For Love is as strong as death (Song of Songs 8:6)

Of Love (the term in Hebrew is feminine) it is said that it is strong (azz). At first sight, the
adjective is surprising, so much so that J oon proposes to understand it as insatiable. But the
parallel with q (hard, relentless, v. 6d) makes one think rather of the context of strife. Love,
then, is not a faint-hearted little boy, but a terrible warrior...The only warrior who can be
compared with love is death (hammwet)...At the moment, the author wishes to affirm the
immeasurable, irresistible power of love without giving a value judgment on it. J ust as one
cannot resist death, so one cannot resist love...
Actually, love and death form a binome which has been dwelt on by the literature of every age.
To love is, in some measure, to die...Whoever loves, loses his own freedom and his own time,
and ends up sacrificing his own life for the person he loves. Greater love has no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends (J ohn 15:13). To love means, definitively, to die, to
lose ones own life, no longer to live for oneself. What J esus says to his disciples, is true for
every authentic experience of love: Whoever loves his life will lose it, and who loses it [...] will
find it (Matt 10:39; cf. 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 17:33; J ohn 12:25). Love and death...are
alike because both offer fusion, final integration."
But they are also enemies, rivals, at war with each other (the term z refers to this contest). If
the war is won by death, then it separates the two lovers: the seal is broken. If Love is truly
strong, it has to win the war with the last enemy. In this connection, Ravasi quotes a phrase of
Gabriel Marcel: To say: I love you is to say: You shall not die
[T]he theme of the victory of love and life over death is the theological centre of the
bookwomans love, according to the Song, is the source not of death but of life for man.
pp. 457-58 of Barbiero, G. (2011). Song of Songs: A Close Reading. (Supplements to Vetus
Testamentum Vol. 144). Brill.