Mahanaim, the Army of God

2My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. 3I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies, 4You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners. 5Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me. Your hair is like a flock of goats, that lie along the side of Gilead. 6Your teeth are like a flock of ewes, which have come up from the washing; of which every one has twins; no one is bereaved among them. 7Your temples are like a piece of a pomegranate behind your veil. 8There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number. 9My dove, my perfect one, is unique. She is her mother’s only daughter. She is the favorite one of her who bore her. The daughters saw her, and called her blessed; the queens and the concubines, and they praised her. 10Who is she who looks out as the morning, beautiful as the moon, clear as the sun, and awesome as an army with banners? 11I went down into the nut tree grove, to see the green plants of the valley, to see whether the vine budded, and the pomegranates were in flower. 12Without realizing it, my desire set me with my royal people’s chariots. 13Return, return, Shulammite! Return, return, that we may gaze at you. Lover Why do you desire to gaze at the Shulammite, as at the dance of Mahanaim?

There is a children’s story about a hedgehog who lived always lonely and cold.

He was forever longing for someone, waiting for another he could give his heart to. One day he met a hedgehog who ached with loneliness as he did. The two carried the same loneliness, and thinking they could comfort each other they promised to live together. The hedgehog couple shared their hearts, and to soothe the cold and the loneliness they came closer to hold each other. But the nearer they came out of a wish to love, the more the spines on their bodies wounded each other. They did not mean it, but pricked by the spines they could not help springing apart, and the wounds each took from the other were very painful. The two of them put their heads together and talked over how they could get on without wounding each other. In the end the couple learned that keeping a suitable distance while respecting and serving each other and living happily is more beautiful than a love that presses too close and wounds.

The moment a person thinks of loving another, a wish to own them appears. Not even knowing that the other person is wounded and hurting on my spines, I behave as I please, as though they were mine; and in the end the wounded one leaves my side. Knowing perfectly well that my character is hurting the other person’s heart and my behavior is a great disappointment to them, I do not much trouble myself to soften my bad habits and my behavior to suit them. This is exactly what human, selfish love is.

What do you think the right distance is for loving someone? I do not mean the distance between bodies but the distance between hearts. However well a couple gets on, their love can be held longer and deeper when they serve each other from a suitable distance with mature characters. The same is true, of course, between parents and children, and it applies to every relationship. The closer people are, the more careful they must be with each other; only with a suitable line drawn can a love be beautiful.

Do you wound the other person on the grounds that you love them? Are you failing to see that your own rough character is hurting the heart of the one you love, and looking only at your own wounds?

A human being can never love another by acting one-sidedly. There are stalkers who claim that a one-sided love is love too, but it is not love. Love has to win the other person’s heart, and the love I give must do the other person good.

You see homes driven to ruin when the husband, who ought to hold his wife, is a small vessel that cannot even hold himself. So the head of a household has to be born again through the word of God in order to become a large vessel. Of course this is not a problem the husband can settle by working at it alone. If the wife will not receive her husband’s love and does not respect him as a person, that home cannot stand straight however hard he works.

The relationship between Jesus and believers is the same. Unlike relationships between people, Jesus gives believers a one-sided love. It is a love that is possible because he is a vessel large enough to hold the whole human race. Christ is the one who hung on the cross we should have hung on and said it was all right that the nails went in; who took the whip in our place and said it was all right that his whole body was torn; who said it was all right that the blood ran under the crown of thorns — only be saved.

We stand in front of a Lord who bears every pain and every mockery and every torment, and we complain that there is no water and no money, and pour out our discontent. Even then, the Christ who takes us in his arms with a word of love is your protector. Unless you receive that love and enjoy it fully, the world you live in will always be pitch dark and anxious and frightening. A wife must be better when her husband is good to her, and we must give thanks for the grace Jesus pours out; only then can a life be happy.

