Bible Wonder- A Women's Body

Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? Hey God, on this whole subject. If you look in the Song of Solomon, which happens to be my favorite book, but on top of that, it's interesting how they did these verses.

Whoever numbered them is pretty good at it, too. I hope you're familiar with the Song of Solomon. It's between, hopefully, Jesus and his bride. In other words, you know, how God loves us.

But as we look at this particular section, it's definitely about a woman's body. And if we're the bride of Christ, there's really neat applications to that that we'll get into in a minute. But this is Song of Solomon, chapter seven, verse seven. And to just read that verse for you.

To clusters of grapes is the way it reads in the King James Version. But I found a phenomenal blog by Katherine Armstrong. And I think a woman is just the person to describe this so much better than me and my buddy Boots trying to clump around in this verse. But I think this is amazing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I read it.

I'm going to post the link, of course, in the podcast notes. But here we go. She says, Solomon's wife to a palm tree, a more consistent continuation of the thought might be comparing her breasts to clusters of dates, or some similar fruit of the palm. Perhaps the imagery of the bride's breast being like clusters of ripe fruit is a natural simile for men, or maybe even for most women. But it wasn't a natural one for me at first, I think of a custard fruit being grapes, dates, or coconuts, as being lumpy and bumpy.

And I think of breasts as being one soft round, and entity more like a peach. However, as I meditated on what our Lord, the living Word and the internal author of this song might have been trying to teach, I remember back to the days when I used to nurse my infant children. As a girl, I assumed that milk flowed from a mother's nipple in a single stream rather than like a kitchen faucet. I'll never forget the first night my infant son started drowning because he couldn't keep up with the flow of milk. He choked and began to cough, releasing his grip on the nipple. Milk sprayed in no less than seven distinct streams, a good three feet away from us in all directions, including his tiny face.

That really enraged him. And I realized with amazement that a woman's breast is not a single fruit. It's really a cluster of fruits.

Indeed, Studying Encyclopedia reassured me that I wasn't abnormal. A woman's nipple consists of 15 to 25 irregularly shaped lobes. Leading from each lobe is a duct. Lactiferous duct, which opens to the outside of the nipple.

That's from the Encyclopedia Americana 1995 for 1949. So here's another example of the connectedness and the perfection of the word. A woman's breast, although soft and smooth, externally is indeed a cluster of fruit organically and internally. Also, Solomon, the human author, was a brilliant man and an avid student of natural history, and he could have perceived with appreciation the essence of nature of his wife's breasts as a cluster of fruit.

Now, with that in mind, it's amazing, isn't it? But as I began to think, now, we're the bride of Christ, and how does this exactly work? Well, you know, Paul made reference many, many times about the milk of the word. Well, as you who wonder about the word of God like I do, and I'm so grateful for your wondering with me in this today, you may know that one of God's names is El Shaddai, which, you know, can kind of mean the many-breasted one. Well, his word is milk.

It's made reference to, there's no doubt. And so as we learn his word, just think how cool is it that we have up to 25 different ducts in each breast in order to have all sorts of families of ours, our children, in so many different ways, feeding from what God has fed to us. And so as Jesus said, you know, freely you received, so freely give. And to teach the word of God, I believe, is what Jesus is referring to when he looked at his bride in the Song of Solomon, chapter seven, and he said, your breasts are like clusters of fruit.

It's something to wonder about today on Bible Wonders. Did you write on my book? I do. I do.