there are always this judicial contrast between love and death, forgiveness and judgement, (and/or gandhi and hitler’s whereabouts); quoting Leithart in his article:
The verse that everyone recognizes as the Song’s theme (8:6) gives the poem a cosmic scope. Love’s strength is comparable to relentless forces of decay and destruction—death (Hebrew, mot) and Sheol. Love is no ordinary fire, but a flash from the very “flame of Yah.” “Mot” is the name of a Canaanite deity, so the conflict of Love and Death is a war of gods.
Most modern construct has no place for “war of the gods”, but we do have something similar; a war of ideology. Yet, in the midst of all speculations about what happens after death, we do know that we are made of dust, and to dust shall we return (ecc3.20). In other parts of scripture, “Sheol” is the designated place where all who died will enter; a “grave”, a “death” so to say, regardless of who you are, what you do in life; a place of weakness and inexistence (isa14.10) where there is nothing to be done (Psa6.5).
Is this surprisingly agnostic?
