“Your stature is like a palm tree…”

The King to his beloved Bride in Song of Songs 7:7

Each word in the Song of Songs is a treasury of revelation and insight. Every single term is like a musical note, where if any of them were taken away, it would dampen the entire composition. Therefore, we must continue to tune our ears even to the smallest of notes within the Song by unpacking the significance of particular words. To re-explain the importance of this, we need to remember something about the Bible. Though it is a book written by men over the course of thousands of years, there is a higher Author behind its frail make-up — a Composer who has hidden certain notes within it for us to discover and enjoy. Everything connects in the Bible, including specific words. 

To use another analogy, the Scriptures are like a puzzle with many different pieces, all of which can be put together to unveil a hidden picture. However, reading Genesis to Revelation straight through like a textbook is not the way to put together the puzzle. The Bible from front to end is actually a jumbled mess of pieces, as though you are just opening up a puzzle box for the first time. The pieces can only be put together through a revelation of Christ and the New Covenant. This is also why the Bible is a living book with a living message. It’s not dead reference book to be read from front to back to get a lesson on morality and or to gain understanding on religious history. That is one layer of the book that can be useful in some regards, but there’s a much more important message in the midst of it.

And so, in this puzzle even individual words can make up its individual pieces. You can take words out of books like Genesis, Exodus, or the Song of Songs and place them alongside each other to find the greater picture jumbled up in the Scriptures. As you do this, you find that the picture formed by this puzzle is the most beautiful image in all of creation — both in the heavens and in the earth. 

Ark, Ark, and Temple

The Hebrew word for “stature” is qowmah. The first time it shows up in the Bible is during the construction of Noah’s ark. As you probably know, the ark was a large wooden boat that would not only hold animals but also the family of the one righteous man left on earth. The qowmah, or stature, of this ark was specifically “thirty cubits” in height (Gen. 6:15). Keep all of that in mind. This is one puzzle piece that we’ll put aside for a moment until we find another one that can connect right into it.

The next time qowmah shows up is in Exodus 25 during the construction of another significant item—the Ark of the Covenant. We mentioned this other Ark in the last chapter; how it was a wooden chest covered in gold, representing both the divinity and humanity of Christ. This chest was filled with the righteous law of God and other holy items. Already you can see a congruence between the Ark of the Covenant and the ark of Noah, which was a wooden structure containing a righteous man inside of it. But we’ll put those two puzzle pieces aside and continue to look for more. 

If you keep searching through the box of the Bible, one of the later times the qowmah piece shows up is in the building of yet another significant structure—the temple of Solomon. The temple was of course a physical building that hosted the presence of God in its innermost room; a room that lay beyond two other places called the outer court and inner room. Interestingly, Solomon’s temple was specifically designed to be “thirty cubits in stature,” just like Noah’s ark (1 Kgs. 6:2). So already there’s a pattern and picture beginning to emerge as we put all these individual Scriptures next to each other. 

Now first and foremost, these images connect back to the person and stature of Christ. However, they also point to us. Humanity is the wooden ark of Noah, tossed in the floods of own destruction but preserved through the righteousness of Christ within. We’re also like the wooden Ark of the Covenant, made to hold the true law of the Spirit within the tablet of our hearts (Rom. 8:2). Furthermore, we are the true temple of God (1 Cor. 3:17). Like the temple and its three main areas (the outer, inner, and innermost rooms), we too are made up of three main regions (body, soul, and spirit). Moreover, in the deepest place within us is the righteous presence of God. Thus, these are all images of our identity as God’s greatest creation.

But the key point in all of this is that the height of our qowmah is “thirty cubits.” In other words, the true stature of humanity is the very stature of God, which is what the number thirty represents. Three is a divine number — the number of the Trinity. Thirty just puts an added emphasis to the number three. Thirty is also the age when Joseph, David, and Jesus were all released into their full calling. Thus, it is also a number of maturation and fullness. At thirty years old, God declared His love over His Son, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matt. 3:17). This is similar to the words of the Song, where Jesus speaks over His mature Bride and declares His pleasure over all her “charms” and “stature.” He is saying to her, “This is My beloved church, in whom I am well-pleased!”

When we stand up into our full stature we look just like our precious Lord. Or — since the number thirty also points to the entire Godhead — we could also say that we look like the entire Trinity who lives together in grace and harmony. This means that our full mature posture is one of unity, love, and honor; all of which rises together into a great dance of faithfulness and intimacy. Even in the wooden frailness of our humanity, we can engage in this eternal dance because of the gift of righteousness inside of us…

The preceding was an excerpt from The Song of the Ages Vol. III: Eden’s Return.