Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Song of Solomon · About this commentary
Love Is Strong as Death
Song of Solomon 8:5-7
5 Who is this who comes up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Beloved Under the apple tree I awakened you. There your mother conceived you. There she was in labor and bore you. · WEB
The book's thesis arrives at its close: love measured against death and the grave, priced beyond purchase, and lit by a flame the versions read differently.
Who is this coming up from the wilderness? — the question that once introduced Solomon's litter with its sixty swords Song of Solomon 3:6. The answer has changed. Now it is two figures, and the bride is leaning on her beloved. The Song's final picture of the pair is not spectacle but support.
Under the apple tree — his own tree, from her first praise of him Song of Solomon 2:3 — I awakened you; there your mother conceived you, labored, and bore you. Love is set in the generational chain, wakened at the very spot where life itself began. Then her great request: set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm. A seal was signature and identity, worn on the body; Scripture elsewhere makes the signet its figure for election itself Haggai 2:23. She asks to be what identifies him.
The reason is the book's thesis, kept until now: love is strong as death. It is measured against the one power no one negotiates with, and holds. Its jealousy — the fierce exclusiveness of covenant, a word Scripture does not blush to apply to God's own love Exodus 34:14 — holds its claim the way the grave holds what it takes. And it burns: the verse's image for love at this pitch is open fire.
Then the price Song of Solomon 8:7: many waters cannot quench it, rivers cannot drown it — flood-scale threats, outlasted. And if a man offered the whole wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised. The market does not carry it. The book began with a leased vineyard; it is about to end by refusing the lease.
settled What this mark means