Summary

The woman is looking back to the time when she was growing up. How has her life progressed at that point? Now as she looks back to that period when she became an adult, she can say of herself, I was a wall, and my breasts were like towers. The reality of her life as a young woman was that she was not an open door. She did not share with others those parts of her body that play a major role in the experience of sexuality. She kept this for that one special person: the one that the Lord has given her to marry. She remains a secure fortress against the men who want to make sexual use of her. This is how matters stand in her life because she is listening to her God and Saviour. She does it this way because she has listened in love and faith to the teaching she received in the family based on God’s Word. That has become part of her life.

These things are also very important for us in our time. It is so important that we stay far from jokes, stories, movies, and websites that show us very different ways on this matter. There are many different media that recommend a loose sexual lifestyle. As long as you enjoy it; as long as you find satisfaction... It is also important at this point not to play with other people’s feelings when you do not plan to have a longterm relationship.

We live in a world where we are advised and encouraged to be open-minded. You are young. You just need to make sure that you do not get any venereal diseases, the HIV virus; and, as a girl, do not get pregnant. Other than that, when you are young you live to enjoy sexual gratification to the fullest. Sexuality has become more and more of a consumer commodity in the world around us. How much misery, how much sorrow is between people in this world because they have become unfaithful to each other. How many marriages did not get shipwrecked because of this. How many children have suffered because of broken relationships.

The Lord who created man and who knows what is truly good for us has given sexuality a different place in our lives. That place is in marriage, in an environment of love and fidelity—with one man, with one woman. When the woman meets the one, the right man, then she becomes a woman who finds peace. This woman was a secure fortress for boys and men. She did not allow herself and her sexuality to be toyed with. Nor did she play around with it herself.

Then she meets the special man under the apple tree who will later become her husband. Love begins to grow. They start a relationship, and grow deeper in friendship and love. They decide to move toward marriage in the unity of true faith in Christ. She does not remain at a distance from him as she did with those others. Love grows between these two people. A wonderful sense of peace is also growing: the precious love between a man and a woman. She now allows herself to be embraced by him. She allows herself to be kissed by this man. Because in each other they have found true love.

This culminates in their being able to give themselves completely to each other on the day of their marriage and afterwards. This mutual peace between them means that in marriage all shame for each other disappears. They trust each other. Such wonderful peace in their exclusive love may then be crowned by also becoming one physically. This the path of Christ. This good path is now also underlined by the wrong example of Solomon, as we see in the next verses (Song of Solomon 8:11–12).