Song of Solomon 8:1-14 – Part 14

[Study Aired February 11, 2023]

“O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate”. (Son 8:1-2 abridged)

Song of Solomon 8:1-2 embodies the Shulamite’s unparalleled love for her groom, and its committed dynamics are the inherent theme of the Song of Solomon for the spiritual love between Christ and his Wife.

The most “terrible” power of authority quantified as “love”, the “I am”, was aonian before man was breathed into existence by God. That terrible love eternally Is, eternally Was and eternally Will continue to Be intrinsic to God as his exclusively identifying dimension to everything he is. Christ’s wife is his glory and made ruler over his house; only in royal rulership is he greater than her. Collectively with their children, the rest of humanity is the glory of the Father. (Gen 41:37-57)

Pro 17:6 Children’s children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers. 

Deu 10:17 For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, [to fear; against all that opposes his love] which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:

Rev 21:6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water [love] of life freely. 

Exo 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

In the earlier parts of the Song of Solomon, I went to lengths to express that the seat of a woman’s love, seen in her breathtaking collage of feminine charm, emanates beneath her breasts and conveys her spiritual heart. Her ‘bowels of compassion’ and heart are one and the same love that is the foundation of her every physical and spiritual expression, both negatively and positively. 

The Bride of Christ is becoming the same as He is, the terrible one irrepressibly expressing her love to him and desiring the fullness of her Lord’s love. She, in the flesh, is unashamedly ensuring her Groom’s understanding of her devotion to him in chapter 8:1-2 with the not-so-subtle lesson of her heart’s craving of how she wants him to experience her love as her inextinguishable response to his love. 

If there was to ever be a pre-marriage lesson of paramount importance for single folk, the Shulamite has proven the answer. Never be spiritually unequally yoked!  The spirit of the God above all gods, the “I am”, gives life physically and spiritually to marital intimacies. Any deviation away from His spirit leads to sexual discord and the potential to cascade further strife. The potentially inelegant discussion from the male enquiring if his intended had a Song of Solomon 8:1-2 passion is unnecessary if the couple is united in the Christ. Authentic unity and dedication in Christ will melt all marital difficulties.

Song of Solomon 8:1-2, authentically and enthusiastically expressed by a believing wife to a non-believing husband, is a major step for his perception of Christ. For believing husbands to hope that their unbelieving wives believe, they need to be Christ’s Christs.

It is far more likely that a non-believing husband will respond positively outwardly to a Song of Solomon 8:1-2 wife than a Song of Solomon 8:1-2 husband would be gladly received by an unbelieving wife. The latter is Christ’s personally given heartache in the wilderness with Israel’s haughty dismissiveness of his expressions to her and her defrauding of him.

Let’s see our Lord’s designed response from his Bride signified by the Shulamite.

Longing for Her Beloved

Son 8:1 O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.
Son 8:2 I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.
Son 8:3 His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me. 
Son 8:4 I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please. 
Son 8:5 Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee. 
Son 8:6 Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. 
Son 8:7 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

Final Advice

Son 8:8 We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? 
Son 8:9 If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar. 
Son 8:10 I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour. 
Son 8:11 Solomon had a vineyard at Baalhamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver. 
Son 8:12 My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred. 
Son 8:13 Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.
Son 8:14 Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

Son 8:1 O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.

Verse one infers that the Shulamite has or had a baby brother. Her soliloquy of sensually powerful imagery graphically muses her looking forward to her fiancé and their mutually intimate interactions with her body, “as [she had delightedly observed her] brother” with their mother (with the accompanying exclamation)! A mother suckling her baby is a mutually deep bonding connection between the two. The Bride of Christ likewise deeply desires the same intimate connection with Him, and their fervid spiritual lovemaking is her aim. Her extravagant giving wholly to him is definitive of the Shulamite, as is Jerusalem, the heavenly city of peace. 

Soon after craving her lover’s kisses, her hidden beautiful desire to fully express her God-given femininity will no longer be held back. She is already “spoken for” [H1696 – communed; declared; promised (2Kg 4:13, Son 8:8)] by her Husband to himself, and is not embarrassed to display discrete affection. As such, she has no need to feel others would condemn her kisses for the appearance of evil and so despise her. The last chapter of the Song of Solomon ties together the Bride’s first passionate desire in the book’s opening verse of intense desire for spiritual arousal.

Son 1:2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.

The entire book of the Song of Solomon emphasises that her private absorption is not to overly ‘awaken her love until He pleases’ until their wedding night. 

Somewhat embarrassingly, we were once at the breast of the Harlot as part of our journey to becoming the “spoken for” Bride of Christ. As Christ’s Bride, her breasts and underlying heart and spirit are full of spiritual richness, her Lord conceived in her. With that unity of spirit, she now passionately looks forward to blessing her Husband with a bountiful harvest for his glory.

Son 8:2 I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.
Son 8:3 His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me. 
Son 8:4 I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.

Those verses’ sensual imagery is left to the individual’s poetic imagination to glorify God.

