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Dating can feel like a strange mix of hope and anxiety that no one fully warns you about. You want to love well and choose wisely, and sometimes those two things pull in different directions. Scripture doesn't map out a dating formula β but it does show you what love is supposed to look like before it reaches the altar.
Get These Verses Daily β FreeβI charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.β
The Song's repeated refrain is a warning: desire is real and good, but awakening love prematurely carries its own cost.
βKeep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.β
Guarding the heart isn't about emotional shutdown β it's about tending the place from which your whole life flows, especially in seasons of vulnerability.
βAnd now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requirest: for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.β
Boaz acknowledges Ruth's character before anything else β the foundation he noticed wasn't her looks but her *αΈ₯ayil*, her strength of character.
βCharity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.β
Paul's description of love is a diagnostic: does what you feel right now look more like this, or more like infatuation that needs the other person to behave a certain way?
βDelight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.β
The promise is not that God gives you whoever you want β it is that when you are rooted in him, your desires themselves begin to align with what is actually good for you.
The Bible doesn't have a word for dating. That's worth sitting with. The concept as we practice it β two people spending time together to discern whether to commit β is largely modern and Western. But Scripture gives you something more useful than a formula: it gives you a portrait of what godly desire, honorable pursuit, and patient trust actually look like in practice.
Song of Solomon β *Shir HaShirim*, the "Song of Songs," the greatest of songs β is the most obvious place to start. It's frank about desire. It celebrates physical attraction without shame. But it also returns again and again to a refrain: "I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem... that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please." Twice, then three times, this chorus appears. The Song itself is warning against rushing. Desire is real and good; the timing of it matters.
You don't have to pretend you have no desires during this season. But the question Scripture presses is: are you seeking someone to serve, or someone to consume? The difference between those two orientations shapes everything about how you date.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Ruth 3 is not a dating manual, but it might be the closest thing the Hebrew Bible offers to courtship wisdom. Ruth approaches Boaz at night on the threshing floor and asks him to spread his garment over her β the Hebrew *kΔnΔp*, "wing" or "corner of a garment," is a marriage proposal idiom, the same word Boaz used in 2:12 when he blessed her for coming under the LORD's wings. She is echoing his own blessing back to him as a request.
What's remarkable is Boaz's response. He doesn't act immediately on desire. He says there is a closer kinsman-redeemer who has first right, and he will follow the proper channel. He protects her reputation that night, sends her home before dawn so no one sees her, and handles the legal process the next morning. The man who eventually marries Ruth is one who, given an open door, chose restraint and order rather than urgency. That pattern is older than the modern concept of courtship by three thousand years.
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