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circumspection if he is to take them; so he who would not lose Jesus Christ and His Spirit, which is easily grieved and withdrawn, must be tender of conscience and watchful (Ezekiel 16:43). In margin, title of Psalms 22:1-31, Jesus Christ is called the 'hind of the morning,' hunted to death by the dogs, and rising again at dawn (cf. Song of Solomon 2:8-9, where He is represented as bounding on the hills). (Psalms 18:33). Here He is resting, but with a repose easily broken (Zephaniah 3:17). 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 (Song of Solomon 3:5; Song of Solomon 8:4), 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 (Proverbs 5:19) of the hind and roe is included in this image of Jesus Christ.
CANTICLE II - Song of Solomon 2:8-17 ; Song of Solomon 3:1-5 - JOHN THE BAPTIST'S MINISTRY