1Co 10:31 Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

The Shulamite is every man’s, and particularly a husband’s, dream.  She uses the potent imagery of her younger brother devotedly hungry at his mother’s breast and wants her Groom’s detailed attention to the “natural” sensuality she passionately desires him to connect with her ~ in fact, not only her breasts but every joint and feature of her body!

So, too, do the Elect of God today absorb herself by Shulamite’s eloquent imagery, having been spiritually at her Lord’s breast, not willingly being pulled away from daily study and its discussions, and gone on to the strong meat of maturity. 

The ‘instruction’ the Shulamite uses at her mother’s house is a deliberately powerful seduction as intoxicating as the kisses of spiced wine that is, for us, spiritual truth.

Of course, we once were at our ‘mother’s’ house in Babylon and got some foundational sustenance from her and handed around by our first father (Satan) to the many wet nurses, the churches of Babylon.

Notice that the Bride dreams of leading her Husband to witness the allegorical counsel of her mother with her baby of how she wants him to devote himself to her; it is not a representation of women’s supposed leadership in the Church.

Christ knows his Wife by her fruits as they drink spiritual wine together in His kingdom. His loving embrace and ardour are everlasting confirmations of His commitment to His Wife. Her Lord’s left hand is under her head; she is His glory. Featured as the 1,000 wives of Solomon, the world will enviously see her glory and praise her as did the daughters of Old Jerusalem.

1Co 11:7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

Deu 33:27 The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them. 

Isa 62:2 And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name. 
Isa 62:3 Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. 
Isa 62:4 Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, [H2657 – my delight is in her; desire; longing; Jerusalem] and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.

Son 8:5 Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee. 

The precise tracking of Solomon’s musing is indistinct. He seems to jump from speaking the Shulamite’s mind to his standpoint as he delights in the beautiful imagery of his devoted Bride strolling along arm in arm with him.

The Bride and the “mother” are one and the same whom Christ brought forth in her birthing blood from the wilderness, raised under his apple tree [H8598 – from H5301: to breathe, blow, breath out] and into the breathtaking young woman she spiritually now is. Through intimate connection, the Shulamite and her groom partake of the cleanliness of each other’s breath and our Husband’s breath for us.

Joh 20:22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

Son 8:6 Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Son 8:7 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

Christ is the seal “upon” his Bride’s heart and arm. She is sealed, betrothed unto her day of redemption in His heart and “upon” his right arm embarrassing her. Her Lord is righteously jealous over her that none other should inquire of her mind’s spirit or amorously embrace her.

2Co 1:20 For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. [She and Christ are one spirit, the “us”. Her Lord drinks in the spiced wine of her exalted desire for him “… I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.” Son 8:2. Pomegranate H7416 origin H7426 – to be exalted; lift up]
2Co 1:21 Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; 
2Co 1:22 Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.

Unrepentant adultery deserves death, which to Babylonian Christianity is an absurd judgment since God to them is not a vindictive God but just loves without the condition of loving chastisement. In the negative, that ironically is a positive since all unrepented sins, including adultery, result in the “vehement flame” that brings forth refined gold. However, Solomon and his bride mirror Christ and His Bride and are impassioned by their “vehement flame” of love that cannot be quenched!

Mar 9:42 And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea [Lake of fire].
Mar 9:43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Noah’s flood never quenched our Lord’s love for his Elect.

(“if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” Son 8:7)

“Contemned” means to despise or hold in contempt. Since the flesh profits nothing, this life’s worldly goods and pleasures are utterly condemned by the Lord’s little flock. It is the Shulamite’s arousing spiritual flame that connects with her Lord’s spirit she knows gives her life eternal.

The Bible translators broke the scriptures up into verses with captions to make them, by their standards, apparently more readable. Hence, they included the heading “Final Advice” after Song of Solomon 8:7, which we will now review.

The last seven verses of the Song of Solomon 8 are an abstract of his troubled mind. He sees perfectly in all wisdom the breathtaking physical beauty of the Shulamite, the epitome of the perfect wife. However, in Song of Solomon 6:11-13, we witness him pondering the meaning of Shulamite deeply by looking upon her “the garden”.

Son 6:11 I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and the pomegranates budded. 

Solomon hopes to see the answers in the Shulamite’s guaranteed fruit, unaware of the coming frustration for his unwitting impossibility of understanding their meaning. He will be frustrated since he has more wisdom of discernment than any natural man ever to have lived, yet, he can’t fathom the enigma of Shulamite since she is hidden in spiritual discernment.

Son 6:12 Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib [chariots were known for swiftness, and built by Amminadib]. 

Solomon’s profound understanding of Shulamite caused his every thought concerning the yoke of her nature to be a light and thus swift and peaceful (Jerusalem) ride for his many chariots of insight, all leading to one earth-shattering significance for which he couldn’t and would never identify. His understanding of her was agonisingly close, yet, for the wisest man ever, he would never understand! 

Son 6:13 Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies. 

Her mystery dogged him, similar to the image of ponderings that comes to mind from the French sculptor Auguste Rodin in his work, “The Thinker”. So, Solomon continues to deeply ponder the young Shulamite.

