The Song is attributed to Solomon and almost certainly preserved in royal-courtly circles before reaching its final form. It is love poetry — unembarrassed, sensual, particular — and the synagogue and church have read it for two thousand years as also a poem about God's love for his people. The two readings are not rivals. Israel learned to speak of covenant in the grammar of marriage; the prophets did the same; Paul did the same. By the time we reach 8:6-7, the poem is reaching for the strongest words it has — death, grave, fire, flood — because ordinary words for love have run out.

From the writers we read together

Brennan Manning

Franciscan priest and author of The Ragamuffin Gospel and Abba's Child (1934-2013)

Manning wrote out of his own ruin. He was an alcoholic priest who knew, in his bones, that the only love that could hold him was a love stronger than death — because death was very near. His whole pastoral project was to convince Christians that the fire in Song 8 is not metaphor for some other thing. It is the actual heat under the gospel. God does not love his people the way a benefactor tolerates a charity case. He loves them the way the Song says love loves: as a seal pressed on the heart, jealous as the grave, unquenchable by floods.

If Manning is right, the danger for most of us is not that we love God too little. It is that we cannot believe he loves us like this. We will accept being approved of, employed, used. We flinch at being treasured. But the verse will not let us flinch. Many waters — including the waters of our own failure — cannot quench it. The flame is the LORD's. He lit it himself, and he will not let it go out over you.