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The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks and says to me:
"Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away."
--------------------
This is the Track 1 Old Testament reading option for the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 17], Year B, according to the lectionary for the Episcopal Church. If selected, this song will be paired with verses picked from Psalm 45, which sings, “My heart is stirring with a noble song; let me recite what I have fashioned for the king; my tongue shall be the pen of a skilled writer.” Both will precede the Epistle selection from James, where he wrote, “In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” All will accompany the Gospel reading from Mark, where Jesus said, “It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
I wrote about this and published my opinions in 2018. That article can be found on this website, clicking on this link. I welcome all to read those observations, which I stand behind today, as I read this song of love not as the seductions of a man and a woman, but as a soul and Yahweh. The comments I crafted in 2018 take a view of this song as if Solomon was divinely inspired by Yahweh. While I think less of Solomon these days, I still see that divinity; but I give less credit to Solomon today. Therefore, I will not rehash what I said in 2018, instead adding a broader view of the whole now.
I want to repeat my views that have consistently been presented about marriage to Yahweh. This has nothing to do with the physical, as divine marriage only is possible between the eternal. The body of flesh is temporal and bound to die. The death of a body of flesh is merely the death of matter no longer being able to sustain the life force that a soul provides. When new life is seen with the birth of a baby, there is nothing actually new. Ask any scientist and they will tell you that everything that existed in Creation still exists today, only in changed states. Thus, a baby is recycled matter and a soul is likewise recycled spirit. Yahweh is the provider of the spirit of life – the “ruach” or “breath, spirit, wind” – which animates matter, giving it the appearance of life. However, the soul is life, the body of flesh is death, and because a soul can either be repeated through reincarnation or elevate back into the heavenly realm as a return to Yahweh, the soul takes on a neutral gender.
The call to marry Yahweh is made to souls so they can escape the recycling of reincarnation. The promise of eternal life means to return to the true place of living, rather than be returned to a body of flesh that has to start over as a newborn and spend years growing and developing, only to grow to the point that the resources of dead matter can no longer sustain a habitat for a living soul. A return to that state of life in dead matter equates to being born dead. That is a return to the realm of death, as opposed to being returned to the realm of true life.
The duality of life and death can then be seen reflected in the duality of the spiritual and the material. This duality is present in a soul within a body of flesh. This duality is expressed in the bodies of flesh being either masculine or feminine. The duality of human sexuality is for the purpose of regeneration of bodies of flesh, which will then provide a home for a spirit of life. In the same way, the spiritual is a projection of the masculine, with the material being a projection of the feminine. As such, when I talk about a marriage to Yahweh, this means a soul in a body of flesh has taken on the essence of femininity because a neuter gender soul has taken on the feminine essence of a body of flesh, regardless of the human gender that body of flesh possesses. All souls in human flesh are then feminine, as brides-to-be for the masculine Yahweh Spirit.
This concept of metaphysics should be simple enough to grasp, but because human beings live in a world that makes it difficult to contemplate the unseen, life takes on the roles of masculine and feminine, based on the birth gender. When religious material is seen in terms of appearing to favor the masculine, the difficulty that comes from disassociating that gender reference from human genitalia creates a world of males dominating females and females who scheme against males from a pretense of subjection. There really is nothing about divine literature that gives greater preference to males, still kings are greater than queens and women have long had little voice in public. Children are the neuter gender, which makes a soul like a child that has to decide what it will be when it grows up.
In the story of Solomon the past two Sundays, he encountered Yahweh in a dream. Solomon was a child king, so he was a neuter gender soul in a masculine body of flesh, which was of feminine essence, being made of dead matter. Yahweh asked the young Solomon, “’ĕ·lō·hîm šə·’al māh ’et·ten-lāḵ,” which says, “elohim ask what shall I give you.” In that question, the Jews assist the Christians in translating “elohim” as a statement of “God” asking the question, “What can I give to you.” That mistranslation keeps both Christians and Jews from recognizing Yahweh would not speak to a child about material gifts. Yahweh addressed the neuter elohim Solomon as a soul that needed marriage to the divine, simply because Solomon had risen to become the King of Israel, which was a nation of God’s chosen people.
