behindthewillowtrees

1. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Her graceful form (7:1-5)

Western European beauties tend to be severe, slim and unsmiling, so delicate that they might be blown away like twigs in the breeze. Some third-world cultures like their women to be more fleshed out. The wall-paintings of ancient Egypt portray their women as very slim and scantily dressed. These stand in stark contrast to the buxom roly-poly nudes of the medieval renaissance period of European art.

It is more than ever clear that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

We see what we want to see, not what is actually there. We filter out that which inconveniently obtrudes. The same happens in photography, as well as in drawings and paintings. The tricks of angled illumination, of tinting and shading, all create an atmosphere of fantasy. But this is the goal of all art forms, to soften the harsh realities of the life we live and to project us into a safer more secure world of escape.

However coolly seductive the artificially created images of beauty in various art forms may be, they are totally eclipsed by the warm pulsating reality of beauty in the flesh. And our lover, confronted with the radiance of his beloved, can only cry out in ecstasy and extol her beauty in the verses which follow.

2. Burning desire drives staying power

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. Carl Jung. 

Bishop Basil of Caesarea taught young males who fell prey to lust:

‘When you see the most beautiful woman in the world, go with your mind to her grave a few days after she has died. Such a terrible odour and putrid flow comes from her body, such that all the latrines in the world don’t smell as bad. Behold what you were lusting after!’

He would also say,

‘Death, death, death! The coffin, the shovel, the spade, the pickaxe …’

Perhaps we need not go to that extreme, but we may all find it helpful to look upon someone whom we lust after from the perspective of their deathbed and ours.

A duet of desire (7:6-10)

In Genesis 3:16 it is the woman’s desire for her husband. In the Genesis context, some have hotly disputed the sexual element and the suggestion has been made that the woman’s desire is actually to dominate her husband, as sin’s urge is to dominate Cain in Genesis 4:7. So then the result of the fall is the disruption of mutual complementarily into one of a desire for mutual domination, the one over the other. Be that as it may, our lovers here in the Song are not trying to dominate each other. She is giving herself to him as his willing partner or opposite number. If the language of the boy seems domineering, that is only because of the strong natural urge for fulfilment once desire has been roused. The urge for consummation is violent for both the girl and the boy.

More adventure + More romance = more passion

Love in the countryside (7:11-13)

The girl wants now to do something about their mutually aroused desire and erotic excitement. Again the theme is love in the open country (literally, in the Hebrew, ‘field’). She is inviting him to spend the night in the ‘henna bushes’. It is most likely that the latter is the meaning here. They want to be far away from human habitations, they are seeking the solitude of the rustic bower. They are to go on a tour of inspection of the springtime, to see whether the vines have budded, and the pomegranates are in bloom. There, in the early morning, in the fragrance of the misty countryside, among the blossom and budding fruit, she will give herself totally and unreservedly to her beloved.

Of course, the fantasy of the lover’s love-making is an illusion! Such romantic notions are too rapidly frustrated by the intrusions of nettle rash, soldier ants, bumble bees and stony ground, to say nothing of ragged urchins peeping through the undergrowth.

The girl hardly seems to be in need of the mandrakes as an aphrodisiac! Together, they explore new ways of stimulating and pleasing each other in their physical relationship. The girl in these verses is again taking the initiative in furthering the progress of their love-life. She is being very suggestive and seductive. She is creating a mental and physical environment in which their union may be consummated with the maximum intensity and minimum of inhibition. She even hints that she is able to teach him a thing or two.

So what has this to teach us today? Perhaps it may act as a stimulus to revive a flagging physical relationship by being more adventurous, more romantic and less mechanical! What really matters is that it is her or him that we are concerned for in our mutual enjoyment, and not just ‘it’. If the sparks fly and the earth moves, then well and good. If they don’t, the tension may be released by dissolving into laughter. For even some of the most carefully laid plans designed to lead to the giddy heights, may on occasion fall flat. Of course, we should try again and be more relaxed about the whole thing, breaking up dull routines with spontaneous outbursts of tenderness. So shall we make room for the “serendipitous enjoyment of our whimsical passions”.

Not just a piece of paper

A longing for intimacy (8:1-4)

If only … if I found, you … I would kiss you … I would lead … I would bring … I would give you . .. The girl has probably worked herself up into a frenzy of desire, so that she imagines she is lying with him (8:3) in fond embrace.

