He says:
5:1 I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
She says:
5:2 I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying,
He says:
Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
She Says:
5:3-8 I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.
They said:
5:9 What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? What is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?
She Says:
5:10-16 My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
What makes this chapter such a problem is the lack of patience in the lover at the door. There are certainly a number of problems to be found here, but His very quick abandonment when she does not open to Him in a more timely manner seems to most of us to be the most problematic of them all.
Looking at this chapter of the Song, from the vantage point of seeing in it a type of Christ as the lover of our souls, it seems to make of Him a most impatient lover or perhaps even a lover with ego problems when she doesn’t respond to His expressed desire to enter her chambers as quickly as He would like.
Several years ago now as I was looking to better understand male and female as the image of God, I tried to reduce and simplify the terms of the equation, and this brought me to see the difference between what each of them represents as the female being an “egg layer,” and the male being a “fertilizer.” I began to explore the difference between the two from that vantage point.
The other night as I found myself putting this chapter of Song of Songs together from that perspective I could see in a moment a normal contrast in urgency between an egg layer, and a fertilizer.
Fasten you seat belt.
Suddenly I was forced to explore the difference between a human male or “fertilizer,” and God the Father as a “fertilizer.”
Not long after studying the Scriptures we find that the Eternal Father has only one begotten Son – Jesus. We don’t have to go too much beyond that discovery when we come to appreciate that this only begotten Eternal Son is also presented to us as a single SEED. (Galatians is particularly clear about this, “Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.” Galatians 3:15-17 NIV
“A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.” Psalm 22:30 KJV
“Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘we would like to see Jesus.’ Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus. Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’” John 12:20-24 NIV
By citing the above passages I am hoping to show that before there could be an “only begotten Son of God”, there had to first be an only Seed of God. “not seed as meaning many seeds, but Seed as being one, even Christ.
A Father who had been waiting since eternity past to enter into an act of love with a woman he had been looking for since the foundation of the world, showed up at her bedchamber. This was not going to be any ordinary act of love, not even a repeatable act of love. You see, this happened in the fullness of time, and by the passion of a Father who had only One Seed to sow. This was going to be an all or nothing act of love. It was going to give her everything He ever had, and it was going to take much more than a moment in time.
There was no time here for hesitation or worthless agendas. It happened when the bedchamber was still full of the law, and not yet the Love of God. When she hesitated she was beat up in the streets by the lawyers, the “watchmen” of her day.
It was neither a time to hesitate where her part in the act of intimacy was concerned, nor was it a time for her to get up and run from the scene of love, because He was going to impregnate her with so much more than she had ever heard about, dreamed or imagined. It would be millennia before all the DNA of His Love for her would finally be where he intended, and she would have to learn how to rest in the impartation of it all. It wasn’t enough for Him to rest in this transaction of love. She would have to learn to rest in its impartation too.
This was not to be a fleeting flirtation, this was to be a forever fixation.
I’m sure there’s a lot more to say about this, but I think this says at least part of what came to mind in thinking about how touchy he seemed to be when she hesitated. Of all the times throughout history when an overture to love was tuning up this was not the time to hesitate. Today is the day to enter His rest!
“Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.” Hebrews 3:7-19 KJV
Love!
Loving Like God 