“My Beloved is mine, and I am His, Who is delighting among the roses until the day does break forth and the shadows have fled away. Turn, my Beloved, and be as a deer, or as a young one of the harts upon the mountains of separation.” (2:16-17)
We read another sweet love declaration between God and Israel, charged with wholesomeness, totality and completeness as infinity and eternity are. This is a love relationship that extends beyond time and space. It transcends what we are able to fathom, conceive or comprehend. Hence Israel must realize what all this represent in terms of her identity as Jewish individuals and as the Jewish nation.
The key to approach and assimilate that identity is to understand God's ways and attributes, and how He relates to all His creation out of His love. For love is the center, the basis and foundation of all He has created for the sake of His love. As we grasp the scope of God's love, we become aware of our love for Him and His love for us.
The mutual love between God and Israel has a purpose in human life and in the world. As Israel creates a space in the world (beginning with our own consciousness) for God to dwell in our midst, He also reveals His presence to us to enter the transcendence of His love.
Thus we also become aware that God is ours and we are His, as His love and our love belong to each other. In order to fully assimilate this, we first must find the essence of our love as an extension of God's love. As we do this, we will be able to truly know how to love God.
This is the beginning of our final redemption. In this sense, reciprocity is fundamental in our relationship with God. He constantly manifests His love to us in many ways, beginning with the air we breathe. Then we are destined to reciprocate by emulating and honoring the best we can the abundant loving kindness of His ways and attributes. Thus we love Him back.
This mutual love allegorically delights among the roses as the beauty and fragrance of love's ways and attributes, which are the complements of God's ways and attributes destined to rule and prevail in all humankind and the world for the eternity to come. This is the foundation of the Messianic era after the remains of the day as our materialistic fantasies and illusions are left behind along with their darkness.
Again, God invites Israel to fully assume her true identity, represented by the allegorical deer and hart mentioned earlier in this song, and meet her Beloved in the divided mountain. This refers to two separated mountains that split from the mountain as it is literal in the original Hebrew in the last part of the final verse in this chapter: “upon the mountains of the mountain”.
“The mountain” or “the mount” is the common symbol for Zion and the Temple of Jerusalem, mentioned by the Jewish prophets in regards to God's promised final redemption: “And redeemers ascended to the mountain of Zion to judge the mount of Esau, and the kingdom has been to the Lord's.” (Obadiah 1:21)
There are two mountains as the split duality in our current human consciousness, reflected in the constant confrontation of good and evil for the control of the expressions in life. This confrontation will cease when the redeeming power of God's love will be revealed to Israel in front of the nations.
This empowered redeeming love will manifest in the renewed strength of the positive traits and trends in consciousness that will wipe out all form of evil from the face of the earth. Those will be the redeemers that will ascend to the mountain of Zion to judge (rectify and direct) the mountain of Esau.
No comments:
Post a Comment