The lovers so far in this particular sequence have had very much a private relationship. It is most likely that in this part of poems, the lovers are neither betrothed nor married. Their behaviour (7:11-13), is hardly characteristic of an engaged or newly wed couple. Although their love is very private, they long for public recognition of their relationship. They want all the world to know that they are in love.

Our ignorance of the particular circumstances of this public display of marital affection make it difficult for us to draw any general conclusions. Social mores in the area of what is acceptable public behaviour are very much a matter of cultural preference. For example, in many western countries, romantic kissing and fondling in public is becoming the norm, whereas in more conservative third-world countries, even holding hands in public is frowned upon. In conservative Islamic nations there is often no public social intercourse between the sexes.

In her mother’s house, the boy has to be on his best behaviour; he is being inspected to see if he meets with her approval. But the boy must find this atmosphere rather suffocating and inhibiting, even irritating and frustrating. For it acts as a brake to his amorous intentions. And yet it does actually encourage the polite and less intimate conventions of social intercourse. It may even enable the two love birds to see each other in a slightly different light. For it is all too easy for them to be so self-absorbed and engrossed in each other, that they fail to see how they behave before friends, relatives and more distant acquaintances.

The whole unit of 8:1—4 is ambiguous. At the surface level, there is a strong movement from the public social realm to the privacy of loving intimacy. Yet hovering in the background are her mother, a brother and the daughters of Jerusalem. These public figures seem to act as a brake on the amorous activities of the young lovers, so they are in constant tension. They want to be free of the restraints of society, yet they want to possess that public recognition of their love. It is like driving a car with the brakes on; a lot of unproductive heat is generated. The solution to this impasse is either to step off the accelerator and allow things to cool down (‘do not stir up love …’) or else to be recognised publicly, then take off the brakes and forge ahead. Such public recognition by society is a valuable cement. The marriage certificate is not ‘just a piece of paper’ which transforms cohabitation into an acceptable relationship. But it is a public exchange of vows that the couple will support and edify each other ‘for better, for worse, in sickness, in health, till death do us part’.

Moving towards a climax again (4:12-5:1)

These verses are the central climax of the whole book: The full sexual union of our lovers (5:). 5:1 represents both the literal centre of the Song, as well as its emotional peak.

1. Smitten lovers (4:9-11)

The words translated by the NIV as ‘You have stolen my heart’ = ‘You have inflamed, aroused, excited my heart.’ Our lover is completely bowled over. It is only natural to use the word ‘bride’ as this is their wedding day.

The power of sexual language to induce desire and stimulate mental images depends partly on the degree of explicitness and mostly the mood or feeling which it evokes. We have here biblical metaphors which are restrained (knowing, entering, coming into the garden, eating honey and the honeycomb, drinking wine and milk, gathering myrrh and spice).

2. Anticipation and virginity (4:12-15)

The “spring enclosed” and the “sealed fountain” are both metaphors for the girl’s sexual exclusiveness, her non-availability to anyone but him, and to her virginity. The metaphor of the girl as a “garden”, watered by an ever flowing spring, indicates that she is alive, fertile, blossoming in every sense. She has an inner spring that is a source of life, not of barrenness. She herself is the guardian of that fountain, to give or to refrain from giving as she so chooses. Of course, it is entirely possible that she can open her garden in order merely to fulfil some immediate sexual pleasure but she hasn’t.

At the basic level, this refers to the girl’s chastity. She has not made herself available to others. She is not sexually experienced.

In our Western European society, chastity is not considered a virtue. On the contrary, it is mocked and held up to ridicule. Those who are ‘sexually inexperienced’, both male and female, are either looked down upon with contempt, or else considered to be the objects of pity.

The reaction of contempt arises from either guilt feelings or hostility towards those who do not conform to their own immoral behaviour. There is the unspoken assumption that lack of experience at this sexual level somehow is a disqualification from progress in this modern world. Or that the chaste or the celibate is somehow incomplete or unfulfilled; that they are emotional cripples bound by outmoded religious scruples. The writer of Ecclesiastes says ‘[There is] a time to embrace and a time to refrain: She has kept herself reserved for her only love (Proverbs 5:15-20).

