You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down to Lebanon. Song of Songs 4:15

Flowing Water – Do you remember the rabbinic principle of exegesis concerning similar words and phrases?  Basically, this principle says since God is the author of the text, where we find similar words we must look for a deeper connection.  The words are not accidental.  They are deliberately chosen to draw us toward divine intersections.  This principle plays an important role in understanding this verse.  The Hebrew description of the lover, the woman, uses a term you will find very revealing.  It is mayim hayyim, literally “living water,” not “flowing water.”

Suddenly we see lots of connections.  Where do we encounter this idea of living water?  Don’t be too quick to jump to Yeshua’s proclamation in John 7:38.  Start at the beginning.  These two words play an important part in the creation narrative.  First, mayim is the description associated with the “deep” (Genesis 1:2).  It is chaos.  When the Spirit of the Lord hovers over the waters, God brings order to chaos.  This is the opening bell sounded by the Hebrew view of God – a God of ordered existence.  From this verse on, we see God’s handiwork bringing order to all creation.  That order extends right to our way of living.  Torah is God’s order for life.

Hayyim (from the verb which means to be, to be alive, to live) is the difference between the dust from which we came and the animated life God breathed into us.  As the pinnacle of His creative work, God creates human beings.  We are alive because He endows us with His breath, the essence of life.  We are nephesh hayyah, earth-creatures who live because of His spirit.  Our first assignment is to bring His order to chaos by acting as His emissaries and regents.  The first step in achieving that goal is to live ordered lives according to His design.

Yeshua adds commentary to our conjoined phrase mayim hayyim when he speaks with the woman at the well (John 4).  What He says to her initially escapes her awareness.  He is the living water.  She takes the phrase as a description of a spring, i.e. flowing water.  But Yeshua uses the metaphor with another sense.  He is the well-spring of life itself, overcoming chaos in every nephesh.  The terror of mayim (water as chaos) is converted to blessing when it meets the God who is.  After all, God’s very name, YHWH, is a form of the verb “to be.”  “To be” from God’s point of view is to be ordered, domesticated and under control.

Now let’s return to Song of Songs.  The description “living water” is applied to the woman in this poem.  Her lover uses mayim hayyim to extol her virtue, connecting it directly to a garden.  If we draw the connection, we could say the male in this poem recognizes and acknowledges the female as the source of ordered existence in the garden of God’s delight.  Perhaps Song of Songs provides context for the real role of the ‘ezer, the role God had in mind when the Garden was His place of pleasure.  If you believe this connection is part of the biblical view of passionate relationship, then there is one question left:  What are you doing to restore the Garden?

Topical Index:  Song of Songs 4:15, John 4, John 7:38, living water, mayim hayyim