Song of Solomon Chapter 4: The Eight Cow Bride

Hidden Treasures of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's. So how fun this morning as I was I guess in engaging in a little new prayer technique that I got over the weekend because I attended the Man Up event with Nikita Koloff and so many wonderful speakers, one of which was Frank Shelton, who shared this idea of the eagle with me. And so as I was praying, God kind of put me on, well, we need to do another review of the fourth chapter. And I thought I would share how that happened as I got into my prayer time this morning. I kind of employed the part of the third chapter of the Song of Solomon where, you know, the beloved said to his bride, you know, my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret place in the stairs, you know, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice. And the idea of that is that, again, we're going back to this idea of dove, and we'll get more into that in a minute, but since we're the dove in the secret place of the stairs, you can't help but think of Jacob's ladder as the stairs.

And so you're going to that place, the secret place where you shut the door and it's just you and him. And then he says, you know, catch for us the little foxes, little foxes that spoil the vine because the vine has tender grapes. And those little foxes are all these things that are chasing you, right?

They're chasing your thoughts when you're just trying to get there and be alone with Christ, which is exactly where I was this morning. But what really helped me do that was Frank Shelton shared this wonder about the eagle. And that wonder is the eagle can look directly into the sun. As a matter of fact, according to many things I read that a mother eagle will hold their child up to the sun, and if they look away, they kick them out of the nest. Like, man, that's a big part of being an eagle is you need to be able to look in the sun. And here's why, is that as they are being chased by other birds or anything else that may want to harm them, if they fly directly into the sun, nothing can follow them. So an atheist one time was studying the birds and saw that and helped get him converted is what Frank Shelton's, you know, shared. But for me, that immediately meant wow, while I am trying to catch for us the little foxes, what a great way to catch the foxes. So as I head towards the sun to get into his presence, and you may know I always ride eagle one, so that's a perfect thing for me.

I am riding eagle one straight towards the sun. And the closer you get to Jesus, of course, nobody else can look straight into Jesus's face. No demon sure can or nothing, no one, none of those thoughts that are after you. So as I got into the presence of God, you know, I really felt like, man, like, here I am and nothing else.

You know, I caught all little foxes and it was just me and him. And so I was like, Lord, where are we going with the podcast today? He said, I want you to go back to the fourth chapter and just look at it. And when you do something will pop right out at you.

And I said, okay. So I went back to the fourth chapter and certainly something did pop as I knew that clearly the fourth chapter has to do with this vision. It ends in an I in verse cause he's trying to give us a vision. He's trying to give us this, this thought and the thought that the thing that jumped out at me immediately was dove eyes. And so I went and looked at the word dove again.

And of course I knew that the eyes had everything to do with the vision that we're studying. And I saw something that I kind of knew, but I never had really studied too much or thought about or conceived is that the word dove itself, if you just look at the raw Hebrew is essentially the idea of iron or wine expressed. Cause it's two. Well, it's actually a yod and a vov and a nun. Well, iron is a yod and a yod and a nun, but they're very similar things, the yod and a vov. So I knew, and I looked at it and it was true that, that the root word that is used to create dove is iron. And so I began to think what, what connection would a dove possibly have to wine other than obviously both are used constantly throughout this book because we keep hearing we have dove eyes and we have love that's better than wine.

We know that. And I started to really think about what the yod was and the letter yod and you know, going to the 119 Psalm and just considering, wow, what does this mean? And the more I thought about it, the yod is the little that means a lot. In other words, that you can't really understand it. It's a very mysterious letter.

It's way bigger. And so you might remember all those verses in the yod section is let this and, and just this unbelievable fear or yahrah of God, which, you know, the word Jesus starts that way. Yahweh starts that way. And it's just more than we can really take in. Well, that's those eyes are those eyes of wonder eyes that, that, that the dove eyes are, are like wine.

They're intoxicating because you can't see what all's in there. It's so deep. And that's the vision. That's the childlike spirit that I think Jesus is really going to after with this verse that as we catch this vision of all the wonder of God and all these things that we wonder about, then the more intoxicating that becomes even for him as he sees that and loves that and the doors that childlike spirit in you.