The question pertained to the actions of a pertinent brat, one who had broken the laws of high places and burned incense and offered animal sacrifices. Solomon made those actions when he was not a Levite or a high priest. The actions of Solomon meant Yahweh spoke to him in a dream like He spoke to Cain, when his countenance was low, counseling his soul to get up spiritually. When Solomon heard the voice as if it was God coming to serve little boy king Solomon, he began to spout egotistical crap, causing Yahweh to step back and let Satan [“adonay”] be the one who was delighted to hear Solomon wanted to eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Thus, “elohim” stated Solomon’s neuter soul would reject marriage to Yahweh and become married to Satan.
I bring all this up because we are now given a song of love written by a soul that had become enslaved by Satan. This means the author of this love song should not be seen as worthy of praise. The good contained in the words put down in writing comes from Yahweh, not from the brain of Solomon. In fact, one can assume that the brain of Solomon was thinking how much more the ladies would be attracted to him, because of how well his brain could think of words to write that would make the women all swoon and then strip naked before him. This is how the divine works of Yahweh manifest. This is a double-edged sword, which cuts sensually into the lusts of material pleasures, along with the realities of male domination and female submission, while also being metaphor for the soul’s submission to Yahweh.
In this later sense, Satan must be seen as a creation of Yahweh, as a elohim that must submit to the Will of Yahweh. When a third of the angels of heaven rebelled, that is a human myth, as Yahweh made elohim that would act in lustful ways for the material Creation and be forever sent to only manifest within that realm. The serpent was one of these who was present in the divine realm of Eden. The serpent is metaphor for the elohim that can possess all souls who reject Yahweh. So, even when they have that possession under their godly control, they still must step aside and allow Yahweh access. This means a soul demonically possessed can be freed from that oppression, allowing that soul to then marry Yahweh. Therefore, even though Solomon was demonically possessed, his soul could be inspired divinely to write words that not only satisfied his egotistical lusts, but also serve the needs of Yahweh.
The selected verses of this song – 8 to 13 – are said to be the voice of the bride, as “The Bride’s Adoration,” with other verses attributed to the voice of “Solomon.” When the influence of Yahweh is seen, the voice of the bride is relative to all human beings on earth, regardless of their human gender. That means the voice of Solomon is then that of Yahweh. The theme of marriage is clearly seen in the repetition of the word translated as “beloved” [“dod”]. This means marriage is not arranged or forced upon any soul. It sings about the desire to be possessed totally by Yahweh, completely submissive to His Will.
The adoration of the bride must come from a child's eyes, where love equates to trust. A virgin soul is an elohim unmarried to a greater Spirit. It is when one's heart and soul want to be one with the Father forever.
In these modern times, when the perversities of humankind have corrupted many of the leaders of the churches purporting to serve Yahweh, such love can be seen as reflected in this song. Human love is unnecessary for a sexual relationship to take form, although the pleasures of the flesh can easily be mistaken for love. The institution of marriage, which solely means the union of a man’s sperm into a woman’s egg [which is guided by the hand of Yahweh], has become an demonic elohim of worship, where the bodies of human flesh are altars where human gender are sacrificed, with Satan putting his blessing on all animalistic unions. The story of Jonathan’s love of David, as brotherly soul mates [not homosexuals wallowing in the gutter of human lusts] is how divine texts can be twisted in perverted ways to make Satan happy. All references to “love” and “heart” are divinely elevated to mean a soul’s desire for salvation leads a soul to seek to do everything possible to please the only entity that can make that happen.
Again, as to the specifics of this song, I refer one back to what I wrote in 2018. I no longer feel the need for human gender pleasures of the flesh. I no longer seek to find inspiration that leads my soul to Yahweh from that relative to Solomon. I leave that up to the younger generations to experience.
As for an optional Old Testament reading for the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, when one’s own personal ministry for Yahweh should already be well underway, the lesson of this song of love is only one’s soul experiencing the love of Yahweh. That love rises well beyond the limitations of human flesh. The love that comes from divine marriage of a soul to Yahweh’s Spirit cannot be measured in physical terms. The terms used by Solomon have to be metaphor, because it is impossible to specifically state what divine love is. Ministry without this love is empty and will find no suitors. The lesson of this song is to preach the Word of Yahweh [which is unknown by human brains], so the souls of others will be awakened to this Word and their hearts opened to receive that Spirit.