The Song Of Solomon 2: You Can't Hurry Love

"Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires" (vs. 7).

There are two tracks simultaneously going on in the Song of Solomon.  One is the love song between lover and beloved in which they share their feelings for one another.  The other track consists of instructional asides to the onlooking world about how to flourish in a relationship of love.

One such principle, to quote Diana Ross and the Supremes, is that you can't hurry love.  The beloved makes this case several times throughout the song, beginning in verse 7.  It reminds me of Paul's first descriptive word about love in the great love chapter of I Corinthians 13: Love is patient.  Love is never forced or manipulated.  If it is, I don't know what you have, but it isn't love.  Instead, love, as God designed it, arises organically, growing rather than concocted, and is natural rather than artificial.

Along the way, the Song of Solomon had added richly to our culture by contributing a lot of imagery and metaphor that has persisted through the ages.  Here is a brief list of familiar terms and expressions from chapter 2 that you may have heard before:

• "A rose of Sharon, a lily of the valley" (vs. 1)
• "His banner over me is love" (vs. 4)
• "Lo! The winter is past" (vs. 11)
• "The little foxes that ruin the vineyards" (vs. 15)
• "My lover is mine and I am his" (vs. 16)

Just like any good modern love song, the Song of Solomon has its memorable lines.  Through the ages, people turned to them so much, in fact, that they buried them in their hearts and, centuries later, we still have them with us as touchstones in the English language!