What Does Song of Solomon 2:7 Mean in the King James?
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.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew can make love itself the one who desires, letting its own readiness set the moment it wakes.
THE MEANING
The verse holds love’s awakening as something with its own timing. The Hebrew repeats one root for “stir up” and “awaken,” then follows with a feminine verb that can agree with “love”: the desire belongs to love itself. Affection is not something another person can summon by insistence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that pressing harder can make love ready before it is.
THE ROOT
תָּעִירוּ
taʿiru
GROWS FROM
ע־ו־ר
to rouse or awaken
“stir up / awake” in this verse is taʿiru. Both verbs grow from the same three-consonant root, so the verse repeats one action rather than naming two separate motions. What English renders as two commands is a doubled image of rousing love.
ALSO GROWS
taʿiru: you awaken or rouse
תָּעִירוּ
This is the first form of the repeated root, naming the act the verse restrains.
teʿoreru: you stir up or awaken
תְּעוֹרְרוּ
The second form intensifies the same root, pressing the image of waking further.
תֶּחְפָּץ
teḥpāṣ
GROWS FROM
ח־פ־ץ
to desire, delight in, or take pleasure in
“please” in this verse is teḥpāṣ. The verb belongs to a root of desire and delight. With “love” just before it, the grammar can be heard as waiting until love itself desires: readiness resides within the love, rather than being imposed on it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāfēṣ: to desire or take pleasure in
חָפֵץ
This verbal form shares the root of the verse’s “please,” showing that its endpoint is desire or delight.
ḥēfeṣ: delight, desire, or what is desired
חֵפֶץ
This noun makes visible the root’s connection between wanting and the thing that draws desire.
אַהֲבָה
ahavah
GROWS FROM
א־ה־ב
to love
The Hebrew noun for love is feminine, and the following verb “desires” can agree with it. That lets love be more than the object being awakened: love itself can be the one whose desire marks the moment.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāhav: to love
אָהַב
The verb is the root action carried by the noun ahavah in this verse.
ʾohēv: one who loves
אֹהֵב
This form shows the same root describing the one who loves, while the verse personifies love as having its own desire.
THE PATTERN
Living desire and growth ripen in their own season; they cannot be made ready by being forced awake.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.THE THREAD
I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.The same ע־ו־ר root appears in “my heart waketh.” Here the heart is already awake within sleep, revealing the inward readiness that Song of Solomon 2:7 refuses to force from outside.
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