Fast forward again to 2023: In my process of recovering from my - by now - fourth breakdown, I discovered a devotional on my sister's bookshelf that centers around Song of Songs (a jewish perspective). Taken into account that I had been a Christian for almost four decades now, the fact that I greatly struggled to believe the content of these pages that focus on God's wooing character and therefore aknowledging one of the most significant character traits of God and his perspective on how he sees me, said a lot about where I had been positioning myself in this "relationship". As part of the status quo I found myself in healthwise, I had no other choice but to open myself up to the possibility that these words might actually be true and to grant them reliability. I was living a co-habitant type of marriage with my Saviour rather than intimate companionship (sounds familiar? :-)).
How hard can it be for Christians to align themselves with the Word of God (aka, in this particular example, Song of Songs):
"Let the king bring me into his chamber (cheder: private or inner rooms within a house, a place of intimacy, inner most parts)" (Song of Songs 1:4), or
"let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth - for your love is more delightful than wine." (Songs of Songs 1:2)
The Hebrew verb form of the word "kisses" is called nashaq and also implies 'to touch gently, to express affection, respect, or allegiance'*.
Challenging already?!
What's even more interesting is the fact that the word nashaq equally means 'to equip with weapons'.
Now there is some food for thought!
While I am reprocessing these verses and the connotation behind these individual words emphasized as part of writing this post, I am once again blown away by the depth of impact that it creates.
In our Western approach to form meaning out of something, we divide certain aspects of contradiction - as either being "good" or "bad". However, in the Hebraic context, contradictions, as we define it, do not oppose, but rather support each other.
When we are being kissed - given and experiencing affection from our bridegroom Jesus, we are equally being equipped with weapons. And this is the crucial point in our reclaiming the type of sonship that leads us to overcome the world - understanding God's most wonderful and extremely incomprehensible, yet so deeply moving and finely-tuned good-will demeanour towards us.
*as extracted from www.biblehub.com
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