Psa 71:5 For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth. 
Psa 71:6 By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother’s bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee. 
Psa 71:7 I am as a wonder unto many; but thou [Christ] art my strong refuge. 

Son 8:8 We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? 
Son 8:9 If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar. 
Son 8:10 I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour. 

In the first studies into the Song of Solomon, we learned that the little sister becomes the Bride of Christ, and in her maturity, breasts specifically feature. Jacob is the younger ‘sister’ without breasts. The first ‘army’, figuratively Esau, expressly represents Babylonian Christianity, and yet, the entire world and the strength of the thread that the elder will serve the younger, Jacob, cannot be broken.

Gen 25:23 And the LORD said unto her, [Rebekah, Isaac’s wife] Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

The day that the little sister was “spoken for” (promised; betrothed) was before creation, yet it came to fruition in Rebekah’s womb.

Rom 9:9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. 
Rom 9:10 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 
Rom 9:11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) [God did the choosing of Esau to serve Jacob, that is Babylon serving the Bride John 15:16]
Rom 9:12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
Rom 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

Oba 1:21 And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the LORD’S.

In wonderment, Babylonian Christianity and the world unconsciously “look upon” the young girl who is their little sister (the younger of the two armies). She is yet to develop into the most spiritually elegant beauty the world could ever imagine. After which, her spiritual breasts (representing her entire Body) to our Lord dynamically arouse his eternal love.

Her Babylonian brothers and sisters unwittingly prophesy her espousal by asking, “what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?”. Subsequently, they despise her for her high calling, signified by Joseph’s brother’s hating Joseph’s spirit for the meaning of his dreams. They say,

Son 8:9 If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.

Their little sister does fulfill their prophecy and symbolically becomes a silver palace behind a wall with a door that encloses her with cedar boards.

Shulamite is the walled city of the Heavenly Jerusalem above, built upon the silver of God’s word of atonement through redemption. She was represented by Solomon’s temple made with hands and beautiful furnishings of silver, gold and cedar. She becomes her Lord’s Christs (plural), ruling them through which she becomes the door they enter through the Lake of Fire. Temporarily, they have (by God’s hand) boarded her up to their unconscious spiritual hurt of not understanding the spiritual.

Son 8:10 I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.

The Shulamite affirms her brothers and sisters, surmising she is a wall. By use of your imagination, Jerusalem is a walled city with towers embedded in its walls; hence, her breasts are like towers. The spiritual dynamics of her breasts are like fortified towers that convincingly repel all enemies of the cross from understanding her aroused heart and coming to Christ. Her virgin spiritual purity did find favour through espousal in the eyes of one man, Christ. At present, she is a walled city shut to the world that will always have gates open at the Eighth Day’s end.

Rev 21:22 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 
Rev 21:23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

Another meaningful signification of her being a walled or hedged city or vineyard is in the parable of the tenants’ (Mark 12:1–12, Isa 5:1-7) 

Mar 12:1 And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge [walled city] about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.
Mar 12:2 And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.

As we know, spiritually through the parable of the talents, some produced one hundredfold or double what he was given (10 or 1,000 ~ completeness and power of corruptible dying flesh) following their chastisements of love and represented by Solomon’s keepers returning him an increase.  

These scriptures support the continuity that the Bride is a fruitful garden, for the short-term, walled and protected by a tower (breasts) of love for the eventual salvation of all mankind. She has been the man of perdition and has come out of Babylon, having served the completeness of the flesh (number 10, or 1,000). 

Solomon represents Christ as the owner of the vineyard he let out to the world. By design, the world, bar the “little flock”, rejected his atonement and redemption through repentance, represented by the full number (1,000) of his silver. 

Son 8:11 Solomon had a vineyard at Baalhamon; he let out the vineyard unto keepers; every one for the fruit thereof was to bring a thousand pieces of silver. 
Son 8:12 My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: thou, O Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep the fruit thereof two hundred.

Again, the entire world, “my vineyard”, represented by 1,000, witnessed against themselves (two) by the two hundred keepers overseeing the fruit. The keepers beat the owner’s Son and killed him in a vain attempt to steal His inheritance for themselves. (Mat 21:33-46).

Son 8:13 Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it.

Thou that dwellest in the gardens is all of humanity, beginning with Adam and Eve and culminating with the Shulamite, representing the outstanding garden that will eventually bring forth the salvation of the world. And all will “harken to [his] voice: [and] cause [all] to hear it”.

Son 8:14 Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

The Shulamite, the Bride of Christ in joyful agony, trembles and sighs in spiritual sensuality for her beloved to delicately prance upon her curvaceous ‘mountains’ (mountains/hills within Jerusalem) and cause her heart beneath Shulamite, the city of peace, to skip like lambs (roe, young antelope or lamb).

Psa 114:1 When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; 
Psa 114:2 Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion. 
Psa 114:3 The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. 
Psa 114:4 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
Psa 114:5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? 
Psa 114:6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs? 
Psa 114:7 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob; 
Psa 114:8 Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.

Our Lord, our Husband, ‘make haste, my beloved, and drink the spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate together in your kingdom!’

[This concludes the study of the Song of Solomon.]