Keel interprets the “seal” on the heart of the lover as the woman herself (“set me as a seal”) and connects this to ANE beliefs about death-warding and life-giving amulets. The bride is the one who stands between death and chaos and her lover.
That’s a stretch, but he provides some biblical support: “Whether it is the cunning Michal (1 Sam. 19:9-17); the determined Abigail, who bets everything on one card (1 Samuel 25); the wise woman of Maacah, who saves her city (2 Sam. 20:14-22); or the heroic Rizpah, who day and night keeps the vultures and the hyenas away from the bodies of her sons until they can be buried (2 Sam 21:8-14) – again and again it is women whose love stands between death and their husbands, their sons, their city, and their people (cf. Esther).” Men fight death too, but often attempt “to defeat the weapons of death with the weapons of death.”
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