God’s Word for You
Song of Solomon 5:2 He knocks
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, May 26, 2024
The Wife Speaks
2 I was asleep but my heart was awake.
A sound! My lover is knocking.
This might have been a better chapter break than verse 1. Here we begin a strange interlude; perhaps the most difficult part of the book to understand. It begins here with the sleeping wife, and a knock at her door. “A sound!” she cries. She assumes it is her husband, and she is right, but why would he be locked out of their bedchamber? The spiritual sense might be easier to detect if we quickly outline the section (5:2-7).
2a, The sleeping wife is awakened by a knock: Her husband.
2b, He asks her to open; his hair is wet with dew.
3, She makes excuses for not opening the door.
4a, He thrusts his hand through the door.
4b, At last her feelings are aroused.
5, She reaches for the door, and it is dripping with myrrh.
6a, She opens the door, but he has gone.
6b, She goes out to look for him.
7, The watchmen find her and beat her up.
This passage is parallel to 3:1-5, but there the woman longs to see her husband, and runs out into the night to find him. She hurries past the watchmen and finds her husband. Here, he longs to see her, but the results are very different. As we will see, she selfishly refuses to get up and open the door. Spiritually, this seems to be a reference first to Israel turning away from the Lord in indifference. Notice here in verse 2 that the husband is knocking. As Jesus said, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).
The Husband Speaks
“Open to me, my sister, my darling,
my dove, my flawless one.
My head is dripping with dew,
my hair with the dampness of the night.”
The words of the husband are a summary of all his compliments and endearments. He only asks to be let in. The call of a husband can be the same. We will only confuse the matter if we try to pursue a reason for the separation of the couple. Perhaps he was simply off to work and arriving home late. What we see spiritually is that Christ, the husband, is struggling with something. His hair is wet on account of the physical world. Dew, the dampness of the night, has him wringing and soaking wet.
As we look ahead in the passage and see the selfish, almost casual rejection of the wife (the church!), we see that the scene points to many, many instances over time. Surely the Lord knocked for Israel but they turned away. Solomon is writing prophetically, but looking back to the years prior to his own reign. Throughout the time of the Judges there were many repetitions of this scene. The people turned from the true faith. God allowed an enemy to threaten and oppress them. God sent a judge to rescue them, and they turned once again to faith. We see this right away in Judges when the Israelites began to intermarry with the Canaanites (Judges 3:6-7), and these marriages caused them to worship false gods like Baal and Asherah. The Lord let them fall into the hands of an enemy for eight years (Judges 3:8). They cried for help, and God sent them Othniel the first judge, who won a war against the enemy (Judges 3:10) and the land had peace for forty years. When David fought the same enemy many years later, he prayed: “Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless” (Psalm 60:11).
But this scene is repeated many times. The northern tribes fell into idolatry and were carried away (Micah 7:12-13). Then Judah did the same thing (Ezekiel 9:9-10). Then the returning Jews, who understood that the dripping dew and the dampness of the night were gifts from God (Haggai 1:10), still rejected Christ when he came, demanding his death (Mark 15:13-14). Why did Luther risk his neck to protest the wickedness in the church if not because they had done the same thing in his day? Why do we keep preaching repentance today, if not to confess our own sins, to ask God for his forgiveness, and to live humbly as our Lord would have us do (Micah 6:8).
The dampness upon the head of the husband, then, is probably the suffering of Jesus at the hands of his enemies. What was agony for him is a blessing for us, just as “God’s favor is like dew on the grass” (Proverbs 19:12). Christ laid down his life for the sins of the world, to rescue some as he offered salvation through his blood to all (John 3:16). What will save anyone when the Lord comes? “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them in the day of the Lord’s wrath” (Zephaniah 1:18). “But it was not with silver or gold that you were redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19).
O, true Israel, the body of Christ, do not turn away from him when he calls you! You already have faith. Build it up by listening to and treasuring his holy word. Through it, you have life, salvation, and the promise of the resurrection.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.