Some of the most epic love stories, poems and letters ever written about love, that are often over looked and underrated, are ironically not exclusive to Hollywood movies but are also found in the Holy Bible. As both a poet and hopeless romantic, I have received much personal enjoyment from Hollywood romantic movies like most people. In fact, a few of my Hollywood favorites in my personal movie library include, Love Jones, starring Lorenz Tate and Nia Long, The Notebook, starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, and the Jane Austen classic, Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen.
However, many of my favorite love stories, and most of my creative inspiration as a writer, have come from reading the many beautiful and profoundly poetic messages and stories of love found throughout the Holy Bible as well. Although there are several love stories in the bible that are more popular and equally worthy of reading like, Samson and Delilah, Jacob and Rachel, David and Bathsheba and, the most notable of all, Ruth and Boaz. My favorite among them that's rarely, if ever, mentioned as a biblical love story is The Book of Esther. It's a short story in the old testament about a Jewish girl, Hadassah, who later in the story becomes Queen Esther after winning the heart of King Xerxes, who ruled the throne in Susa, Persia.
After falling deeply in love with King Xerxes and becoming his Queen she saves her native Jewish nation from their arch enemy by courageously revealing to the King his secret plot to destroy her people, which resulted in his own death. After reading the bible version of Esther and watching the movie version, One Night with the King, both several times, I found this to be a profoundly heart warming story full of epic love and romance.
Contrary to popular belief, the bible is also full of relationships where couples express their very romantic and passionate feelings for one another through steamy love letters and erotic poems. One of my favorites to read, for example, are the poems in Song of Solomon (also recorded in some bible translations as Song of Songs). This book of the bible follows the relationship between a man and woman who are deeply in love and write poems to each other throughout their courtship that leads to marriage.
In closing, I share with you one of the eloquently written love poems from the woman in Song of Solomon about her persistent and determined search for her soul mate that goes as follows:
"Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him but found him not.
I will rise now and go about the city in the streets,
and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loves;
I sought him but I found him not.
The watchmen that go about the city found me;
I asked them, Have you seen him whom my soul loves?
Scarcely had I passed by them, when I found him
who my soul loves;
I held him, and would not let him go
until I had brought him into my mother's house
and into the chambers of her that bore me.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or by the young roes of the field,
that you stir not up nor awake my love till it please."
~Song of Solomon Chapter 3:1-5
Holy Bible, Lamsa Aramaic Translation
Now that's epic! Until next time...I surround you in LOVE & Light!
