“Set me as a seal over your heart”
Set me as a seal over your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unrelenting as Sheol. (Song of Songs 8:6 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A vague poetic wish to be close, using the word 'seal'.
The cultural key
A seal in the ancient world was intensely personal: a signet ring or a small engraved cylinder, worn on a cord around the neck against the chest or bound on the arm, and pressed into clay to sign documents and mark property. It was your legal identity and signature, the one object you never let out of your possession. So the bride's plea, 'set me as a seal over your heart, as a seal upon your arm,' asks to be made her lover's most personal, inseparable possession, worn always against his heart and on the arm that acts, carried as close and as permanently as a man carried his own identity. The lines that follow explain the intensity: such love is 'as strong as death,' as fierce and unyielding as the grave that never loosens its grip. Hearing 'seal' only as a stamp, the modern reader misses that she is asking to be his very identity, held for life.
Recovered meaning
A 'seal' was one's signet, worn always on the chest or arm as one's identity and never surrendered; she asks to be exactly that to her lover, his inseparable, defining possession. The plea is for a love as permanent and unyielding as death itself.