Love Strong as Death

Near the end of the Song of Songs, a bride speaks to the one she loves. She does not ask him for gifts or for fine words. She asks to be set upon him like a seal, the mark that shows to whom a thing belongs, and then she tells him what love is.

Song of Songs 8:6-7 Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is hard as Sheol; its flames are flames of fire, a flame of Yah. Many waters cannot quench love, neither do the floods drown it. If a man (ish אִישׁ eesh) would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised.

These are among the strongest words about love anywhere in Scripture, and there is nothing soft in them. Love is set beside death, and jealousy beside Sheol, the grave. Love burns, the floods cannot put it out, and no fortune can buy it. Many people picture the love of God as a warm blanket that covers everything and asks for nothing. The Song does not describe a blanket. It describes a fire.

Three Hebrew Words

Love here is ahavah (אַהֲבָה), the noun of ahav, the ordinary Hebrew verb for loving, and the bride says that it is “strong as death.” When death takes hold of a person, no one can loosen its grip or bargain with it. That is the grip she gives to love.

Beside it stands qin’ah (קִנְאָה), jealousy. In English the word can sound small and petty, but in this verse it is the zeal of a love that will not share its beloved with anyone else, and the Song calls it “hard as Sheol,” as unyielding as the grave itself. The same Hebrew root stands in the Ten Commandments, at the place where God forbids His people to bow down to images.

Exodus 20:5 You shall not bow down to them, and you shall not serve them (avad עָבַד aw-bad'); for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God (El), visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those who hate Me,

“A jealous God” is El qanna, from the same root as qin’ah, so the jealousy the Song calls “hard as Sheol” is named with the very word God uses of Himself in that commandment. In the very next verse of that commandment He says to whom He shows lovingkindness: “to those who love Me and to those who keep My commandments (mitzvot מִצוָה mits-vaw')” (Exodus 20:6). Love and commandments stand side by side there, at Sinai, and that pairing will come back again and again in the pages ahead.

The third word is the most striking. The Hebrew word behind “a flame of Yah” is shalhevetyah, and it ends with Yah, the short form of the divine name, the same Yah that closes the word hallelu-yah. This is more than heightened human passion; the fire of this love belongs to the LORD Himself. A love strong as death, jealous as the grave, and burning with His fire is not something a person produces by trying hard to feel warmly toward God.

“Many waters cannot quench love, neither do the floods drown it.” Nor can it be bought, for a man who would give “all the wealth of his house for love” would be “utterly despised.” Such a love is given, and it is never purchased.

The Question of This Book

What, then, does Scripture itself call love? Most of us come to the Bible with an answer already in hand. Ask almost anyone what love is, whether on the street or in a church on a Sunday morning, and the answer will describe a feeling: a rush of warmth, a deep sense of affection. We tend to judge whether love is real by how strong the feeling is. Many have also heard a lesson on Greek in a sermon: the language has several words for love, and agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay is the highest, the unconditional love of God Himself, while phileo φιλέω fil-eh'-o is lower, the affection of human friendship. A conclusion often follows, offered kindly and sincerely: what God wants from us is agape, not commandments, and if we love, we need not be concerned about keeping His law.

That is a claim about words, and claims about words can be tested. The Bible shows how it uses its own vocabulary, because the same words appear again and again in many settings, about good things and bad. When Scripture uses a word in a certain way, that use is the definition to adopt, whatever the English word has come to mean today. The first part of this book lays those words out, Greek and Hebrew, reads them where they stand, and lets Scripture give its own definition of love. It does give one, and it gives it in plain words: “For this is the love of God — that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3).

Throughout the book, Scripture is quoted from the Yeshua Literal Version (YLV), which keeps a number of original words in the text with their meaning beside them, such as agape(love) or anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah(Torah-lessness). Where the point of a verse lives in one Hebrew or Greek word, that word is named, so that you can see for yourself what the text says.

Why It Matters Now

The previous book in this series, which followed the goel, the near kinsman who redeems, closed with words Yeshua spoke on the night before the cross.

John 15:10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My agape(love); just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His agape(love).

Keeping and abiding, commandments and agape, stand together in that one sentence. This book opens that sentence. Nor is it a quiet subject for a quiet day, because Yeshua tied the future of love to the question of the commandments when He spoke of the end of the age.

Matthew 24:12 Because anomia(Torah-lessness) is multiplied, most people's love will grow cold.

He did not say that love would grow cold because people would stop feeling. He said it would grow cold “because anomia(Torah-lessness) is multiplied.” Anomia is life without the Torah, without the law God gave. Where it is multiplied, the love of most people cools. The cooling of love and the setting aside of God’s law are joined in Yeshua’s own sentence.

The book follows the line Scripture itself draws. It begins with the words for love, the definition the Bible gives, and the love God showed before anyone loved Him. It then turns to the marriage He made in Genesis and used as the picture of His covenant, to the Song, and to Hosea, whom God told to love an unfaithful wife again. From there it moves through the patience that holds back the day of judgment, the soul poured out in blood, the command to tend the sheep and keep the commandments even to death, and the growth that ends in sons who are like the Son, until it comes at last to the age in which love grows cold.

A Love That Cannot Be Bought

God loved first, and every love that answers Him begins there. The aim is simply to let God say what He calls love, and what He calls loving Him, and then to stand under His answer. A love that is “strong as death” cannot rest on a passing feeling, and it needs no lesson that sets it free from God’s commandments.

The first step is to set the words themselves on the table: every word that English Bibles translate as “love,” how often each one appears, and which words the writers of the New Testament never used at all.