Song of Solomon 2 · a question people ask
"I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem … that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires" (2:7). What is this charge saying?
The verse says who is charged, what they are charged by, and what the charge is. The daughters of Jerusalem are spoken to, and the Hebrew you is plural. I adjure you is shava, the Hebrew word for swearing an oath, and the charge is made "by the roes, or by the hinds of the field" (2:7). The verse doesn't name God, and it doesn't say why the roes and the hinds are named. Stir up and awaken are two forms of one Hebrew verb, ur, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "rouse oneself, awake" (tap awaken). Until it so desires is chafets, which the Song has only in this charge (tap desires). The charge comes three times, in almost the same words (2:7, 3:5, 8:4), and each time just after words of holding: "His right hand embraces me" (2:6), "I held him, and would not let him go" (3:4), and "His right hand would embrace me" (8:3). The Song doesn't explain the charge beyond its words, and these notes don't either. They don't apply it to anyone's relationships or choices today, and they don't promise anything from it. How Christians read the Song as a whole is chapter 1's honest question, and these notes don't argue it again.
The verses
“His left hand is under my head. His right hand embraces me. I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, or by the hinds of the field, that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires.”
“I had scarcely passed from them, when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, into the room of her who conceived me. I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, or by the hinds of the field, that you not stir up nor awaken love, until it so desires.”
“His left hand would be under my head. His right hand would embrace me. I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up, nor awaken love, until it so desires.”