Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 14 · January 14
Strong as Death
“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. 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.”
An old woman in a care home has lost most of what she owned. The house is sold and the furniture is gone, but the nurses know better than to try to take the ring off her finger. It has been there for sixty years, through her husband's funeral and every year since. Of everything she had, that is the one thing she will not part with.
The Song of Solomon's last great word on love is spoken by a woman asking to be held on to: "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm." A seal was a signet, the mark that made a document yours. People wore it on a cord at the chest or on the hand, and it was the last thing they would part with. In Jeremiah, God warns a king that even if he were "the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence." That threat hit hard because everybody knew you do not take off your seal.
The reasons she gives are not gentle: "love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire." This is a love poem between a man and a woman. It is printed in Scripture without apology, and the fire in it is real fire.
Bless God for making love that way, because He did not have to. He took the strongest force people ever feel, the one that ranks beside death, and put it into the hands of two people to give to each other. He also uses the same kind of words about Himself, without embarrassment: "the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." And the Song goes on: "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it." If a man offered everything he owns to buy it, his offer would be met with scorn. Praise God for a world with that kind of love in it.
So may you be sealed the way she asks, on your heart and on your arm, by someone who does not take the seal off. When the flood comes, may it find that it cannot put the fire out, because what can only be given can never be bought. And may the love you have been given, which is real fire and yet never enough on its own, keep sending you toward the One it was modelled on, whose love never lets go.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 14 is The Path of Life (Psalm 16:11).