When I was little I had a hobby horse, and remember spending countless hours riding and taking care of it. Later when on a horse as an adult I experienced a strong déjà vu feeling, and the memory of the pretend horse came to mind. It was for me the explanation as to why I felt like a child riding the ‘real’ thing! :-)
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All this came to mind recently on the last day of a trip in which I couldn’t escape an adventurous sense that all of it’s moments were once played out in the history of the Bible somewhere. In this case I didn’t know what, but felt that something from the past was merging with the present to form a new and higher reality.
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I think I needed this experience to help understand something in the next passage of the Song, and perhaps more to come.
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The Color of The Bed
Look at you! How beautiful you are, my beloved, and how charming! Our bed is green! Song 1:16
I find it intriguing that when the Shulamite woman is in the garden returning the gaze of her beloved that she at first sees his beauty, and then immediately a bed. She obviously saw what he is thinking! :-) But this is no ordinary bed. The first thing she notices is that it is green.
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Green is a color in plants that comes from chlorophyll, and represents a receptiveness to life (in the sun) and the ability to give back life as well. Fresh and new in this life, it can also mean “unripe in experience or judgment.” (as in, “he is green”) Yes, if “first love” has a color it would be green, and what a fitting one for the “new bed” that is in the Spirit! The receptive quality of this bed is also pictured when Jesus fed over 5000 people upon green grass, Mark 6:39. Perhaps they too had a surreal sense of fulfillment lounging there, knowing that it is says in Psalm 23 that the Lord Himself, “makes us to lie down in green pastures.”
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The Setting of The Bed
…The beams of our houses are cedar, and our rafters of cypress. Song 1:17
There is something else about this bed that is unique. It appears to be one bed, but found in multiple protective, canopied structures.¹ These houses, the bride says, are made with beams of cedar and rafters of cypress. Cedar was a prized wood for it’s durability and fragrance, and used in sacrifices. Cypress (fir) was also special, and first mentioned in connection to what David’s instruments were all made of. ² There is strong evidence that the Cross was made of a combination of both kinds of wood. ³ But interestingly these trees were not common to the immediate area of Jerusalem, but imported from the north country. Why did the Shulamite mention them? Well, it is recorded that Solomon built his home and the Temple of God with both cedar and cypress.³¹ Now if the Shulamite indeed dwelt in Jerusalem once before and worshiped in the temple, she would know about this. What she was likely seeing in the wilderness outside Jerusalem were natural and native trees, but in the Spirit she was seeing them as the supporting structure of the Lord’s house. And whenever she came upon one of these “houses”, it contained a familiar green, inviting, and life-giving foundation for intimacy and true worship.
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The Pattern in the Heavenlies
These are things that served as a copy and shadow of heavenly things…made according to a pattern… Heb. 8:5
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I have a dear brother in another state who regularly signs off, “I’ll meet you in the garden.” I really like this. Because while it is difficult to bear with the current distance between the individual “homes” where Christ dwells, there is for all who do not walk according the flesh a “green bed” in the true garden of Eden that is our enjoyable reality. It is a place of oneness we have in the Spirit by faith.
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A bed …what an interesting place! There is union, conception, birth, rest, healing, and later death that all occur in a bed. In the culture of the Bible even eating happened when reclining! Isn’t it beautiful how the Lord set this all up as a shadow of our life in Christ? It seems like the only thing not done in bed is working!
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With love,
Pam
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We are in each others’ hearts, to live together and to die together… 2 Cor. 7:3
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² 2 Sam 6:5 / ³ Isaiah 14:8, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross / ³¹ 1 Kings 5:8-10
¹ “Since the two lovers hardly own “houses”, commentators taking the word literally are forced to devise ways of interpreting the plural as a singular. The problem dissolves if “houses” is seen as a metaphor of places where the lovers meet. [Also knowing that] The possessive “our” conveys not ownership but intimacy…” ~Bloch and Bloch
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