NOTES for Sol 8:6

The comparison of love with death, and zeal with Sheol, the realm of the dead, may at first glance seem somewhat strange. Indeed, love is usually associated not with death, but with life, and in all its fullness. Relating zeal to Sheol may seem more logical: where there is jealousy, one can expect anything, including what may end in death.

However, the corresponding Hebrew word implies zeal not in the modern sense of the word, an almost exclusively negative sense, but in the sense in which it was used in ancient times, meaning striving or ardor for that toward which a person has zeal. Even in Pushkin's time, the Russian word for "to be zealous" meant "to strive," and the corresponding Hebrew word means primarily just that.

So love and zeal are comparable to death and to Sheol. Why is this so? The question remains unanswered if we forget that in the Bible all spiritual concepts are considered as ultimate concepts, brought to their logical completion and fullness. Therefore both love and death must be taken in their fullness, brought to the limit to which they can go. And if so, one must speak of the love of the Kingdom and of eternal destruction.

It would seem that we are speaking of human love, of the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man. Yet the love spoken of in the biblical books is one; it is not divided, as theologians sometimes try to divide it, into "earthly" and "heavenly." Just as the world is not split into a "higher," spiritual world and a "lower," natural one. And in the Bible, the human being too is an exceptionally whole creature; dividedness in all its existing forms became characteristic of him after the fall.

The apostle Paul does not accidentally liken the relationship of spouses to the relationship of Christ with the Church, just as earlier the great prophets likened to it God's relationship with His people: every love, if it is real and complete, belongs to the Kingdom. In the fallen world every such love exists contrary to the laws of this fallen world, which always seeks to kill it.

At first the powers of this world usually try to deprive love of its true spiritual content, to make it part of this world, to humiliate and vulgarize it. If this fails, the fallen world tries to destroy love together with its bearers. This is not surprising: the fallen world is calmer without the love of the Kingdom. Of the two powers, love and death, the fallen world chooses death. But at the end of time the Kingdom nevertheless triumphs in the world, and therefore love, which drives out death, triumphs.