If only you were to me like a brother, who was nursed at my mother's breasts! Then, if I found you outside, I would kiss you, and no one would despise me. (Song of Songs 8:1)

If only it was socially acceptable to kiss you, love you, be in relationship with you.

This is not the impediment it once was for our varied human relationships.

Modernity, mobility, and different notions of morality have in many places loosened the strictures of social sanction.

But somehow some loves continue to prompt suspicion and worse.

The Hebrew verb nashaq, depending on context, means to touch gently, to come together, to kiss (as above) or to be armed, as in "They were armed with bows, using both the right hand and the left to sling stones and to shoot arrows from the bow..." (1Chronicles 12:2)

For some lovers in some places they may need to be well-armed before they should kiss.

And in many places a public display of affection for God is despised. How is it that love should be so threatening?