The Song of Songs gives us eight chapters of erotic poetry about the beauty and challenge of human sexuality. Wait, what? What is that doing in the Bible? Ancient commentators – including such famous names as Origen, Jerome, Athanasius, and Augustine – believed the passion of the lovers is an allegory, expressing God’s love for humanity and our devoted response. Modern writers such as Andrew Greeley have followed this same path, seeing passionate human love as an analogue for the love of God.

Did these various commentators read the text this way because they were too embarrassed to take the erotic imagery simply as erotic? The text certainly doesn’t appear to be talking about religion when it speaks explicitly about the bride’s beauty (Song 2:15-16, 4:1-7), about misunderstanding and miscommunications between lovers (5:2-6), and about sexual longing (1:2-3, 2:6) and fulfillment (4:16-5:1). If we take the words for what they plainly say, Song of Solomon shows us clearly that the Bible is not afraid, here and elsewhere, to urge us to celebrate and revel in the wonder of married love (Proverbs 5:18-19; Genesis 2:23-25).

Yet perhaps what all those commentators have seen was motivated not so much by embarrassment as by insight. They saw that the love poetry in the Song of Solomon could make us wonder whether the spiritual union we could experience with God could be as fun and deep and passionate and unitive as great sex with your soul mate. Could we find ourselves in love like that with the Lord our God?

Several centuries later, Hosea saw that this imagery could be used to describe God’s intense longing to reconnect with Israel (Hosea 2:14-19). Several centuries after that, Paul proposed that the joining of husband and wife is a great mystery that gives us a way of understanding the relationship of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31-32). What would it be like, then, if we today were bold enough to take Song 7:10-13 in just the same way?

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Set a fire in our hearts, O God, to yearn for union with you with eager longing, like bride and groom: with laughter and joy and passionate fulfillment in the depths of your love.