Isaiah 55:1

1“Hey! Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

The Lord, who has already paid the whole price, said that the only thing left for you to do is enjoy peace and rest inside the love of Christ. He opened the road of salvation, saying that the unrighteous can be forgiven if they let go of human thinking and human righteousness and return to God. He is able to take a sinner in his arms like this because, as the heavens are higher than the earth, the Lord’s thoughts are higher than the thoughts of foolish human beings.

Solomon, who ruled a nation, had far higher thoughts and a broader heart and a wider view of life than the Shulammite; and so, although she had wronged him, when she repented of her fault and came to him he gladly received his wife. This is what a solid husband looks like as he takes a weak wife in his arms, and it is the great love of God forgiving believers who are like the prodigal son. Because this love exists, people born as children of Satan have been blessed with becoming children of God.

Song of Solomon 6:3

3I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. He browses among the lilies,

The Shulammite came to see that just as the many sheep belong to her husband, she too belongs to him. As the sheep hear Solomon’s voice and follow him and obey, she grasped that she too has become one with her husband.

John 14:20

20In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

As Solomon and the Shulammite are one, the triune God and believers are one. Believers who were sinners can become one with God only because of the sacrifice of Christ. Without the sacrifice of a Christ who bore every sin, it could never have happened.

When Solomon saw the longing in the eyes of a Shulammite who had come a long way to find him, he knew that she had truly grasped what she had done wrong. There is nothing so beautiful as a heart that repents of a fault and turns. Believers, of course, may also commit the fault of grieving God because they cannot let go of the world’s zeal and greed and plans. But there is also no faith so precious as grasping one’s own fault and turning.

Song of Solomon 6:8

8There are sixty queens, eighty concubines, and virgins without number.

Set this beside the word telling us that Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and we can see that when he met the Shulammite it was probably a good while before 1 Kings 11.

Solomon praised the Shulammite as one who stands out above anyone else. That he called her far and away the outstanding one, though there were so many women who loved him, means that at a distance he saw what he had not seen while she was near — that she is a deeply true person. People sometimes discover another’s real worth when they are apart rather than when they are together. So it is necessary to speak and act toward the person beside you more as a person, in ordinary times, and a life that respects the other matters.

Believers and wives, who receive a one-sided love from Christ and from a husband, do not really know how greatly loved and how happy they are at this moment. They do not really know how firm a support that fence has been in keeping their lives safe, and that is why they betray the love so easily. But once abandoned by Christ and by a husband, they will be mocked by the world and by people and treated with contempt. Only then will they grasp how great and how warm that love was.

So while you are loved by Christ and by a husband, you must work at repaying that love with a gift beautifully wrapped. Wrap the love Christ gave for the saving of souls in devotion and faithfulness and give it back to him; and for the work a husband has done for the household, give back the raising of the children wisely and the making of a home at peace. Those would be great gifts.

They tell us that in heaven there is more joy over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

While the shepherd is always beside them keeping them safe, leading them to green pasture and to streams of flowing water, the sheep think it is a matter of course. But once they have lost the shepherd and are alone in a strange place, they will see what a great blessing it was to have him beside them. Sheep do not think anything will ever happen to separate them from the shepherd. Even when the day darkens and they cannot see him well, they think it is fine to look away for a moment, because the shepherd comes whenever they call.

But if a sheep does not go where the shepherd leads and looks for pasture as it pleases and is separated from him, then however much it cries in a strange place it cannot hear the shepherd’s warm voice. For the lost sheep now, nothing has changed except that the shepherd is gone. There is food to eat in the wide field, and it has been given the freedom to live as it likes.

But once the day darkened, the lost sheep had nowhere to rest. For a sheep, having no shepherd means having no protector to drive the wild animals off when they gather, and no refuge to go into and stay in safely. Only then did the sheep cry aloud, frightened and afraid of the world.

And it was to this sheep, which looked away and lost its road, that the shepherd came. It is easy to understand how glad the sheep was the moment it saw him.

All of us were lost sheep. We were foolish sheep who grew greedy for a little more grass, found the shepherd’s leading stifling, and set out on a strange road in search of freedom. And Jesus the shepherd came to sinners like that. The Lord did not rebuke these sinners who had lost the road of truth and were wandering; he lifted them gladly onto his shoulders and carried them to where the flock was. Look quietly into the heart of Jesus and you feel the heart of a Solomon rejoicing over a Shulammite who has come to find him.

