Christian Community Bible

1 If only you were my brother, nursed at my mother’s breasts, I could kiss you outside if we met, without anyone despising me for it.

2 I would lead and bring you into the house of my mother, and you would teach me there. I would give you wine with spice and the juice of my pomegranates.

3 His left hand is under my head; his right arm embraces me. He

4 I beg you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers of nature, not to arouse or stir up love before her time has come. Chorus

5 Who is this coming from the wilderness leaning upon her lover? He I woke you under the apple tree, where you were conceived by your mother, where she who bore you was in travail. [Bol]

6 Set me as a seal on your heart, set me as a seal on your arm. For love is strong as death; its jealousy lasting as the power of death, it burns like a blazing fire, it blazes like a mighty flame.

7 No flood can extinguish love nor river submerge it. If a man were to buy love with all the wealth of his house, is all he would purchase. [Bol]

8 We have a little sister with her breasts yet unformed. What shall we do for her when her courtship is begun?

9 If she were a rampart, we would build towers of silver on it. If she were a gate, we would enclose it with panels of cedar. She

10 I am a rampart and my breasts are towers; thus I have become, in his eyes, like one who brings peace.

11 At Baal-hamon Solomon had a vineyard, which he gave over to caretakers; for its fruit, each had to pay: a thousand pieces of silver.

12 But my vineyard is mine and I myself keep it. You, Solomon, may have the thousand, and the fruit keepers two hundred pieces.

13 You who dwell in the gardens, with your friends in attendance, let me hear your utterance.

14 Make haste, my love; be like a gazelle or a young stag on the spice-laden hills!

  • Proverbs 7,13

  • Genesis 38,18

  • Isaiah 28,15

  • Hosea 13,14

  • Deuteronomy 32,24

  • Deuteronomy 4,24

Song 8,1

If only you were my brother. A way of saying: Is there then no possibility for me to escape from social rules and conventions society intends to impose on us? Are we able to relate to God in feeling free from rites, religious attitudes, all of which are very useful, for sure, but only for a time and a given place?

Song 8,6

Love is strong as death... The Song ends with the promise of the eternal union of the Lord with his people. The love of the jealous God is strong, and strong also is the love that he puts in the heart of his children: who will separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom 8:35).

Love - as it is here expressed whether divine or human is the same if it is sincere - is far removed from what our society knows.The love of man and woman has been freed from the constraints of social life, and has overcome little by little the secular prejudices of masculine domination, thus becoming the privileged place for communication between persons, at the same time seen as an increased fear of "losing one's own life" in binding oneself totally to another person. Many try to combine what is contradictory: a love that leads to the fullness of joy and the fullness of self, and a secret decision to break as soon as one sees the possibility of finding something better.

Here the biblical text gives priority not to happiness but to love. The Song is the will to know love at whatever cost, and the Gospel tells us the price. Marriage will be restored in such a way: people marry to respond together to a call, and happiness here below will be a free gift in the way God wishes to give it.

Song 8,8

The last verses of the Song of Songs, from 8:8, were possibly phrases added to the poem later; they make political references. The fact that they have been inserted here is quite significant: it seems to confirm that what people read in the song were the aspirations of the Israeli community and its will not to turn away from its hopes.

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