But what about sexual relationships outside marriage? E.g. Paul recognizes that to link one’s self with a prostitute is to become one flesh with her.

But when a husband and his wife become one flesh, it is much more than a simple physical relationship. Whilst the sexual act can never be divorced from the context of a permanent total relationship between a man and his wife who are irrevocably committed to each other, it is but one very small part of the totality of their union together.

3. Invitation (4:16)

The girl then invites her lover into her garden. The word for ‘awake’ in “awake, north wind”, is the same as that used in the refrain to the daughters of Jerusalem, ‘Do not awake love until it please.’ There it was a call to avoid premature awakening. But now the time is right. There is to be no restraint. She is freely giving herself to him. She is not merely passive, but ardent and eager. The use of the verb ‘to enter’ or to come into is a standard Hebrew metaphor for sexual intercourse.

For the newlywed couple, this act of intercourse represents the joyful climax of their physical relationship. When two members of this “God-like cerebral species” approach the heights of communion between themselves, what do they do? Think? Speculate? Meditate? No, they take off their clothes. Do they want to get their brains together? No, they want to get their bodies together!

“Bouncing buttocks, phallic thrusts, heaving bodies, sighs and moans and giggles are all part of the God-given natural order of things”.

For true love is adventurous, and every adventure involves risk-taking; and this in turn requires the courage to overcome fears and inhibitions.

The lovers, having tasted the honey pot may be tempted to think that these ecstatic heights are attainable every time.

But Eros is a mischievous elf, whimsical and capricious, and the sooner we recognize this, the better for our emotional and psychological well-being.

We may lay the wood, but on occasion the bonfire fails to ignite. We may be afflicted with a desperately urgent desire at those very times when there is absolutely no possibility of fulfilment, and have to be content with frustrated glances at a distance.

But if only we could indulge in a hearty laugh over all this, the tensions and irritations would be dissolved readily. Our society’s quest for instant total gratification doesn’t help us here. But we should learn not to treat it with such “reverential gravity”, as C. S. Lewis put it. Laughter should be an integral part of the marriage bed. For to laugh with each other is to be involved personally, it is an expression of a relationship which is far more than a performance.

‘One flesh’ union is meant to be more than a physical act like eating. Behind the physical there is the relational, the interaction at a psychological, personal level. The two, while retaining their own identities, are striving to be outside of themselves, to become more of the other. It is this mystical union!

3. Consummation (5:1)

I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride;
I have gathered my myrrh with my spice.
I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey (thicket);
I have drunk my wine and my milk.

John Piper:
Sex does not marriage and adultery does not necessarily break marriage. The decisive thing is the covenant relationship.

This verse describes the boy’s response. The verse is full of the first person:

I have come …
I have gathered …
I have eaten …
I have drunk; four very deliberate and incisive verbal actions.

Eight times the strongly possessive ‘my’ occurs:
My garden, my sister bride, my myrrh, my spice, my honeycomb, my honey, my wine, my milk.

These are obviously metaphors, not to be taken literally. The drinking metaphor occurs in Proverbs 7:18, where the unfaithful wife invites her lover to come into her marriage bed with the words:

‘Come, let’s drink deep of love till morning; let’s enjoy ourselves with love!’

Drinking milk is a metaphor which occurs in Mesopotamian love- songs, which Ancient Near-Eastern love-poetry often uses the metaphors of honeycomb and of ‘thicket’ to describe female genitalia.

Hang ups

1. There are a number of references in the Old Testament which refer to stolen honey, the taking of the forbidden thing.

Samson took the honeycomb from the carcass of the dead lion, thereby violating his Nazirite vow.

Jonathan dipped his staff into the honeycomb and ate, thus unwittingly violating the command of his father Saul.

Is there here the possible hint of the frisson of delight in doing that which is forbidden?

‘Stolen water is sweet; food eaten in secret is delicious!’

The western church has long been accused linking sexuality with sin. True but wrong! We can be certain that sexuality (both male and female) is part of humanity, upon which God, when he had created them, pronounced the verdict ‘good’.

Augustine’s views on the solidarity of the human race with Adam’s sin, and of our biological links with him as the founder of the human race, forced him to postulate that original sin was propagated through the act of intercourse.

