The woman who so enjoys her husband’s love addresses the girls of Jerusalem. She makes it clear that she is now about to say something that is very important. She adjures them, that is, she puts them under oath. She swears by the gazelles and the does of the field. As surely as they know those animals, what she is saying now is as sure as that. When she sings her song of praise of the love between her and her husband, the daughters, that is, the young women should not think only of sexuality. They should not start thinking that the satisfaction of physical desires is everything. If that is the same as love for people, bad things will happen.
Then girls and young women will start trying to dress as provocative as possible, in order to arouse the attention and desire of a boy or a man. The world is full of such thoughts. Many books, movies, videos, music, and advertisements all have the idea that sex and love are the same thing. Suggestive clothing, dressing up in a suggestive way should then give the impression that a life full of sex and the experience of it makes one happy. The Holy Spirit shows in this text that it does not. If you are unmarried, it is so important that you do not seek a marriage partner just for the sake of sex. It is so necessary to be constantly mindful that the time of courtship is not just a time to make out with each other. Love is so much more.
Love is a gift from God that makes you feel and understand each other in a very special way, so that a very special affection grows between a man and a woman; that you want to and can talk with the other about all things in your life; that you do not want to hide a single thing from the other person; that one feels so safe with the other that you can share anything with each other.
It should not be the case that we want to arouse this love through all kinds of sexual stimuli. Then you only arouse the desire for sexual gratification, and it becomes almost impossible not to live as a married couple in your courtship period. Then love also does not blossom during the time you are married because then you do not know what real love is.
Therefore, it is very important that a courtship begins in the right way. It is very important that the feeling of attraction comes from a tender interest in each other; that you really get to know each other well. That is how real love can grow. True love seeks the inner beauty of the other. Then you want to live together with the other person based on your love of Christ. Then it is decisive in your life what the Holy Spirit says through Paul: “A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). Seeking a relationship only in the Lord!
A true and full love can only come to fruition when people live together in love for the Lord; when they serve him together in his church. Then you will also talk together about life with the Lord. Then you pray together to him for the strength to live in a holy way toward your marriage, without physical intercourse. Then you do not arouse such love, but you receive it at the time the Lord in his wisdom and grace grants it to you.
The girls of Jerusalem are warned not to pursue the satisfaction of sexual desires but to pursue true love, where sexual intercourse is the crowning glory of love and faithfulness to one another.
7 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.