Young Love

Song of Songs 8:14 Come away, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice-laden mountains.

There is just something about young love, love when it takes over a life, captivates our thinking and feeling, seizes our desires and longings. Every waking moment, and even in dreams of the night, our thoughts seem to center on the other. Most people can remember those moments, although for some of us, those moments seem like a lifetime ago!

This most beautiful of books in the Scriptures tell of the desires of two relatively young people who have fallen head over heals in love with each other. That is at least how it comes across. This book has the most sensual lines written in the Scriptures.

While some have seen an application to the love the LORD has for us in these verses, I think they are an example for God’s people of what the height of human romantic and sexual desire looks like. It is written in language that veils the content, which allows the imagination to fill in the details. It is written in the rural language of vineyards, city walls, and beautiful animals.

So why is it important that the Scriptures have this intimate portrait? I think it lets us know that our desires in this area are not misplaced. They are the way the LORD designed us to be in courtship and marriage. We are designed to desire, and that desire is part of what the LORD called good.

But all desires need to be channeled. Sexual desires are to have on object, your spouse. And those desires can be fulfilled in the intimacy of the marriage bed.

We see this two times in the book itself. The warning not to arouse or awaken love until the proper time is repeated twice in the book. It follows the words of an intimate encounter. (See 2:6-7 & 8:3-4) The writer warns “the daughters of Jerusalem” about the dangers of ‘getting things going’ too soon in a relationship.

The picture of male and female gazelles in a field is used. Their energy and enthusiasm is a picture of what can happen when someone allows desires to take over completely. The writer warns her friends to be very careful. Once things get going, it can be hard to stop!

But within the bounds of marriage, as we read in the text, these desires can be given full expression. Our text is the last verse in the whole book. The woman tells her beloved to be like that wild animal. She wants the desire to be put into action. She offers herself as the “spice-laden mountains.”

What a picture of desire, a willing submission, both by the man to be faithful and by the woman, to yield to his advances. This is the way marital love is to be expressed. Each desiring the presence of the other, allowing full expression of the sexuality that the LORD designed when He made us male and female.

But all too often this highest of sensual desire and expression gets diluted and polluted in our cultural discussion. It is no longer about fulfilling the design of our creator and turns into self-fulfillment and autonomy. We become objects for others to use for their pleasure. Objects!

What the LORD desires for us is a fulfillment of His original design. Pure desire expressed in the bounds of marriage, male and female becoming one. Each lost in the other, full desires focused on the other and fulfilling in them their deepest longings and urges.

And the LORD blesses this kind of sensual desire. So be blessed!