Song of Songs 7:10

I am my beloved’s,
and his desire is for me.

It is an interesting fact that the earliest interpretations of the Song of Songs, both Jewish and Christian, are spiritual, not literal. In other words, whatever the original intention of the author of this passionate and frankly erotic love poetry, the very earliest readers immediately saw in it an image of the relationship between God and Israel and, when the Church was born, between Christ and His Bride, the New Israel, the Church. It’s not hard to see why: marital love, particularly at its height, is perhaps of the most powerful experience of love known in this world. It is only natural that the God who is Love should make such love a sign and sacrament of His relationship with us. It is not that God is like such passionate earthly love. It is that such earthly love is vaguely like the unfathomable fires of love that burn in the heart of the Blessed Trinity.