Answer: He stays. Through everything.
As Song of Solomon ends, it spends much of its last few words teaching about the nature of true love. Solomon's bride speaks boldly about the nature of love that lasts, full of much wisdom:
[Her]
[6] Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
the very flame of the LORD.
[7] Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
all the wealth of his house,
he would be utterly despised.
(Song of Solomon 8:6-7 ESV)
We'll go through this section line-by-line, since there's so much wisdom packed into each phrase.
"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm" Essentially, Solomon's bride wants to be her husband's most prized possession. In the ancient Israelite world, a seal would be your means of personally identifying yourself. It was often a stone engraved with your unique personal pattern, so that if you stamped it into hot wax, it would indicate that you had personally approved or sent the document in question. You protected and prized your seal, since it was one-of-a-kind, and if stolen, would be impossible to perfectly replicate. There was no physical object you protected like your seal.
So for her to ask to be her husband's seal, she's asking to be cherished, to be prized for being uniquely her, for their relationship to be protected. She wants to be so uniquely identified with Solomon that everyone knows she is his seal. She wants to be so close to her husband in mind, in soul, in heart, that if she approves something, people know Solomon approves of it. She wants to be one with him.
She also wants his heart to be stamped with her, so that every other woman realizes he's hers. This is what true love aspires to; this is what marriage should be.
Our culture sometimes mocks overly obsessed girlfriends and boyfriends, people who cling so tightly so early that they're portrayed as pathetically desperate. That's not what we're talking about, here.
This couple is wed. They have gotten to know each other over a long courtship and have pledged to spend their lives together. They have vowed before God to love each other as their spouse. Once that commitment has been made, the wife should be stamped on her husband's heart, marking her as his, and him as hers.
"for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave." Death is a constant, one of the most powerful and fearsome things in all creation. No matter who you are, how strong you are, or how smart you are, death will claim you, in the end. It is unavoidable and unbeatable, particularly so in the minds of the people of the ancient world.
So when Solomon's bride compares the strength of love to the strength of death, she is saying that true love is unbeatable. It can not be defeated. True love that has been sealed by marriage vows should never fail.
So when she's asking to be cherished as a seal upon her husband's heart, she is not saying this out of desperation. This is right and proper and beautiful in a marriage of true love.
When she says "jealousy" above, she's not referring to the paranoid stalkerish kind of jealousy where she's constantly checking her husband's phone for suspicious text messages and attacking every woman who likes one of his Facebook status updates.
Rather, she's saying that the marriage commitment is serious. It's a covenant where you bring all that you are and pledge to love all that your spouse is. It means that when a man marries a woman, he is suddenly dead to all other women, and they are dead to him. He is committed exclusively and entirely to his bride, and she to him.
This is also why cohabitation is such a terrible thing. Today's culture says that if you like someone, you should move in together, so see if you're sexually compatible and can make a life together. It almost makes sense. But it is the exact opposite of love!
True love is a commitment of your all. Cohabitation says that I like parts of you, but I'm not sure about the whole thing. It says that I'm going to take from you anything I want without promising anything solid in return. It says that I always want to leave the back door open, because I'm not sure that I want to love only you. This is why cohabitation often kills romance; it is full of lust, but not of true love, a relationship formed from selfishness instead of commitment.
Cohabitation says that it could end at any time, that the feelings may be fleeting, that this could simply fade away and be nothing.
But true love always endures, always perseveres, never fails. "Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD." This is the only direct reference to God in the entire Song, and its meaning is clear: true love between humans is built of the very same love that Jesus has for His bride, the Church.
In other words, a husband can divorce his wife when Christ divorces the church. Just so that we're clear: that will never happen.
In the entire Bible, only two relationships are considered exclusive, such that this kind of jealousy is appropriate: the love of God for the church, and the love of husband and wife for each other. This is partly because marriage is intended to show the world how God loves the church; marriage is a living parable, teaching the world about the God who is Love.
In other words, if a person comes up to a married couple and says, "What does it look like for God to love me?", a good husband should be able to smile, turn to his wife, and say, "It looks a lot like how I love her."
"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it." True love survives all challenges. In the ancient world, they feared the sea above all. Its power couldn't be tamed, and traveling on it was always risky. Once it had you in its grip, you were gone.
Yet even the terrible powers of the sea cannot quench the fire of love. No matter what power rises against it, love will always triumph.
"If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised." As the Beatles so beautifully sang, "You can't buy me love." We idolize money, so much so that the Bible rightly says the love of money is the root of all evil. Yet even this powerful, greatly desired thing has no ability to acquire love.
True love is unlike everything else on earth. It can't be bought in any sense; anything resembling love that came about exclusively through the exchange of money cannot be love. If a man tried to win a woman solely by giving her cash, and never once tried to pursue her heart, he would be utterly despised.
So why do I talk about all of this in a blog that's ostensibly written as Song of Solomon for singles?
Because this kind of true love is the goal of every romantic relationship. Often people are not conscious of it in exactly this way, and wouldn't articulate it this way if they were asked. Yet this is what we are wired for; this is what our romantic desires always aspire to.
So wherever you are in life, whether single or dating or married, aspire to this kind of love!
Above all, once you're made your marriage vows, pursue this kind of love until your dying breath.
Love is not a cheap. If you pursue love, you should know what you're aspiring to. If you promise someone love, and do no deliver the kind of love desired by Solomon's bride, you will shatter someone's heart.
To be clear, I don't mean that you can summon this kind of love simply by willing it to be. This love is the love of God; if you want it, ask Him for it. Ask God to form this love in you, to shape you into the kind of person who can pursue this kind of love, who can give it and enjoy it.
And if you want to know the definition of true love, you have only to look at the One who laid down His life to save his bride, who loved her so much even in her imperfections that He gladly endured the Cross so that she would never have to suffer it. That, my friends, is what true love is, and its flames cannot be quenched!
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