The Shulamite Walked Whole Through Four Empires

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She Brought Two Stones to the Wedding

A king married a noblewoman, and she came into his house carrying two gems of her own. He looked at them, went to his treasury, and brought out two that matched. Four stones on the table, two hers and two his, and the marriage started even.

Her two had names. Abraham handed them down to his children, and God said out loud why He had chosen the man: because he will instruct his household after him to keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice. That was her half of the settlement. Righteousness and justice, carried out of one old man's tent into a whole people.

The two the king matched them with were kindness and mercy.

The Day the King Took His Back

She lost hers.

Not robbed, but lost the way anything is lost, by handling it carelessly for long enough. Amos described what it looked like from the street. They have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood. A court that sells its verdicts. A stone weight in the scale that is not the weight stamped on its side.

The king said nothing about it for a long time. Then he came and lifted his own two off the table. "I have withdrawn My peace from this people," He said. "My kindness and My mercy with it."

The house was still standing, but there was nothing left in it.

Three Tutors Arguing Over Iron

The son of that house had gone bad by then, and three tutors stood in front of the king arguing about how heavy to make his chains.

Moses went first and did not flinch. "A hundred litra." He had already written the sentence out in full: many evils and troubles will find them.

But David said a hundred would kill the boy outright. "Twelve." One for each hour of daylight, because his own prayer asked God to answer on the day of trouble, and a day runs twelve hours.

Then Jeremiah stood up, because Jeremiah had seen the boy more recently than either of them, in a burning city, being marched out of it. "He cannot carry twelve. One litra." He had a verse ready that puts the trouble and the way out of it in the same breath. It is a time of trouble for Jacob, and out of it he will be saved.

A hundred, then twelve, then one. The weight came down each time, because every man who spoke had watched the boy more closely than the man before him.

Moses asked for one more thing. "Master of the world. When You see Your children in trouble and there is nobody left standing to ask You for mercy on their behalf, answer them anyway. Answer them right away."

"As you live, Moses. Whenever they call Me, I answer."

Reish Lakish put it the way the women put it in the birthing room, crowding around a girl on the stool who is frightened and too far along to stop. May the One who answered your mother answer you. David said the same thing to Israel. May the One who answered Jacob answer you, and Jacob is the man who built an altar and named it for the God who answered him on the day he was in trouble.

Return, Return

In the Song of Songs a voice calls after a woman who is walking away. Return, return, Shulamite. Return, return, and let us look at you.

The word comes four times. Rabbi Berekhya set the four calls against four kingdoms, four empires Israel walked into and four she walked out of still recognizably herself. Whole going in and whole coming out. Not comfortable. Whole.

Her name carries the word for peace, and the peace travels with her, tent to tent, wherever the tents happen to be pitched that year. The priests lay the Name on her every morning and finish the blessing with that same word. Rabbi Levi said the rain comes down for her sake and so does the dew. Rabbi Elazar ben Maron said she is the reason the ground under everyone else does not turn to liquid.

The Crown Made Out of What She Lost

Then she got up and went looking.

That is the entire turn, and the parable spends one line on it. She rose and applied herself and found her two gems and carried them back. Zion is redeemed by justice, and the ones inside her who turn back are redeemed by righteousness.

The king brought his two out of the treasury again. "The mountains can move and the hills can collapse," He said, "and My kindness will not move away from you, and the covenant of My peace will not collapse."

Then he did the thing nobody in the room expected. So he did not slide her two stones back across the table and lock his own away. He had all four set into a single crown and put it on her head.

"I will betroth you to Me forever. With righteousness and with justice, with kindness and with mercy. I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness."