Song of Solomon 2:7

I 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.

I charge you ... stir not up ... my love. Not an oath "by the roes," but a solemn charge to act as cautiously as the hunter would with the wild roes, which are proverbially timorous. He must advance with breathless circumspection if he is to take them; so he who would not lose Jesus Christ and His Spirit, which is easily grieved and withdrawn, must be tender of conscience and watchful (). In margin, title of Psalms 22:1, Jesus Christ is called the 'hind of the morning,' hunted to death by the dogs, and rising again at dawn (cf. Song of Solomon 2:8, where He is represented as bounding on the hills). (). Here He is resting, but with a repose easily broken (). It is thought a gross rudeness in the East to awaken one sleeping, especially a person of rank.

My love - in Hebrew, feminine for masculine, the abstract for concrete, Jesus Christ being the embodiment of love itself (; ), where, as here, the context requires it to be applied to Him, not her. She, too, is "love" (cf. 7:6), because His love calls forth her love. Presumption in the convert is as grieving to the Spirit as despair. The lovingness and pleasantness () of the hind and roe is included in this image of Jesus Christ.

CANTICLE II - Song of Solomon 2:8 ; Song of Solomon 3:1 - JOHN THE BAPTIST'S MINISTRY