Why is love compared to death, fire, and water in the closing song?

The speaker wishes the beloved were like a brother so that she could kiss him openly without contempt. She would bring him into her mother’s house to be taught and offer spiced wine and pomegranate wine. His left hand is beneath her head and his right will embrace her. Challoner interprets the two hands as the Old and New Testaments. Jerusalem’s daughters are asked not to awaken love until she pleases.

A figure comes from the desert, leaning on her beloved. The words about the apple tree mention the mother’s corruption. Challoner interprets this passage through Gentile conversion, Christ’s support for the Church, sacramental grace, and redemption at the cross. His historical theological reading also identifies the mother with the synagogue and its denial of Christ; this attribution belongs to the edition’s note.

The speaker asks to be a seal on the beloved’s heart and arm. Love is strong as death, jealousy hard as hell, and its lamps burn like flames. Great waters and floods cannot extinguish charity, and a whole house’s wealth cannot buy love. The question about a little sister leads to possible silver defenses for a wall or cedar boards for a door. Challoner reads the sister as Jews whose future conversion would make them part of the Church. A voice then calls herself a wall that has found peace.

The peaceable one’s vineyard is entrusted to keepers, each bringing a thousand silver pieces. A thousand belong to the peaceable one and two hundred to the keepers of its fruit. A garden dweller is asked to let the listening friends hear her voice. The final request tells the beloved to flee like a roe or young hart on fragrant mountains.