Summary

The woman’s desire goes even further. She wants her beloved to take her into the house, to one of the rooms of the house where no one can see them. She calls her husband her king. She wants him to take the initiative. She would like to follow him in love because she feels entirely safe with him. This is very different with King Solomon and his 1,000 wives. As one of Solomon wives you do not know to whom he will give his love on any given day, or with whom he will spend that day and night.

She says, We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you.

The pronoun we points to the woman and the young women mentioned in Song of Solomon 1:3. The wife makes clear to the girls how good the love of her husband is. She calls on them to praise him for it, to rejoice in the love he radiates in this world. The wife reveres this husband, so full of love and tenderness. She can well understand that others love her husband.

As we look again at the first four verses, we see that the wife is eager to be with her husband. This is how it will be when Christ controls our lives as well as our marriage. Then you want to be with each other as husband and wife. You look forward to the time when your partner comes home, and you are together again. If this is not the case, it is the Lord himself who points out a deficiency in your life. Then the love in your life has begun to fade and it is necessary therefore for love to start growing in you again. Then it is necessary to go on your knees—either by yourself or together—and ask the Lord to help you in that situation. Ask him to grant you his love and faithfulness. Love in marriage is a task for which you will need God’s love and Spirit every time again.

When you are in a relationship, it is necessary that you grow closer to each other in love. On the way toward marriage, you continually need to ask yourselves together whether you enjoy being with each other. Not just kissing and touching each other, but doing all things in life together and talking about them with one another. When you notice that you often do not want to be together, when you are always looking for others in order not to be together, and when you do not grow in this, it is better not to go down the road of marriage together—especially since marriage is supposed to be an image of the relationship between Christ and his church (see Ephesians 5:32). The wife’s longing for her husband shows us how we too should long for Christ to be with us—that we need to want to be with him as our greatest love, the person with whom we feel most safe and secure. God’s people experience in love that the Lord is the husband of his people (see Isaiah 54:5; Revelation 21:2). The believers embrace their God and Saviour in love. The relationship between Christ and his church is a relationship of love.

Every time that you think or feel, It is better that the Lord does not see me now, or when you think, for a while, I am going to ignore the fact that Christ is present, you are on the wrong road. Then we are on a path where we do not want to live out God’s love. For those who live by faith do not seek to distance themselves from Christ. Instead, you want to have him as close to you as possible, again and again. It is awful when you feel that God is far away from you, because you are going your own way through life. No, you want the nearness of Christ in your life. Then you experience in love, as a gift of the Spirit, that Christ is the Man of our lives. Then you will listen in love to the call of the Lord: Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him! (Psalm 2:12).