At the end of the Song of Songs, we heard the Bride declare that “love is as strong as death.”
As far as human love goes, that’s either hyperbole or crazy talk. My love is not as strong as death. As I sat by my brother-in-law’s hospital bed last week, I felt the impotence of human love in the face of death.
When it comes to human love, death always wins.
The pattern of the Wisdom books helps us see what is going on.
Proverbs shows us the standard of wisdom. The Song of Songs shows us the glory of beauty. Ecclesiastes reminds us of the exceptions.
As Zack Eswine puts it, “In Proverbs, a good man plus God’s love and wisdom equals a good life. In Ecclesiastes a good man plus God’s love still dies like the beast or the fool.” (9)
The wisdom books sometimes seem a little strange to us. We like Proverbs – the wise father who teaches wisdom to his sons. But we blush a little at the Song of Songs – the beautiful Bride who sings of her glorious Beloved. And when we turn to Ecclesiastes, Zack Eswine says it well: “Ecclesiastes sounds like a crazed man downtown. He smells like he hasn’t bathed – looks like it too – and as we pass by he won’t stop glaring at us and beckoning to us that our lives are built on illusions, and that we are all going to die.” (5)
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