Catch for Us the Foxes!

Catch for us the Foxes; It’s The Little Things!

Recently my daughter posted her “Snow Day Activity” on Facebook and it was the scripture in Song of Solomon 2:15. Today I was reading D.L. Moody’s book “The Overcoming Life” (highly recommended) and what did he write about? Song of Solomon 2:15. So I figured that the “Thought of the Day” should be about what that scripture represents to me. Some would disagree theologically but D.L. Moody and I are right in sync so Here we go!

Song of Solomon 2:14-16

¹⁴ “O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
In the secret place of the steep pathway,
Let me see your form,
Let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet,
And your form is lovely.”

¹⁵ “Catch the foxes for us,
The little foxes that are ruining the vineyards,
While our vineyards are in blossom.”

¹⁶ “My beloved is mine, and I am his;
He pastures his flock among the lilies.”

To get the full weight of this you need to look at the verses before and after verse 15. Here the Shulamite is expressing her feelings romantically while looking out a window at the wonders of spring, and wham, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that are ruining our vineyards while our vineyards are in blossom” then boom, right back to the romantic stuff.

So what is the significance of this? Well let’s start with a bit of history. According to Easton’s Bible Dictionary there is only one fox indigenous to Israel; “Vulpes thaleb, or the Syrian fox. It burrows, is silent and solitary in its habits, is destructive to vineyards, being a plunderer of ripe grapes.” However, the comment in Song of Solomon 2:15 mentions the “little foxes”. The Hebrew word here is qatan or “little” but one meaning is also “young”. The implication is that the foxes are not full grown. Adult foxes are large enough to reach the grapes on the vine but the younger foxes cannot reach the grapes so, you’ve probably guessed it, they have to pull down the vine to get to the grapes.

There are so many times when all of the sudden, in our relationship with God or with others, we realize something is wrong, there is enmity, strife and unhappiness. What happened? We think about things and we are not drunkards, adulterers, thieves, we have never done anything really bad but there is this enmity. The fact is that it is usually never a monumental event or action that causes this sudden onset of strife. Nearly always it is a little series of things of which we may not have even thought significant enough to take note. But there it is, a messed up relationship.

It is the little things that tear down relationships. The things that may seem simply insignificant to us and are maybe not that big of a deal to someone else build up to tear down the vine. Whether it is our relationship with God or our relationship with our spouse, family or friends, it is the little things that tear down the bridge of love called relationship and it is always driven by selfishness. It could be any of the deeds of the flesh, bad habits, neglect. Whatever the cause it accumulates to the degree that it damages or destroys relationships!

Let’s look at a major even in history. At around 02:20am on April 15th 1912 the luxury liner Titanic slipped beneath the waters of the north Atlantic to her final watery grave. What happened to cause this unsinkable luxury liner to sink? The Titanic hit an iceberg which breached 5 continuous segments of her bulkhead causing water to spill over the remaining bulkheads until she ultimately went down. But what was the cause? Analysis of the rivets used to fasten the bulkheads found excessive slag (impurities) which caused the rivets to fail in succession allowing the bulkheads to separate and fill with water.

The rivets that hold our relationships together are the very things that can contain impurities which may cause the bulkhead of relationships to fail. We must allow God to replace those rivets with rivets that do not have the slag of carnality which will cause them to fail. There are a couple of simple things we can do to insure that our rivets are Gods and not ours.

First, we must focus on God’s will for our lives for the things that we believe we need. Matthew 6:33 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Second, we must consider others as more important than ourselves. Phillipians 2:3 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;”

If we do these two simple things the little foxes haven’t got a chance!