Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.
Set me as a seal upon your heart is a request to be permanently marked by someone, to leave an impression that can't be smudged out or replaced. It's followed by one of the boldest claims in all of ancient poetry: love is strong as death, jealousy fierce as the grave. Whoever wrote this wasn't interested in comparing love to something pretty. They compared it to the two most undefeated forces they knew.
Then the economics of it: many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered all the wealth of his house for it, he'd be despised. Real love, this poem insists, isn't a transaction you can buy your way into or wash away with hardship. It's not for sale, and it can't be extinguished by circumstance either.
It's worth sitting with how extreme this claim actually is. Most love we encounter is negotiable, conditional, erodable. This poem describes something else — a love as relentless as the grave is relentless, and as impossible to buy as it is to drown.
If every love you've known has felt negotiable or conditional, this poem's claim of something unbuyable and unquenchable is worth wondering about.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.