Song of Solomon 8:6

(6) Seal.—See Jeremiah 22:24; Haggai 2:23, &c. A symbol of something especially dear and precious.

Jealousy.—Strong passion, from a word meaning to be red with flame; not in a bad sense, as the parallelism shows:—

“Strong as death is love,Inexorable as Sheol is ardent passion.”

Grave.—Heb. sheôl. Perhaps, as in the LXX., Hades, with its figurative gates and bars (Psalms 6:5, Note).

Coals.—Heb. resheph; in Psalms 78:48, hot thunderbolts (comp. Habakkuk 3:5); in Job 5:7, sparks; Marg., sons of the burning; Deuteronomy 32:24, burning heat of the burning fever of the plague.

A most vehement flame.—Literally, a flame of Jah, the only place where a sacred name occurs in the book, and here, as in the Authorised Version, adverbially, to express something superlatively great and strong. Southey’s lines are a faint echo of this:—

“But love is indestructible,Its holy flame for ever burneth,From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.”