Song of Solomon 8:7
Many waters can't quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned. Friends
WEB
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
KJV
What Song of Solomon 8:7 means
Love cannot be put out by the strongest forces in the universe and cannot be bought by the strongest force in society, so the man who shows up with his whole fortune to purchase it ends up thoroughly ridiculed.
This is the close of the last great speech in the Song, and many readers hear in it the thesis of the whole book. The woman has just asked to be set as a seal on her lover's heart, because love is strong as death and jealousy as cruel as the grave, burning with flashes of fire. Verse 7 finishes her argument. The flame is lit, the waters come to drown it, and they fail. Then the same love turns out to be unavailable at any price.
The Song comes from a world where marriage was largely a contract between households, settled with bride-price and dowry. The closing sneer at the man who arrives with his whole estate in hand lands on a practice the first audience knew by heart. The waters carry their own freight. Many waters and rivers were the old language of the deep, the flood, the chaos that unmakes the world. Love is set in that company and stays lit.
The verse just before ends with shalhevetyah, a word for fire with the short form of God's name attached to it. Some translators read the flame of the Lord and hear the only mention of God in the entire Song. Others take the ending as a Hebrew intensifier and render a raging flame. Translations still split there, and God stays half hidden inside a word for fire. The scorn at the end is blunt: Hebrew doubles the verb for despise, so the buyer is despised with despising. Everyone laughs.
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