Song of Songs Advent Devotion for Couples – Advent 3 Monday ~ Bread for Beggars

This Advent devotional is intended to be a tool to draw you and your family further into God’s Word during this special season. Song of Songs is especially fitting for married or engaged couples to read together. The readings for each week have been divided into “parts” and labeled for husband and wife to read to each other.

The Song of Songs is not only a poem that Solomon is singing to his bride, known as “the Shulammite,” but it is at the same time a letter Christ is speaking to his bride, the Church. Christ is calling her home to him, a central theme of Advent, as we await the day Christ will return to take us home to heaven.

As you read these parts, think of these characters:

Husband (Groom) – Solomon – Christ

Wife (Bride) – Solomon’s beloved, the Shulammite – Christ’s beloved, the Church

Both – “Others”: family members or women in Jerusalem – members of the Church (or, sometimes, those outside the church)

Opening Prayer

The third Advent candle (rose/pink) along with two violet candles are lit.

The husband may say, or the couple may say together:

In the name of the Father and of † the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heavenly Father, who has created man and woman and provided them with the estate of marriage, provide us in our relationship the kind of love that reflects your love for us. For you gave your Son to purchase us by his blood, and you will send him again to bring us to the heavenly wedding feast on the Last Day. Strengthen us by your Word as we expect his Advent. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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Together you may confess the Apostles’ Creed and pray the Lord’s Prayer.

Song of Songs 4:8-6:10

Marital Bliss
Husband: Come with me from Lebanon, my bride; come with me from Lebanon. Depart from the peak of Amana, from the peak of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards. You have captivated my heart, my [beloved] sister [in Christ, as though we are one blood], my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better your love is than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice! Your lips drip nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue; the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon. A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed. Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choicest fruits, henna with nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all choice spices – a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow.
Wife: Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits.
Husband: I came to my garden, my sister, my bride, I gathered my myrrh with my spice, I ate my honeycomb with my honey, I drank my wine with my milk.
Both: Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!
Nightmare: Searching
Wife: I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking.
Husband: “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.”
Wife: I had put off my garment; how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them? My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me. I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone. My soul failed me when he spoke. I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. The watchmen found me as they went about in the city; they beat me, they bruised me; they took away my veil, those watchmen of the walls. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him I am sick with love.
Praise
Both: What is your beloved more than another beloved, O most beautiful among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved, that you thus adjure us?
Wife: My beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand. His head is the finest gold; his locks are wavy, black as a raven. His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, bathed in milk, sitting beside a full pool. His cheeks are like beds of spices, mounds of sweet-smelling herbs. His lips are lilies, dripping liquid myrrh. His arms are rods of gold, set with jewels. His body is polished ivory, bedecked with sapphires. His legs are alabaster columns, set on bases of gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
Garden Conversation
Both: Where has your beloved gone, O most beautiful among women? Where has your beloved turned, that we may seek him with you?
Wife: My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies.
Husband: You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners. Turn away your eyes from me, for they overwhelm me. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of ewes that have come up from the washing; all of them bear twins; not one among them has lost its young. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and virgins without number. My dove, my perfect one, is the only one, the only one of her mother, pure to her who bore her. The young women saw her and called her blessed; the queens and concubines also, and they praised her. “Who is this who looks down like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners?”

Hymn

Hymn verses this week: “The Bridegroom Soon Will Call Us,” v. 4

(Listen to the melody here)

4. Our Father, rich in blessing,
Will give us crowns of gold
And, to His bosom pressing,
Impart a bliss untold,
Will welcome with embraces
Of never-ending love,
And deck us with His graces
In blissful realms above.

Author: Johann Walter; Translator: Matthias Loy