GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
SONG OF SOLOMON 8:5
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The Wife
5 Who is this coming up from the desert
leaning on her lover?
This final chapter (there are only nine verses left after this one) has been described as a kind of “curtain call” in which all of the characters appear once again. All of the themes return. So the question, “Who is this coming?” (3:6; 6:10) does not surprise us. Here it is not a mystery, however. It’s the bride, leaning on her husband, in a little scene all by itself. This is the couple as they will be for the rest of their lives, one couple, one flesh, one love in Christ.
Spiritually, it is simply the church leaning on our Savior for the rest of time and for all eternity. If there is a mystery about this, it is only a mystery to unbelievers who cannot comprehend the devotion of the people of God to their holy God and Lord, nor his compassionate devotion to his people who are made holy by his gracious sacrifice. “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified” (1 Thessalonians 4:3); “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Even the Gentiles, those who have now come to faith, “become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:16).
Why does she depict herself as leaning on Christ? “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). This is a priceless lesson for us all. Better to be a man who hobbles on a cane than a boy who sprints into all sin and danger, if the cane he leans upon is Christ.
Under the apple tree I roused you;
there your mother was in labor with you,
she was in labor and gave birth to you.
Here again this is an isolated passage. They are looking at or remembering a certain tree, the one where she first aroused his passion; the place where they first fell in love. Evidently he told her that it was the very place where his mother gave birth to him, experiencing her labor pains, but yes, it is also where they fell in love.
This is a scene that would not be easy to duplicate today. Then, it was common for a woman to give birth wherever the pains overtook her. Racheld gave birth to Benjamin on the road to Bethlehem and died there, perhaps in a tent (Genesis 35:16-19). Mary was also overtaken by her birth-pains near Bethlehem and had to give birth near a cow’s manger, perhaps in a stable or some other rough shelter (Luke 2:7). But there in that place where Mary writhed in childbirth, the shepherds came to worship the Christ child (Luke 2:16), and we still adore him and worship him, remembering the scene of his birth in that place year by year, more than two thousand Christmases so far, and counting.
We must be careful not to equate the apple tree with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit of that tree is unknown to us. It could as well have been a pear, or a banana, or a fig, or some other fruit that no longer exists. The myth (and there is no other word that fits) that the fruit of the fall of man was an apple is probably derived from the similarity of the Latin words malus “evil” and malum “apple.” Therefore there does not need to be any spiritual connection with the fall of man here. Instead, there is simply a reminder that Christ has been the one that the Christian church has loved and leaned upon ever since his birth as a baby in Bethlehem.
We should remember the lowliness of the circumstances of his birth, without any exceptional comforts, indeed, the baby was, as we sing, “asleep on the hay” while the cattle were lowing and mooing and quite probably waking the poor baby up with their racket– as anyone will attest who has been among the cows before they are milked, when their udders are swollen and sore. So God brought the Savior into the world in the manner he loves so much, choosing the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; the weak things of the world to shame the strong. “He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things– and the things that are not– to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). And so he brought forth Jesus, “our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). And who does the bride point out for everyone to see? Her marvelous husband. The Church points to Christ in all things. “Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthiains 1:31).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Song of Solomon 8:5 Under the apple tree