Whilst we may agree with him that our very humanness now necessarily implies a sharing of Adam’s condition as bearing the infection of sin, we do not have to agree with him that the whole condition is somehow located in the sexual act. This puts too biological a focus on a moral condition.

Augustine worked with the standard Greek categories of the higher and lower faculties of man. This is at odds with the Old Testament which looks at mankind from a more holistic point of view, rather than analysing man into his constituent parts.

We cannot read our passage and argue that sex is sinful. What our lovers are doing together is sweet and delicious to them, but there is no trace of any kind of guilt feelings or of a secret furtiveness. They are abandoning themselves unreservedly and unashamedly to each other

2. 5:1 seems on the surface of it to indicate a strong male triumphalism. ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ But the whole tenor of the Song is against any such interpretation.

She has invited him in eagerly, their passion is mutual. Most of the Song is concerned with the girl’s feelings; it is only occasionally that the passion of the man is described. His eagerness is described in terms of strong determination in 7:8, ‘I said, I will climb the palm tree and seize its fruits.’

The lovers have talked, walked and had fun together. They have eaten and prayed together. They have held hands, embraced and caressed. They have kissed and fondled each other.

And now at last, what they have looked forward to for so long, with such keen anticipation, has become reality. It is an act that will be repeated again and again, affirming and consolidating their growing relationship.

The continuing expression of their sexual union is both a cause and a result of their growing intimacy and adjustment in other areas of their life together. The initial thrills of sexual discovery will inevitably reduce, but their joy at growing integration of their lives must surely increase.

What they are doing is good, wholesome, right and proper and for life.

Cell Outline
From the text:
1. In SofS 4:1-7, if a man’s prospective wife is not a perfect model of physical beauty, can he still love her?
Is having physical beauty everything (Job 42:15)?
What happens when we grow old (1 Peter 3:2-4)
What are some of the difference in how beauty is perceived in other cultures we may know about?

2. In SofS 4:9-10,12, why is he calling his beloved “his sister”?
Hint: While the physical relationship should reflect the love for each other, the love for each other should be more important than the physical relationship.

In SofS 4:12-5:1, what are they talking about?
Hint: 1:2-3:5 are the courtship, 3:6-5:1 are the wedding, 4:1-5:1 are the wedding night.

Beyond the text:

1. Is it helpful for single people to fantasise about their own possible future marriage?

2. What can we do to keep our own marriages from falling into a rut?

3. Is ‘falling in love’ a necessary prerequisite for a successful marriage?

4. What are the advantages of an arranged marriage?

5. What is the purpose of a wedding as a public ceremony?

Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body’s superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home. Henri Nouwen

Friends
Convergence (the industry buzzword for that different technologies — mobile phones, cameras, radios, email, Internet access and more — can be combined in a single device) appears to be far less successful when applied to personal relationships! Friendships are vital for wellbeing. It is possible and beneficial to have many close friendships; maintaining many sexual relationships tends to cause serious problems! 

Jesus never married and often spent long periods of time alone to pray (Luke 5:16; ! Matt. 14:22—23), was nevertheless close to his disciples, particularly Peter, James and John, and had other friends such as Lazarus, and Martha —Mary Magdalene.  Paul, another long-term single, had close friends and travelling companions in his work: Tychicus, Timothy, Epaphroditus, and many others in the churches he planted around the Roman Empire.

Of all the occasions when the church and individuals are told to ‘love’ in the NT, the sense is never sexual. In biblical terms, it turns out that there is far more to love than just sex. 1 Corinthians 13,  1 John 4:7-21; John 13:34—3 5.

‘A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing…’ (Ps. 68:5-6).

The assumption is that what the widow needs is a defender, not a husband. When the widow asks Elijah for help in 1 Kings 17, his solution is not to find her another husband, but to ensure continued financial provision. How would that story have ended if it had been written today? Probably in the same way that Bridget Jones’s Diary did, along with a thousand other books and films: with the lonely, unfulfilled single blissfully pairing off. The lonely do not merely need a partner, but a family.

Family as the basic unit of society is assumed in the Old Testament. Proverbs, however, recognizes that friendship is sometimes of as great or even greater importance than family.

‘A man of [many] friends may be destroyed, but there is a friend [literally 'one loving"] who sticks closer than a brother’ (Prov 18:24).

