he spoke of when he said, “Greater love hath no man than this” (John 15:13).

His people bear his seal. Paul says that we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession (Ephesians 1:13–14), and Jesus says that no one can pluck his sheep out of his hand (John 10:28–29). His love is stronger than death, for he conquered death on the cross. His jealousy for his bride is a holy zeal to keep her pure and faithful, and his love is a fire that comes from the heart of God.

These verses give us Scripture’s highest praise of the love between a husband and wife. That love is meant to be whole and exclusive, to last through every flood and to be freely given, and its fire is kindled by God. The same verses show us who God is. He marks his people as his own, he is jealous for their love, his love outlasts every flood of their sin, and he gives it freely in Christ, who has proved it stronger than death. The bride comes up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved, and so his people come through this world, held by a love that is strong as death.