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Notes on Song of Songs
By Dr. Nancy Moelk
Thus, I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.
Song of Songs 8:10b (NIV)
Song of songs has been loved by Christians through the ages. Generation after generation has recognized the mystical nature of this love poem. Even if we don’t totally understand it, reciting the verses and meditating upon them can move us into a tactile experience of God’s presence. Its content is not meant to cater to our intellect or Western modes of linear thinking.
In the late 1990’s I was visiting a friend and found a book about worship called “Glory” by Ruth Heflin Ward. Something she said caught my attention and started me on a journey of experiencing the Song of Songs over the next decade. The Greek idea of knowing is acquiring information where the Hebrew concept of knowing is to become one with something so that you are no longer the same.
Ruth suggested ignoring the designations of “Beloved” and “Lover” which are marked in most translations. She encouraged letting all the declarations of love be applicable to both God saying it to us and us saying it back to Him.
The first time I experienced this reciprocity was concerning verse 8:10b (NIV). “Thus, I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment.”
I kept hearing that verse over and over in my head. Finally, I asked God to show me what it meant. I realized He was speaking to my deepest heart about His view of me: I bring Him contentment. What a concept! I didn’t really understand it fully until my first grandchild was born in 2006.
The love I felt for Tara Faith Ireland, my first grandchild, was beyond my understanding. I happily held her in my arms, just gazing at her. I experienced joy and contentment that was inexplicable. One day, as I was enjoying looking at Tara while she was doing absolutely nothing, I clearly heard God whispering over my shoulder, “This is how I feel about you!”
Like all infants, Tara was unproductive, helpless and needy. But that in no way deterred my intense fondness for her. I was simply happy, content, satisfied—because she was alive—no other purpose or reason was necessary. I delighted in her every breath and enjoyed the smallest accomplishments. She could offer me nothing. And I didn’t need her to do anything.
I surrendered myself to this startling picture of how God viewed me, felt about me, experienced me. It humbled me and honored me. It made me fall in love with Him even more.
This unconditional love of God for me needs to conquer my entire soul. A process which will go on until I see Him face-to-face in eternity. The fact that I bringHim contentment is a parental type of love. As a child we are meant to be the one who receives most of the time in a relationship with our parent. A more mature love, like that of a romantic relationship introduces a willingness to give oneself and sacrifice. We become open to allowing the love of our life to fill in the gaps of where we are needy or wanting.
Years later, in February 2011, Gary called to say his job had been terminated. Several years before, he had lost another job and was unemployed for almost a year. The bad memories and difficulties of that year rose within me. “Not again,” I mumbled. I was driving in my car and suddenly felt the presence of the Lord with me. I heard Him say, “Can you smile at me? I am still with you. Would you allow me in this moment to bring you contentment?”
Could I love Him without conditions? Could I be content even if the events of life swept the opposite way than what I wanted? If my husband wasn’t the one they kept in the company buyout? If I or my loved one wasn’t healed? If this or that problem wasn’t resolved to my satisfaction?
Could I venture to throw my lot in with Him without playing it safe and guarding my own self-interest? Could I trust in Him will all my heart and not lean to my own understanding? These questions and the answers of my heart will continue going forward. As I keep surrendering to the love between us, even these questions will get lost in an eternal love affair where the ending of the story never comes but is always known to be good.
So, Song of Songs is a treasure trove of such verses which we can use back and forth with our Divine Lover/Parent/Spouse. If we free this mystical love poem from the confines of exegesis and linear western interpretation, we can engage its Author in a wonderous living dialogue.
O, Holy Spirit, come and teach this love to my heart. Let me know the Celestial Lover as His Beloved and let me become, with Your help, a lover of the One who is my Beloved. Let me come to offer each verse from the innermost being of myself and to receive each verse from the Depths of His Heart.
*******
“Dark am I, but lovely…”
Song of Songs 1:5
Early on in my meditation of Song of Songs, I would avoid verses and passages like this one. It seemed like an admission of “wrongness”. “My own vineyard I have neglected.” (1:6) My own filter of shame highlighted the flaws, the darkness of my soul, the mistakes and poor choices. Surely with all these flaws, I could not still be “lovely.”
This shame filter in me came from a “performance” orientation. My worth rested on a barometer of “rightness” or success. Any suggestion highlighting my flaws produced a feeling of unease at best and a piercing shame at worst. Both of these were often accompanied by an automatic defensive attitude. Could I actually be lovely at the same time I was so “wrong”?