And ‘Do not go to your brother’s house when disaster strikes you – better a neighbour nearby than a brother far away’ (Prov 27:10).

Jesus made it clear that family was important (Mark 7:9-13), but that other relationships and concerns could be of even greater importance (Mark 3:31—35).

So friendship, fellowship with both God and other believers, and family all feature as priorities, but not sex. Coming from a mentality that assumes that romantic relationship is better than singleness and that everyone who is not ‘in a relationship’ wishes to be (or else, has something wrong with them), it is easy to devalue singles. The Bible does not equate love or relationship with sex, but neither does it separate sex from relationship. Sexual relationship is one part — an important part, but only a part — of God’s relational plan for us. It is not his only solution to loneliness, or even his first.  This may seem an obvious point, but it is a perspective that still needs stating as it can be one that our culture barely permits us to hold (Ps. 68:5-6; 1 Kings 17; Prov. 18:24, Prov. 27:10). In Acts 2:42—47, the picture we have of the early church seems to be something like a warm extended family. To enjoy the same kind of fellowship with and support from other Christians that we do with our closest friends and family is a great challenge for us today.

Fears

The text is so marvellously alive, that any comment will appear to be very pedestrian. Beautiful poems can too often be reduced to dust and ashes by dry academic analysis. But, for the purposes of our exposition, we can divide the poem quite naturally into the girl’s eager anticipation (verses 8-9) and the boy’s urgent invitation (verses 10-14).

1. The fear of leaving (SS 2:8-13)
The domestic scene represents safety, security, the acceptance of society’s norms and conventions. But it can speak of dullness and decay and of drab conformity, of a prison within which free spirits are confined. The barriers between these two types of existence are dramatically and forcefully represented by the wall, the windows and the lattice. She must penetrate these obstacles in order to join her lover, not just physically but emotionally and psychologically. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.’ 

2. The fear of nakedness (SS 2:14) Face = lit form.
Nakedness in the Old Testament is nearly always associated with shame, humiliation and degradation.  Our real selves are more fully expressed by our outer clothing, which expresses our personality more than nudity ever can. The Apostle Paul, speaking in the completely different context of the Christian’s resurrection body, writes of this desire, ‘Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked … because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.’

Foxes

Foxes are guileful creatures in ancient fable and folklore. But here, their threat seems to be minimized. They are little foxes, playful creatures that romp wantonly through the vineyards destroying the blossom. What then is all this about?  Conscious of the attraction that her feminine charms hold for all young men, she is reminding her lover that there may be others who may be tempted to mount a fox raid on her vineyards that are in bloom, and that he had better show a bit of masculine chivalry towards her. Not that there is any hint of possible unfaithfulness or promiscuity here.

1. Teasing
But after the uncertain teasing of 2:14-15 we return to a reaffirmation of the fundamental theme of the Song – the mutual belonging of the lovers. In any relationship that is secure at its most fundamental level, there is always room for teasing, for play, for frolicking adventure; also there is always the possibility of nagging insecurities, of doubts, of longings for deeper levels of intimacy, or fear of loss. But for now, all hesitations are gone, and the girl reaffirms in verse 16 the depth of their mutual belonging. He belongs to her just as much as she belongs to him. They own, they possess each other.

2. Dysfunction
Their relationship is totally symmetrical. The whole of each belongs, and is available to the whole of the other. As Paul says of the marriage relationship:

‘The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone, but also to his wife."

But here in the Song we are not just talking about bodies. Their bodily sharing is an expression of their mutual love and loyalty, of their determination to treat each other as whole persons. This reciprocity, this mutuality is something that shines out from the Song, something of a protest against the male dominance and macho-masculinity which sin brought into the world.

3. Waiting
Here, our culture’s obsession with sex is utterly unhelpful. The Song of Songs repeatedly warns, ‘do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires’ (2:7; 5:3; 8:4) — but the media does exactly that in the name of entertainment and advertising.

Although the Song of Songs addresses the ‘daughters of Jerusalem’, it is men who are disproportionately susceptible and therefore targeted by this kind of visual temptation. In 1 Corinthians 7:9 Paul writes that it ‘is better to marry than to burn with passion’ – a condition that was apparently leading the Corinthians into sexual immorality. Given that our environment is almost as sexually saturated as was theirs, we can hardly expect a different outcome.

