Song of Songs 8:6-7
Chapter 8
6
Set me as a seal on your heart, set me as a seal on your arm. For love is strong as death; its jealousy lasting as the power of death, it burns like a blazing fire, it blazes like a mighty flame.
7
No flood can extinguish love nor river submerge it. If a man were to buy love with all the wealth of his house, contempt is all he would purchase.
Commentaries
Theophany of Love.
We are at the climax. Throughout the book, this implicit question has echoed: To whom will Love reveal itself? The king and queen have glimpsed its presence in Solomon’s canopy and in the amorous encounter. The young people have not yet reached the end of their journey. The woman wounded by Love has sought it even in her nightmares and sighed for it. Now the divinity “Love” (“She” in the translation) appears, coming perhaps from Lebanon, if we follow a particular textual tradition. It appears at the origin of life, where our mother conceived us for death (cf. Gn 3:16a, 19). Unlike Prov 8:22-31, Love, not Wisdom, is present and active from the very beginning of creation. Love replaces the “Shema” (Dt 11:8), whose words must be engraved on the heart and tied to the hand (Dt 6:5, 8). Love, like the new covenant, must be inscribed on the heart, as Jeremiah 31:33 states (cf. Heb 10:16). This engraving is a lasting memorial. If the woman looks at her arms, she will see the tattoo of Love. The Beloved and Love merge into an intimate, complete embrace. Love brings life and immortality: it conquers death, contrary to what Ecclesiastes 9:6.10 suggests. Now we see that Love used its arrows to wound the woman: they are divine darts, divine flames. Not even the deepest waters of death can extinguish the fire of love (cf. Is 42:3). Ultimately, Love cannot be bought or sold. It is pure gratuity.