You too must be thankful that there are people beside you now holding you in love, and that there is a Jesus who gives his own life and protects you. Think what you would look like, left behind, if the God and the people who loved you were to leave. It would be a life frightening beyond imagining. The world is never an easy place. At every step you have to wrestle and stay alert, asking whether you are going straight according to the word of truth and whether Christ will welcome you at the end of your life. Many things come to us in a life, and when we do not forget that all of them are stepping stones toward the kingdom of God, we can walk the road of faith under the shepherd’s leading.

At last the women of Jerusalem are speaking as they look at a Shulammite who has met Solomon.

Song of Solomon 6:10

10Who is she who looks out as the morning, beautiful as the moon, clear as the sun, and awesome as an army with banners?

The women of Jerusalem were astonished at how beautiful the Shulammite looked now that she had met her husband. Simply loving someone makes a person’s face shine and changes their appearance until it is dazzling. That is why you can tell without being told when people are in love.

Believers who grow through the word shine spiritually, so they carry a dignity clearly different from anything produced by dressing up the outside. However poor and sick and weak their life in the world, the spiritual authority breathing out of them makes them stand out, as it did the Shulammite. In believers who grow through the word, the behavior changes first, because they cut off the worldly habits they used to enjoy, live according to God’s will, and begin the work of cutting and shaping themselves in order to be an example to others. Of course they stumble along the way; but you can see that they get up again and do not stop going down the road of truth. If you too have turned back through the word, get up with strength and run, and do not look back at the world again.

Song of Solomon 6:13

13Return, return, Shulammite! Return, return, that we may gaze at you. Lover Why do you desire to gaze at the Shulammite, as at the dance of Mahanaim?

In Genesis 32:2, while Jacob was on his way to meet Esau, he saw the messengers of God encamped there. Jacob called these angels the army of God — Mahanaim.

Genesis 32:2

2When he saw them, Jacob said, “This is God’s army.” He called the name of that place Mahanaim.

God showed him Mahanaim in order to make Jacob certain, afraid as he was of being repaid by his brother Esau, whose birthright he had taken, that God’s angels themselves would keep him safe; that is why he showed him the army of God. Mahanaim is a proper name meaning two camps, or two armies. Jacob called it that, most likely, because a great many angels formed into two armies — the angels of the Lord of hosts — were guarding his company front and back, or left and right.

If believers had their spiritual eyes opened and could see Mahanaim as Jacob did, they would fear God; but they cannot see it, so they live as they please. Yet if we believe in the Mahanaim that guarded Jacob, then the work by which God keeps believers safe through the armies of heaven and the angels is going on even now.

If you believe that Jacob was a man who really did trust God, you must believe that there is a Mahanaim guarding you even now. If the armies of heaven and the angels are standing guard beside you, the world will not be frightening.

Once she came to her husband’s side, the Shulammite looked beautiful and full of dignity, like Mahanaim. Simply meeting the one she loves changes a woman like this. This is how the church and believers who are loved by God in the world ought to look. The church and the believers who are loved by Christ must have a dignity no one dares come near, and a commanding presence, if the world is not to treat them carelessly.

Christ, who gives love without ever changing, is right beside you — so what is there to fear, and why shrink before the powers of the world? You have only to give off the light of happiness and rest and peace inside the arms of the bridegroom who loves you. When the Shulammite searched for her husband all night she was attacked by those on patrol like a fledgling that had lost its mother; but now that Solomon is beside her, no one will dare treat her carelessly. This is the relationship between Christ and believers, and the relationship of a husband and wife who truly love each other.

However much power the world holds as it tries to bring down the church and its believers, it can never win, because the army of God escorts them. If believers believe this firmly, miracles will happen. And believers under that protection of heaven are entirely free of the world, and will be praised as blessed.

May you be kept safe at the Lord’s side always. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.