However, ours also has the problem of a decreasing marriage rate, while the age at first marriage is rising — from 24 for men and 22 for women in 1970 to 31 and 29 respectively in 2003, a seven-year shift in the marriage age over just three decades. Marriage is not the solution that people are seeking.

As if a concession to this, the likelihood of cohabiting before marriage also rises with age of first marriage — from 19% and 23% for 20- to 24-year-old men and women respectively to 63% and 59% for 3 5 – to 39-year olds.

How should Christians respond to this trend? Should we encourage people to marry younger? If so, how do we keep those marriages together, given that very early marriage, particularly teenage marriage, increases the likelihood of divorce later?

And how do we tackle some of the practical issues that underlie the decision to postpone marriage — increased time in full-time education, student debt and lack of job stability?

4. Separation
Prolonged absence can play havoc with our emotional stability. It is only partially true that absence makes the heart grow fonder. The coals which blazed so brightly when together, may so easily smoulder and be extinguished when forced apart and left alone. The longer the absence, the greater the scope for fantasizing about the relationship. And the imaginations of the heart and mind may not correspond to the actual reality in the flesh when the lovers reunite. Similarly, the absence gives free reign to fear of loss, to jealousy, to insecurity. What is my partner doing now, who is benefitting from his attentions, is he being enticed away, or lured into more immediate relationships? Absence without reassurance can give way to speculative doubts. Are we right for each other? Are we compatible? We rationalize our fears, we counteract them because we cannot bear the possibility of being wrong, the pain of rejection, the loss of self-respect brought about by discovering that we have made mistakes, that we have fooled ourselves for too long.

Separation also gives room for thought, for reflection and contemplation. The girl in our Song takes the initiative to resolve the impasse of her uncertainty. To live too long in uncertainty is debilitating, and needs as far as is possible a stroke of initiative to resolve it. The girl’s initiative here is irrational. But love is a brand of madness. Not that it just makes us do irrational things, but love is a madness of the soul. It so disorients our senses, our rationality, it so takes possession of our hearts and minds, that all else is carried before it in its flood. Its tide is unstoppable, its fire unquenchable (8:6-7). The onset of love, of ‘being in love’ is entering a whole new dimension of existence. The lovers feel as though they had never lived at all before they met each other.

5. Freedom
So the ambiguity of the language indicates the ambiguity of human responses. She wants him; she does not want him. This is a tension which every one of us feels. We dislike dependency, yet we cannot do without it; we long for its succour, but wish that things might be otherwise. What strange creatures we are! We want to be free, yet we want to possess and be possessed. We want to maintain independence, yet the loneliness of independence drives us to the desire for intimacy. And intimacy in turn leads us to the ‘chains of love’. Any actual relationship will have to be a compromise. It is possible to suffocate our partners by an overwhelming desire for an unhealthy intimacy, by a cloying togetherness which stunts any development of different interests, and we limp along, leaning on each other as psychological and emotional crutches. Alternatively we can each go our own separate ways, with barely a meeting of minds, let alone bodies. But the adventure of courtship, both within and outside marriage, entails the ability to be flexible enough to cope with these tensions. There is some truth in the saying that only those who have learned to live with the responsible freedom and independence of singleness are qualified to cope with the togetherness and mutual dependency of marriage.

Cell Outline

From the text:
1. In SofS 2:15, what is the significance of foxes? What impact can small sins have on a marriage?
Hint: A family of foxes, over a long time, can destroy the roots of the vines and ruin a vineyard.

2. In SofS 3:1-4, why did the woman seek the man here? Is there anything wrong with the women taking the initiative in the relationship? Does Ruth 3:7 help?

3. In SofS 2:7, 3:5 and 8:4, why should people not stir up love until it pleases? What practical steps can be taken to ensure that we ‘do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires’?
Hint: One should not try to rush someone to sexual maturity, sexual intimacy, or a marriage commitment.

Beyond the text:

1. Do you think that the Song undermines the gender stereotypes of our modern society?

2. What degrees of intimacy are appropriate for particular stages in a developing relationship?

3. Are sexual fantasies always an indication of lust?

4. How far may we articulate to our spouses the particular intimacies which we find most pleasurable?

5. When does our desire for intimacy degenerate into a selfish desire for sexual gratification?