Chapter 7 develops a high theology of husband and wife. Together they represent the fullness of God’s dual characteristics, heaven and earth, and even the wider human family. Their love is therefore never merely private.
The chapter’s most distinctive move is representative love. A spouse is to be loved as representing all men or all women, which turns marriage into a disciplined concentration of universal love rather than a narrowing of it.
It also portrays God as delighting in the laughter, conversation, fragrance, and reciprocity of a true couple. In that sense, the Kingdom of Heaven is not only future hope but something tasted in the household now.