God had to teach me that perfectionism and idealism are the twin mothers of misery. They set us up for constant disappointment, dissatisfaction, anxiety and ultimately, over the long haul, for bitterness.
I had to be wooed out of my damming perspective and into His. How, O Lord, can you get past my flaws to see me as lovely? Obviously, there was a serious discrepancy between my standards and His. Yes, Jesus died for my sins. But does that absolve me of my responsibility to look like someone who deserved such intervention? His extreme act of sacrifice at the cross would, at times, leave me feeling further estranged. My lack of devotion and commitment in response to His love left me wanting to hide.
Finally, I gave up my quest to be enough. Good enough. Strong enough. Pure enough. Loving enough. I can never be Him. But I can welcome all the gift of Himself He wished to give me in Union with Him. He has enough goodness, strength, purity, love, etc. to share with me. And when I don’t do well in receiving it or using it, He still wants to be with me! I had to let go of my expectation of saving myself by good works and internal excellence.
Whether we see ourselves as flawed on the inside or on the outside, He is comfortable with us as we are. We may look unusual, we may be rough or coarse, unpolished. We may not fit the idea of what others think we should be. But He knows us and sees us and welcomes us to come as we are.
I have counseled Christians for close to 30 years. Rarely do I meet one who seems to have embraced even remotely how God joys over them, even though they are flawed. Take a deep breath and repeat after me, “I am flawed by lovely.” I raised four children and have changed over a thousand diapers. Never once did I confuse the precious, lovely baby with the mess in the diaper. When He looks at us, He sees His creation and a deep resounding Voice echoes from with Him, “You are good.”
The bottom line is that we are not in charge of who loves us (true love) and how. As soon as we try to manipulate others to love us by our own performance, we have created an environment where we can never receive true love. If we have “been forced to work in the vineyards” of relationships, it is time to stop considering ourselves in light of what we can earn. Love comes to us as an unprovoked gift. We surrender to love. We open our hearts to the free will sacrifice of self offered by another.
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How right they are to adore you!
Song of Songs 1:4c
Here on earth, we can’t easily see ourselves or anything else as it truly is. We especially can’t see God as He is. The Bible provides us with accounts of people, angels, creatures and beings who see Him in much closer proximity than us. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses—saints who have lived here on earth, died to this world, and now behold God in His unveiled majesty. Angels behold the face of God.
All of heaven is very near to us but in another dimension. The four living creatures mentioned in the Revelation of John, Chapter 4 are caught up in His glory, crying, “Holy, holy, holy.” They cried out to John, and they still cry out to us, “Come up here!”. The eyes that cover their bodies have spent eons of untold gazing at the One who sits on the throne. Let us ask to look into their eyes so we can see the beauty and majesty and wonder of our God. The heavenly host are part of the King’s entourage. They glitter and shine with His blinding brightness.
When we connect with God’s presence (which is everywhere) it is a matter of connecting with what is already present around u and in us. We seek and we find the treasure of His Essence if we keep asking, seeking and knocking for it. Because the Kingdom of God is within us, heaven and earth are meant to co-exist and mingle within us. Each one of us is a portal of heaven. Whether you know it or not, you have living waters flowing from deep within your being. Are you willing to have Jesus open up all the gateways within you so you leak all over your life? Or are you dammed up by trauma, denial, negative emotions and fears?
Prepare the way of the Lord, a highway in the desert for our God. The Kingdom of God has been put within us by the Holy Spirit. Now He wants to express Himself through us into every aspect of our earthy existence.
I have read the Bible for over 40 years. I used to memorize verses about the nature and character of God. But now, when I think about what He is like, it leads me into an encounter with a Person. I become captivated by His kindness, beauty, goodness, mercy, patience, justice, majesty, holiness, etc.
How right they are to adore you!! Ask that you would come and know Him as He truly is. I know I had so many misconceptions about Him and surely still do. I believed He was like my parents, or like me, or like other authority figures. Abusive, self-serving, petty, incompetent. Getting those false beliefs out in the open took time and was painful, at times. But waiting at the end of every lie renounced is the One who rightly is adored.
Be washed in His nature and let every pore of your being soak up His perfection. “But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
*******
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.
Song of Songs 1:1a
What an invitation! There is a sweet surrender here to God desiring us and enjoying us and wanting to lavish His love upon us. The King, in His excellence and beauty and power is captured by the peasant girl!
