When the wife brought up that decisive encounter in their lives, she said, Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.
Back then, a seal was very important in Israel. There were two kinds of seals. There were seals that you carried with you on a chain. Such a seal then hung somewhere near the region of your heart. The seal hung there as a sign that it was very important to you. It was a matter close to your heart. You were not allowed to lose that seal. In this way the woman wants to be safe and secure with her beloved. She wants to be carried on the man’s heart. She wants to be so strongly attached to him as someone he never wants to be without. He is so attached to her in love that he never wants it any other way either.
This is how she has spoken of him from the beginning already. We heard this earlier in Song of Solomon 1:13–14: My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh that lies between my breasts. My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of Engedi.
These words are also very important to us today. Living with each other as husband and wife is not a casual affair. Those who marry are bound to each other. You do not have the freedom to give your love to someone else as well. No—the other person has to be a seal on your heart. It needs to be such that the other person will find love and security with you. That is what the Lord teaches us here. He shows us that the life of husband and wife is a matter of faithful love, a life in which you are constantly open to each other. In which you always want to care for each other in love. If you are married, you have promised before God that you are and will continue to be a seal on the other person’s heart.
That is the promise that married people have given each other. Most importantly, that promise has been expressed before the ears of the Lord God. It is a promise that is in accordance with his will. You can keep that promise when you seek love and faithfulness for the other person in Christ. When you continually ask for the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. You ask the Spirit to always live for towards your spouse with an open heart. This also means that when there is something in your spouse that annoys you, you discuss it with him or her. You discuss such matters in love for each other. Ask the LORD in your prayers that your love for the other person remains strong. Only then is it possible to continue to live in true love for one another.
Then you also learn to openly discuss your wrong feelings, your wrong behaviour, your wrong comments toward the other person—and receive forgiveness. You learn to sacrifice certain things for the other out of love. Only in this way can you be a seal on the other person’s heart.
When you live like this in your marriage, others will take note of it. They hear it in the way you speak about your spouse, or how you speak in general about faithfulness in marriage and how you deal with it. Then you will see happening in your life what you can read in the second line of this verse, as a seal upon your arm.
The second kind of seal that was in use in Israel at that time was the signet ring. This seal was attached to your hand, visible to everyone. The wife now asks her husband: let it be clear to everyone that I belong to you and that I am your love, your wife. In many societies, the wedding ring is still the public sign that you are married. You are not ashamed of it. You display it quite openly. It shows to others that they do not have to knock on your door for intimate contact because you are married. It also calls on you to continually show in practice that you live in love with your husband or wife and that you are therefore not open to another person in that way. It is also very important that as members of the church of Christ we show that living in love and faithfulness to that one woman or man in marriage is something very beautiful and good. This also gives evidence of the firm belief that marriage as a lifelong bond is a wonderful gift from the heavenly Father.
In the remainder of this verse, the Spirit shows how strong and fierce the power of love is. We then read some rather strong language. Especially when love is compared to death. For we then read: for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.
When we think about the power of death it is clear that this power is very great. You cannot run from death. Every human being will one day die; it is inevitable and unavoidable. Even the most advanced medical care cannot ultimately keep death away from a human being. Love is compared to that power of death. When people are in love with each other, its power is very great. You cannot just argue it away. There may be big problems. But when there is love between people, they always look for a way to straighten out those problems, just to be able to continue on their way together. We must remember that this is about the love that is right and good in God’s eyes. It is not about what the world calls love; not the kind of love that is flaunted in movies and TV series. Nor is it the love between someone who wants to follow Christ and another who does not wish to do so in his or her life. The only true love we find on earth, is love that comes from God.
6 Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD.