“Surpassing the love of women”
I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother. You were delightful to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women. (2 Samuel 1:26 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A line modern readers may hear as a romantic or sexual confession.
The cultural key
David and Jonathan had entered a formal covenant, sworn and sealed (1 Samuel 18:3; 20:16-17), of a kind that bound them and their houses in loyalty. In the ancient Near East, 'love' (ahavah) is frequently the vocabulary of covenant and treaty, meaning steadfast allegiance rather than romance, and most scholars read this line as praise of a brotherhood-loyalty deeper than the ordinary bonds of clan and marriage. Honesty requires noting that some modern readers hear a romantic or sexual claim here; the treaty-language setting is why most scholars read it as sworn covenant friendship rather than through modern categories, though the elegy itself leaves the bond unnamed and readers weigh it differently.
Recovered meaning
David mourns a covenant brother whose sworn loyalty outstripped even the deepest natural ties. The words draw on the language of ancient covenant devotion, and on the majority scholarly reading are an elegy for a friendship bound by oath.