Song of Solomon 8:7 · World English Bible
Song of Solomon 8:7 Meaning Many Waters Can’t Quench Love
Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned.
What does Song of Solomon 8:7 mean?
He loves them and they love Him: the love started on the other side A line from the Quran that the Sufis keep returning to puts God's love first and the human answer second. Love you generate yourself can be worn down, because you are the one holding it up.
From the Sufism reading below.
Song of Solomon 8:7 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Sufism
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Sufism
He loves them and they love Him: the love started on the other side A line from the Quran that the Sufis keep returning to puts God's love first and the human answer second. Love you generate yourself can be worn down, because you are the one holding it up. When it begins elsewhere, hardship never reaches the source, and a person going through a long stretch of trouble finds they are being carried rather than emptied.
ʿIshq: Love that consumes ʿIshq is the word for love that burns a person rather than comforting them. Most attachments cool once they start costing too much, so people expect trouble to eventually wear love thin. Here the cost works the other way round: the harder the days get, the more a person finds they want nothing and nobody else.
Balāʾ: Being tested by what loves you The Prophet said that when God loves people, He tests them. Anyone in a hard season reads it as a sign of being dropped, or as proof that the whole attachment was a mistake. Taken this way, the pressure stops counting as a verdict on the bond, and a person can go through it without concluding that the love has failed.
Maḥabba: Love as the destination Al-Ghazali put love at the top, above every other practice and station. People still try to trade for it: more effort, more giving, more sacrifice, as though enough of those would buy the thing outright. Each of those is only the road there, and handing over the road in exchange for the place you were heading leaves a person exactly where they started.
If I worship you for fear of hell, burn me in it: love that wants nothing back Rabia prayed to be burned in Hell if the worship came from fear, and shut out of Paradise if it came from hope of reward. Anyone offering something in exchange is still standing outside, counting, waiting to see what the payment gets them. Once a person stops expecting anything back, the accounting ends, and what is left is love with no price attached to it.
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Live Song of Solomon 8:7 today
- Name the hard stretch you are in, the job, the diagnosis, the money, the silence in the house, and say out loud that you are being carried through it rather than drained by it. Then go make your coffee.
- Do one thing for someone today with no return built into it, and do not mention it afterward. No text, no hint, nothing dropped into the group chat.
- When the day goes badly and the temptation comes to decide the whole thing was a mistake, let the hard day be just a hard day. Pressure is not a verdict.
Where in my life am I still quietly trying to buy what can only be given?
The same truth in other traditions
Bhagavad Gita
Devotion offered without a price on it, a leaf or a cup of water given with the whole heart, is received completely. What is traded for is never the thing itself.
Tao Te Ching 78
Water yields to everything and wears down what is hardest. Nothing can quench it, because its strength is not something it is holding up by effort.
Judaism · Pirkei Avot
Love that depends on a reason ends when the reason ends. Love with no condition under it outlasts every season that tries to argue it away.
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