B. The Covenant of Lovers in Marriage (8:5-14)

This final section shows the lovers in conversation with the brides’s brothers or friends assuring her that they know of her integrity and purity. The bride’s words show the growth and maturity that has come during the courtship. The words of 8:10 are a declaration of her virtuous character and maturity. She and her lover want only the closest bond to keep them committed to each other forever.

The key verse of SS, 8:10, may express something of the same quality and endurance of love as that found in 1Co 13. In my view the original literal intent of SS was to show the splendor of physical love in marriage as Solomon and the Shulammite maiden experienced it. To find applications and analogies of the truth of this interpretation does not do SS an injustice. It should be used more frequently by young Christian lovers in the enhancement of their romance in courtship, all the while preserving themselves in purity for each other until after their marriage. And best of all it is analogous to a believer’s relationship to Christ and of Christ’s to the believer.

Seen in this light the words of Dennis Kinlaw have a great deal of meaning:

It is important to see that the biblical account does not see procreation as the originally primary purpose of sex. Before the forming of the first woman, according to Genesis 2:20, Adam found no “suitable helper.” Thus the primary purpose of women is not procreation. . . . She is the one in whom her husband finds his completeness. That completeness may involve progeny, but it is far more than this. The ability of the woman to bear children is an intermittent and passing phase of her earthly existence. Her femaleness and her role as marriage partner are far more extensive than this. The complete giving of one partner in a divinely ordered relationship of love to the other results normally in children. This, however, is a bonus. Married love has its own justification in that it is God’s own way of making that higher person, that “one flesh,” which is God’s normal order for His children (p. 644).