Section four — The Fight

Section Four
THE FIGHT  5:2 – 5:7

• Why was she upset?
• Was she trying to avoid having sex?
• Did he think he had done anything  wrong?
• Did she think she had done anything wrong?
• Who was right?

How much time elapsed between the wedding night and The Fight?  I don’t see anything that will tell us the length of time, but married couples will usually have this particular fight.  It goes all the way back to Genesis when Adam and Eve were getting their punishment.  Adam had been passive.  God said he was going to have to work hard to provide food.  Eve had taken the lead and followed Satan.  Her punishment included that your desire will be for your husband.  Guys if you take pride in her wanting to be with you even when you have done stupid stuff, it isn’t that you are so great.  It is part of her punishment.
Anyway, some time has passed since they were married.  She had been expecting him to come and be with her.  As it became later and later, she sort of fell asleep.  It seems that she was becoming unhappy with him.  She is alone when the story picks back up.
I was asleep, but my heart was awake.  A voice!  My beloved knocking, “Open to me, my sister, my darling companion, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is filled with dew, my hair with damp of the night”
She was asleep — but not in a sound sleep.  It appears that she had been expecting him earlier, but now she was slow or reluctant to let him come in.  They are married.  Separate bedrooms is certainly a possibility in their culture for the people with money.  At first it seemed like a strange thing for him to say ‘my head is filled with dew’….  He is claiming that he was outside where he would have been working.  If he had been with another woman, his hair wouldn’t be full of dew.  If someone is outside on a foggy evening his hair would have a different look than someone who had just taken a shower or someone who had been swimming.  So that is his justification —  I was working (to make things better for us).
She replied to him:
I had taken off my cloak;  must I put it back on?  I had washed my feet:  must i get them dirty?
She tells us what happened next:
My beloved extended his hand through the latch opening, and my heart deeply longed for him.  I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, and my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt.  I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and gone.  My soul went out when he spoke.  I sought him but did not find him.  I called out to him, but he did not answer me.
She was slow to wake up, or at least slow to respond — but when she did, she was very disappointed that he was gone.  He knew that he had blown a chance at an enjoyable evening together.  She knew she had pushed it too far in trying to make him feel bad or guilty.