Is This Love- Bob Marley
An analyses.
The song works with a deep spiritual tone, balancing the intricacies of love in its divine and human elements.
I wanna love you and treat you right;
I wanna love you every day and every night:
We’ll be together with a roof right over our heads;
We’ll share the shelter of my single bed;
We’ll share the same room, yeah-for Jah provide the bread.
The above contains lines from the first stanza.
It starts with the entreaties of Love to a beloved carrying a promise to be loving and just- ‘love you and treat you right’. It follows with a statement of commitment promising to always ‘love everyday and every night’. The emphasis on ‘every’ as repeated twice in the line reinforces the commitment. The lines that follow further postulate the creation story of a man and a woman as created by God to live together as one. ‘Share the shelter of my single bed’ as stated strengthens the commitment in the human world where they will live together, copulate and grow together sharing the same room.
The divine aspect is instilled with the mention of Jah, a Rastafarian word which is the poetical and Biblical name of God, from a shortened form of Jahweh or Jehovah found in Psalms 68:4. This is fundamental and deep because it’s uncommon in everyday love song to find such a spiritual balance where a lover commits the upkeep of the family into the hands of the Almighty. Also symbolic is the use of bread which becomes the metaphor for food.
Is this love — is this love — is this love -
Is this love that I’m feelin’?
Is this love — is this love — is this love -
Is this love that I’m feelin’?
I wanna know — wanna know — wanna know now!
I got to know — got to know — got to know now!
To make it much more serious and position the idea of Love as something divine, something of great commitment, the singer breaks into a rhetorical question:
‘Is this love — is this love — is this love -
Is this love that I’m feelin’?
I wanna know — wanna know — wanna know now!
I got to know — got to know — got to know now!
Interestingly, he isn’t even sure and seems to be so puzzled that he ‘wants to know now!’
The song is deeply spiritual and rooted in the culture of Rastafarianism as well as the Bible.