Love is an affection.
Love is an affection of the heart.
Love is a feeling.
Love is a subjective feeling.
True love a holy love is a feeling subject to change but when felt is based on objective unchanging truth as it relates to the object/Object of its affection.
True love when felt to a higher degree or another comes with other emotions.
Each of the other emotions that come with love can be felt to various degree’s based on the purity of the heart.
Each emotion or feeling that comes with love can not only vary in degree but also in sensibility. What I mean by sensibility is your ability to know it is there. You may not be sensible of it.
These other emotions that come with love, particularly true love to God are all fruits of the Spirit. Meaning if you have God’s holy spirit dwelling in you because you believe the Gospel and have repented (Ephesians 1:15) then you will also sense joy and peace (Gal. 5:22).
Jealousy comes with love.
King Solomon and his first wife started off as far apart as two people can get. One was a Jew and the other a Gentile. Two completely different backgrounds. She was a new believer when they fell in love at his first anointing. Yet sometime after their marriage the two of them got so close that you could not separate them.
Their hearts were one. Their faith the same. Their love the same. She had her heart bond tightly to his and she was sealed to his arm.
How was this possible?
She attributes this strict closeness and happiness to the kind of love they had in their hearts.
It was superlatively strong.
It’s jealousy severe and cruel at times.
It had superlative sparks.
It was unquenchable.
It was priceless.
This special kind of true love bound them together tighter than ever.
My thoughts today kept going back to Jealousy and the idea that Jealousy and the word zeal are often interchangeable in Scripture.
And the fact that zeal is a feeling.
Having you ever been zealous for anyone or anything?
It’s all consuming.
You seek after them or it and nothing can stop you.
It’s a feeling.
A feeling that comes with desire.
A feeling that comes with pain when what you desire or who you desire that is yours, is your beloved but yet you don’t sense their love.
I was often thinking of the woman in the song.
She really loved the Messiah, shepherd and king of Israel.
She truly had ardent affections for him.
She was zealous for him.
To have him.
To have him close.
To have him close physically, spiritually and mentally.
With ardent affection and a burning zeal in her heart she says to him,
“Draw me after you, let us hurry!” Song 1:4
Her feelings for him were not small nor weak but came with a high dose of zeal due to a strong, unquenchable and priceless flame being in her heart that burned for him, the king of peace, Israel’s third Messiah and anointed king.
The questions that often come to my mind have to do with the translation of the key verse in Solomon’s love poem. After realizing she is fully heart to heart with he husband she wants to stay there and never leave him so she says with ardent affection to him,
“Set me as a seal upon you heart, as a seal upon your arm.“
And how is it possible for him to do that with her?
“For your love is strong as death,
It’s Jealousy is as cruel (severe, intense, fierce or unrelenting) as Sheol.
Love’s sparks are a flame above all other’s.
Many waters cant quench love.
If someone where to give their whole household for love the offer would be utterly scorned.” Solomon’s Song of Songs 8:6-7
Translators have a hard time figuring out what word to put there. Whatever the feeling is like is the same as Sheol. The place of the dead.
The feelings a person in hell have as it relates to zeal or jealousy are unforgiving, relentless, burning hotter without satisfaction, ever wanting but never getting. Similar to the rich man in hell who wanted just a drop of water but could not even get one drop of relief in Luke 16:19-31. Which is why he called it a place of torment.
For sure the person in hell never feels one drop of love and grace but they feel what is like to experience the wrath of God and punishment for their sinful life which is not only torment but increasing torment. Imagine desire increasing yet knowing you will never ever forever get fulfilment of that desire. The thought of which will only increase the degree of mental pain and suffering.
I say this because there seems to be a connection between the desires or zeal of the damned in hell and the desire and zeal of the woman in the Love Song when it doesn’t feel like he is close to her.
Just after engagement and before the wedding she went through a living hell night after night.
Listen to how she puts it,
“Night after night on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves. I looked for him and did not find him.” Solomon’s Song of Songs 3:1
Think of the just engaged woman up night after night waiting for her fiancé to come back from active duty during war time.
How does such a woman feel?
Certainly if she loved him and if she was truly zealous for him she would want him to be there physically close to her. Yet she can’t have it. She can’t have him. She must be patient yet night after night the feeling gets unbearable similar to the unbearable feeling of the wrath of God in Sheol.
Notice what I am doing. I am taking the feelings described in Song 8:6-7 and reading them back into the text of Song 3:1.
Since we know what love is like according to Song 8:6-7 “For love is…“.
And we know in Song 3:1 she says, “Night after night I looked for the one my heart loves. I looked for him but did not find him.”
The one her heart LOVES is not there. The one she has feelings for is not there. The one she has strong feelings for is not there by her side. The one she is zealous for is not there. The one she loves and has ardent feelings for is not there.
This is a good time to get closer to God!
So when her lover is absent the feeling of zeal that comes with her love tends to be cruel, severe and unrelenting. What a horrible place to be in and of itself, yet we all know that when true lover’s are absent from one another that absence breeds desire and increased desire brings two lovers closer. Even if physically apart their heart will get closer. Their minds will be more often on the one they love because desire is increased.
So what happens to this woman who is enflamed with love and her lover is not close. One night the pain becomes unbearable and she can’t just lay there. Listen to her account of that night when love and zeal prevailed.
3 All night long on my bed
I looked for the one my heart loves;
I looked for him but did not find him.
2 I will get up now and go about the city,
through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves.
So I looked for him but did not find him.
3 The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
“Have you seen the one my heart loves?”
4 Scarcely had I passed them
when I found the one my heart loves.
I held him and would not let him go
till I had brought him to my mother’s house,
to the room of the one who conceived me.” Solomon’s Song of Songs 3:1-4
Think of a kingdom with watchman guarding the city at night. The watchman know where young king Solomon is. She gets up out of bed, looks for him. The watchmen help her and she finds him. She holds him tight until the unbearable feelings of a holy jealousy go away and she feels like life has just begun. A new life closer to the one she loves. Her old life is passing and her new life united to him in love is just beginning.
Though he has done nothing wrong. He has not committed adultery and left her there. They are engaged and living in separate places when the nights become unbearable. So this feeling of jealousy can and was felt by the bride in the love song before marriage. She wanted to share with us what love felt like for her night after night when she would look for him and want him to be there and he wasn’t.
Then comes the command that is repeated 3x in the song.
“Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”
The temptation at the time is to desire him to be there. Properly speaking the nights of an engaged holy couple ought to be spent in separate beds. Being together at night in bed is reserved for marriage. To think you have a right to have him there in bed with you at night is not wise.
Do not arouse this idea in your heart until love desires. He is yours. He has promised to be yours. But your not married yet.
Sinful jealousy desires what the sinful heart wants. Things in a relationship before the proper time.
Holy jealousy comes with patience and desires certain physical intimacy at the proper time, when a holy and true love desires.
Nothing wrong with having him there with you at night. But it is probably rarely a good idea to have him there night after night in your bed. This happiness is reserved for marriage.
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