Song of Solomon 1:6

Scripture generally uses the word "black" to express affliction, sorrow, and persecution. "My skin," as Job says, "turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat" (Job 30:30). This is especially true of disobedient Israel. But here the confession is sweetly joined with faith in Christ, and so it becomes the true expression of every believer. "I am very dark, but lovely." Black as sin in myself — whiter than snow in Christ.

She owns that whether it was her own fault, or whether it was the cruel persecution she had endured in the just chastening of her faults, such was her condition — black, but, by grace, she was comely.

In this book the Bridegroom looks at the bride and says to her, "You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you." Speaking of herself, she can only say, "I am very dark." In John 13 the Lord Jesus looks at His disciples and calls them completely clean. Yet within a few hours one of them would curse and swear that he did not know Him. So vast is the difference between what we are in ourselves and what we are in Christ — between our standing and our possible state.

In the light of Christ's perfection we have discovered our own blackness. So we realise that we are no pattern for others. Think of our many failures under fiery trials. Think how much we have slaved in the world's vineyards, and how much we have neglected our own things. Are we not forced to say with the bride, "Do not gaze at me"? And yet how often our words and ways betray the vanity of our hearts, which in practice says, "Gaze at me." The effort to attract attention to ourselves shows how little we have been in the chambers of the King.

She speaks of herself as burnt black by the hot rays of the sun. Her oppressors forced her into hard labour in their vineyards. They made her serve their interests, and she had no time left to look after her own things. Her own mother's children, that is, her own brothers, were her oppressors. They were the very people from whom you would expect affection and kindness. So she learned a sad fact: the world runs on its selfish interests. It will brush aside even natural affection to reach its own ends.

God had called Israel to be "the keeper of the vineyards" — that is, the keeper of the nations, to be a blessing to them. But she failed. She did not even keep her own vineyard. It is her confession to the One she now knows and longs for.

It is good for the most gifted not to be always giving out. It is also good for the simplest believers not to be always only taking in. An evangelist, for instance, might get so taken up with winning other people's souls that he forgets he has a soul of his own — a soul that must praise and remember the Lord. "They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept." It is good for the heart of any man, whatever his gift, to have a little quiet time for Christ. Those quiet times should not be too far apart.