This verse never fails to lift me right into God’s presence. It is a daring invitation to a person of no rank or nobility into the intimate space of the King of Kings. With this I throw away my shame and self-consciousness at being “inappropriate” in any way. I come boldly before the throne of grace, based on His love for me which has been sealed in blood. I won’t resist His decision to focus His great affection on me.
“Let him kiss me. . .” I no sooner say these words and the warmth and weight of His presence comes upon me. I start to feel His presence kissing my cells with His glory—the aura of His Essence.
For many years I was a Christian who never felt His presence. After my initial moments of repentance, it was a dry, dry faith walk. Often the Christian who never feels the manifest Presence of God may have beliefs that demote feelings and the imagination as stepchildren of the soul. They view these aspects of their personality with disdain or suspicion. God has an imagination. For example, He thought up each one of use, a unique person in a sea of billions.
I was such an “anti-feeling” Christian: My stance was that Jesus fixed me at salvation, by the “complete” work of the cross. Now it was up to me to walk out of that victory and change the world! I gutted out seven years in the mission field with that theology. My last year in Morocco, I had a nervous breakdown and spent three years heavily medicated and hopeless.
Desperation is a great persuader. It helped me to become open to considering I may have had a few faulty expectations about myself and about God. The complete work of the cross is from God’s perspective. We never have to earn anything from Him. The bill is paid in full.
And yet the process of our becoming yielded to His life by the Holy Spirit within us is a life long journey. Letting Him know the inner most parts of us is good. We don’t want to engage in missions, ministry, and others works only to have Him say to us, “I never knew you. Depart from me.”
So, let Him kiss me and welcome me, all of me, into His Essence. Say “yes” to the Divine Invitation.
*******
Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?
Who is this coming up from the wilderness like a column of smoke,
perfumed with myrrh and incense made from all the spices of the merchant?
Look! It is Solomon’s carriage, escorted by sixty warriors, the noblest of Israel,
Song of Songs 8:5-7
Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?
We lived in Marrakech, Morocco near the edge of the Sahara desert for three years. During those years, there was a drought, and it only rained three times. It brought the desert even closer to us. The desert is a place of barrenness that opens the possibility of raw truth to emerge without distractions, without cloudy vision. We can pass through other types of deserts: deserts of depression, poverty, loneliness, isolation, bitterness, physical pain, trauma, rejection, hopelessness, etc.
Deserts leave you without the usual resources for “making things right.” Scarcity, sparseness, life on the edge: survival is questionable. The desert strips you down to the bare essentials. Just me and what I carry: outside provisions are basically non-existent.
The desert is a place of focus. A stillness and lack of “status quo” present an environment where transformation can take place. I become naked in the desert. My own resources become undone. And that’s when I am ready to meet my lover. And, oh, what a lover He is. His experience in the desert is quite different than mine.
Who is this coming up from the wilderness like a column of smoke,
perfumed with myrrh and incense made from all the spices of the merchant?
Look! It is Solomon’s carriage, escorted by sixty warriors, the noblest of Israel,
He is in the desert too, but He is equipped to the max. If you read the entire passage of Chapter 4:6-10, you find He carries provision, comfort, luxury, romance, beauty, protection and more. He is married to us and comes rejoicing, ready for a mystical union in the desert.
The combination of my nakedness in the desert and His bountiful Presence creates a perfect match which is truly like what happens when it rains in the desert and all the dry seeds of its true potential spring into life and fruitfulness. Like the desert transformed into an unrecognizable garden by the gush of waters, we become different by our encounter with Him. To the point where others say in wonder, “Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover? I don’t know who she is? I have never seen her before! She doesn’t look like the person I used to know.”
*******
Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.
Song of Songs 2:7 and 8:4
God is interested in engaging us in a relationship with Him that involves three different roles. Child to parent, lover to beloved and spouse to spouse.
After our adoption into His family, we need extensive “reprogramming” to learn what His parenting is like. Over time, our hidden, false beliefs about Him, ourselves and others are brought to the surface and replaced by truth implanted by love. Though we continue to grow in knowing His unconditional love as His child, at some point we become His fiancé. Now more is expected of us and we are lured away from other “loves” and asked to dedicate ourselves to Him above all else. As we pursue this more mature relationship with God, we are eventually made to be His spouse. Our union becomes a source of fruitfulness and together we create a culture throughout all our “territory” that reflects the Kingdom of God.
The one simple key to this ongoing journey with God is this: it has to be real. Our hearts must be available for this journey. Talk is cheap. Bible study can be a “head fest”. Church attendance, tithing, even evangelical and social service can be perfunctory acts done to establish self-esteem.
God is searching for the desire of our hearts. He has poured His own desire out to the point of death. That is how much He longed to be with us forever. Now He looks for our response.
The child is meant to be a little receiver: happy, safe and un-self-conscious about taking and taking from the loving parent. The child, open to relationship and humble, accepts that he/she is vulnerable, needy, unproductive and greatly in need of training. She learns and grows through relationship. The parent mirrors the child’s reflection back to her. She begins to see herself and her world through His eyes.
This is the soil, sun and water, that nourishes the tree and gives it a chance to eventually bear good fruit. At some point, the tree is ready for pruning and the winter season. Chill hours (below freezing) are needed during winter to bring tasty fruit in the spring. Pruning forces resources to be directed to certain areas of focus and prevents a watering down of effectiveness. As fruit grows, it will one day be available to be offered to another.
The heart begins to desire to focus on someone other than ourselves. In fact, increasingly, there is a movement toward wanting to give away ourselves to another. At first it may be in selfish pursuit of gratifying our own needs and wants, but true love eventually shows itself in the overwhelming desire for the happiness, fulfillment and pleasure in our beloved.
The fiancé is learning about love and how to give herself to another. Gradually she grows in unconditional love and union with the Ultimate Lover of the Universe. The spousal stage has begun. We can soon have a grand harvest where the Kingdom of God is increasingly taking over all that we touch or are involved in. His kingdom culture permeates our earthy household: our families, our work, our community, etc. Our territory becomes His territory.
This quote from Richard Rohr:
Divine Lover: “Where did your heart go? When did you lose track of your longings so that they no longer walk together with your steps?
Human Lover: “I didn’t know I lost my heart. I just kept stumbling forward. But I felt strangely empty.”
Divine Lover: “We must go find your heart together. You’re right. It is empty to live without deep connection to it.”
Human Lover: “I’m afraid.”
Divine Lover: “Fear not, I am with you.”
Human Lover: “Help me go there. I have lost my way.”
Divine Lover: “Show me where you trusted long ago, where you hoped, where you dared to love.”
Human Lover: “I have forgotten the faces and places but now I remember the pain and the bitter taste in my mouth.”
Divine Lover: “You showed your face to those who could not see you. You bared your heart, and no one embraced you.”
Human Lover: “Do you, my love, know such pain of rejection?”
Divine Lover: “I know this well. Come and own it with me and we will walk together to a new place. My face will see you and my bared heart will surround yours. And we will be one.”
Human Lover: “You have made my worst deserts like a well-watered garden.”
*******
My beloved spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me.
See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.
Song of Songs 2:10-11
No matter where I am in life, He comes and meets me there. In sin, in pleasure, in hiding, in error, lost, confused or broken. He seeks me out with great celestial energy. He often comes to me as my life. He pursues me, into every area of my being. He comes knocking on my door. All of me is of interest to Him. “MINE” He says.
“Arise.” Wherever I am, He bids me to leave that place with Him and move one. Any pain from relinquishment is overshadowed by the wealth and adventure of what is ahead. I am leaving something behind I can’t keep in order to gain something I will never lose. Higher up and further in! Never alone. Our Divine Companion invites us, those who are flawed and inappropriate but lovely. He calls us His darling and beautiful one. He invites us. “Come with me.”
When He shows up, the season of singing has come and the winter has past. Nothing has to be the same if we are willing to leave our resting place. Often where we see ourselves being in a homestead instead of a temporary shelter on the way to our true home.
“O lovely one, beautiful one.” He says to us, we are His. In His eyes we are worth temporarily abandoning the perfection of heaven to rescue us from isolation and hopelessness. As He methodically works with us to free us from all that blocks our identity and destiny, He honors us as one worth waiting for.
*******
Listen! My beloved! Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills.
Song of Songs 2:8
He joyfully surmounts great barriers to get to us. He seeks us out. He offers a new vision of who we are. He calls forth our beauty and innate loveliness. We need only resolve to go with Him and leave behind every self-perception and falsity we have ever embraced about ourselves, our lives and Him.