(a) Level 1 Overview : Love within human relationship.

The Song of Solomon beautifully traces the growing and blossoming of a relationship between man and woman. It traces the stages before marriage and then within marriage.
 
The chart to the right gives us a general overview of marital development, using the 5 progressions of love already mentioned...... 

Looking at the chart  you will see that the first two stages are before the Marriage proper. They are in the 'Betrothal' stage (equivalent to modern day 'engagement' except this period was a time of preparation for the marriage where the bride prepared the wedding garments and the groom prepared the house with no thought of not going through with it!). 
The last three stages show the proper development of a godly marriage relationship into a powerful team for His Kingdom. 
Look at the descriptions of each stage...there must a progressive build up of each level - if acouple tries to jump too fast onto one level it will be damaged!

One thing to note is the man’s constant affirmation of his love for the woman by referring to her as ‘My Love’ (or ‘darling’) -  1:9,15; 2:2,10,13; 4:1,7; 5:2; 6:4. Also he says that she is beautiful many times -  1:15; 2:10,13; 4:1,7; 6:4; 7:1,6.

What can we learn from this ?

We will not be considering this level in detail, but the focus of this study will be to look at the second level in detail over the next few lessons.

 Next.

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