The Song of Songs: The Love Story of God and Israel (XX)

“What is your Beloved above [any] beloved, O beautiful among women? What is your Beloved above [any] beloved, that thus you have adjured us?” (5:9)

Our good traits, qualities, thoughts, emotions, feelings, passions and instincts along with our positive speech and actions (all these “the daughter of Jerusalem”, for they come from Jerusalem as our permanent connection with God) come to question the truthfulness and fidelity of our yearning for God's love and His promised final redemption.

They ask Israel who is her God, her Beloved, over other lesser gods as idols revered by ego's beliefs and feelings of lack out of material fantasies and illusions.

They seem to ask,

“Why do you appeal to us if you yourself have desired and chosen to go after your false gods of vanity, futility, haughtiness, 'glamour', 'prestige', 'class', and 'sophistication', in the fantasy world of consumer society, 'light' culture, fashion trends, false ideologies and beliefs?”

“Are you aware that the goodness of love as a material manifestation of God's love does not cohabit with ego's fantasies and illusions?”

Our conscious self is compelled to answer to our essence and true identity, built on the truth of goodness.

Speaking of truth, living by it and making it the source and foundation for judgment are the expressions of goodness in the material world.

Thus we realize that we pursue goodness as the truth by which we apply our judgment. Hence goodness is the utmost truth of life to live by and for it in the world, and learn that the reason of justice is to make truth prevail as the embodiment of goodness.

All expressions of goodness come from the Creator. By being and doing goodness we bless ourselves as extensions and expressions of God’s goodness. Our sages call this being partners with God in His creation (Talmud, Shabbat 10a).

Thus we become channels, but also vessels of goodness. We not only do goodness for the sake of it, but to proclaim and teach its principles and make them rule all aspects of life.

This is the original meaning of the Hebrew word for correctness or righteousness, usually translated as charity; for goodness is the right thing to do.

It’s not just an act of bestowing or giving food or material goods for those in need, it is also about the ethical principle behind the action. We are good because is the right way to be and live.

“The highway of righteousness leads to life, and in its path there is no death.” (Proverbs 12:28)

In this ethical context, death represents the opposite traits and qualities of goodness. Death as the destructive traits and trends in consciousness we must transform and redirect towards love’s ways and attributes.

Thus we wipe out evil from the face of the earth, and begin to live the goodness of God’s love fully revealed in the Messianic era.

We have to realize that goodness is the source and object of our fullness. As goodness satisfies every aspect, level and dimension of life, we achieve completeness as the primordial quality of peace.

In the wholesomeness of peace there is no space for lack, deficiency, illness, disease, failure, wrongness, falsehood or sin, for there is nothing to transgress.

This completeness characterizes the Messianic consciousness as the beginning of the total redemption promised by God in Jewish prophecy. Thus we also realize the stillness of peace as the perfection of living in, by, with and for the sake of goodness.

This is the final result of completion after we end the changing process from a consciousness of lack to a consciousness of fulfillment. Hence when we hear that the straight and narrow path of righteousness is walked with eternal vigilance, we assimilate that if we look to the right or to the left we must see only the same goodness we leave behind as we walk, and look ahead for new and greater expressions of goodness God sets up for us.