And it reminded me very much. And by the way, as you go through this, the fourth chapter, you can't help but note that the ninth verse goes back after their, her eyes, right? Because he says that one of her eyes is completely ravished him.

And that idea of the Tet is these wonderfully good eyes, right? And Jesus even talked about the light of his eyes. And so, you know, I think he goes right after that. And then fascinatingly in the 10th verse, he goes back after the wine because, you know, there in the yod, right? He talks again about that idea of wine, which is yod, yod, nun.

And so yod, yod to an extent nun expressed is a dove. Like, and you see that it's just, it's spectacular. And I couldn't help but think about what this might be leading to as an overall vision. And recently I heard a lecture on the 15th of Av. And I think it's very much connected to what we're talking about to get this vision of what Jesus is doing for us. Because if we can get the vision and get these wonder eyes that intoxicate him, then we, like many brides become more and more beautiful based on his love. And the idea of that was taught in the celebration of the 15th of Av, which many articles you read in Jewish literature talk about that was their biggest, the second biggest day of the year, because it was the day that the Jewish men picked their brides and what the the way that this ceremony went.

And I'm going to put a link to the Qumtar ceremony that explains all that I'm talking about. If you want to see it actually in Jewish literature, that the 15th of Av, the way it went was the Jewish women would go out and they'd have to borrow white clothes. In other words, they're going to go where white, the single women would borrow these white clothes. The reason they borrowed them is so that nobody would have clothes that would embarrass the other people.

The rich ones wouldn't have more clothes or better clothes than the poor ones. So they had to go borrow white clothes and then they all went out into the vine and into the vineyard and there they would dance. And when they danced, they would say these different things based on three different groups.

And so here's what they would say, which I think is absolutely amazing. The first group was considered the beautiful ones. And the beautiful ones were not just beautiful because they looked beautiful, but they were beautiful from the standpoint of their Torah understanding and that they even, and the Torah meaning, you know, obviously the Bible, and that they would not only just know their stuff, but that they would actually dig out new stuff and that they would teach things that other people hadn't seen. And the wonder of that made them beautiful. And so the beautiful ones would cry out, look for beauty for a woman is for beauty.

That's interesting, right? And the second group were the ones that had the prestigious family, the one that had the, you know, the lineage that would be that their family, you know, was the, you know, konim, they were priests or whatever it was. And so those that were in the book, good families said, look for family for a woman is for children.

The third group, which fascinatingly they called the ugly ones because they neither had that Torah beauty nor did they have come from a big family. And this one is spectacular because what this group would say is make your acquisition for the sake of heaven. As long as you decorate us with jewels and, and it speaks so much to why he's going to make studs. I mean, borders of gold and studs of silver that we talked about in the first verse, because it is the, the groom that makes us beautiful to some extent. But you know, if you watch movies like the big fat Greek wedding, you'll, you'll see how when a man starts to fall in love with a woman, she makes it, she becomes beautiful. And the idea of, of that love brings out the best in her. And then he adorns it with his adoration.

And so as, as we're, we're looking at this whole fourth chapter, his adoration is coming, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. In other words, all these verses about our well and our fountain and our garden and our spices and all these things are, are meant to bring out that beauty, not only that it would bring it out, but that we would see it. And, and then in, in our love for Jesus, you know, develop and grow into the most beautiful. You know, some people have talked about the, you know, eight cow bride.

Maybe you've heard that story about the man who paid eight cows for his bride, because even though she wasn't all that attractive, but she became more and more attractive the longer they were married. And that idea is to bring out beauty. Well, I think the vision that the overall fourth chapter, if you climbed to 10,000 feet and what God was wanting me to see clearly in the fourth chapter is all these attributes that Jesus is calling out in us are our adornment that, that we have because we are the bride of Christ. And as we see the beauty of all these things and we walk into the beautiful bride, the Proverbs 31 bride, you know, that, that, that God had in mind for us if we walk in our identity as the bride of Christ. So how fun is that, man? Just spectacular from my standpoint to see as, as, as Jesus showed me this morning, as I got in the secret place of the stairs and he gave me those dove eyes. Thanks for listening.