Christian Community Bible

1 Where has your lover gone, most beautiful woman? Where has your lover turned, that we may help you look for him? She

2 My lover has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to pasture his flock in the garden and to gather lilies.

3 My lover is mine, and I am his; he shepherds his flock among the lilies. He

4 My love, you are lovely as Tirzah, beautiful as Jerusalem, majestic as bannered troops.

5 Turn your eyes away from me for they bewitch me. Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down the heights of Gilead.

6 Your teeth are like sheep coming in droves from the washing, each one opposing its twin, not one has been left alone.

7 Your cheeks behind your veil are like halves of a pomegranate. [Bol]

8 Sixty queens, eighty concubines, virgins beyond number –

9 but my dove, my perfect one, is unique, the only daughter and favorite of her mother. She was called blessed by the virgins and praised by queens and concubines:

10 “Who is this coming like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as bannered troops?”

11 I went to the nut orchard to look over the valley in bloom, to see if the vines had flowered, or if the pomegranates had blossomed.

12 Before I became aware of it, my desire had set me on the chariot with the daughter of the prince. Chorus

Song 6,1

My lover is mine, and I am his. How far we are from Moses after ten centuries of salvation history! (For Deuteronomy which also speaks of love, attributes to Moses more than he actually said.) Here we find the message of the great prophets. Let us remember, however, that for them, the bride-to-be, the spouse, is always the collective Israel. Only in the Christian community (but already in certain psalms), the Bible will be read as the history of the personal love of God for his people: those he has known beforehand and sanctified.

If God reveals himself as Love and Lover, it is not a way of speaking; he tells us what is his very nature. God's eternity is a feast of love, with its constant creativity from which proceed the Persons of the Son and the Spirit constantly reabsorbed into the joy of this union. Often we hesitate to think and to express it, so obsessed are we by the idea that if God is infinitely great, he must be, to begin with, a gentleman according to our fixed ideas, a great scholar, of course, and a great engineer as well.

Compare 6:8-9 with psalm 45. This psalm was probably not written on the occasion of a king's marriage, but, with the imagery of a royal wedding, it spoke of the inauguration of the Messiah's reign. The Queens and the favorites are the pagan nations who submit to the Messiah-King; in no way will they prevent Israel from remaining unique.

Song 6,8

But my dove, my perfect one, is unique (6:9). Fitting for Israel and fitting also for whoever has received marks of God's special love. All are loved "in Christ" and some infinitely more than others who have received only one talent. Each one, however, is loved with a unique love which makes that person feel he/she is special, as if ignoring what others might have received even if they be Apostles or Our Lady. Love cannot but be jealous, even if there is no place for jealousy in the kingdom of God.

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