Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of Bether.
All Commentaries on Song of Songs 2:17 Go To Song of Songs 2
Nilus of Sinai
AD 430
He pastures his flocks among the lilies, therefore, although he does so only until the coming day emerges and the shadows begin to move on. Since the majority of people think that the events which are passing and not stable are fixed and will remain, because their faculty of discernment is obscured by the darkness of ignorance, they have need of the daylight in order to see that the shadows of the things of this world dissipate and have no permanence. For all present realities are shadows, drawing their origin from the good things of the heavens yet subsisting like shadows, only resembling the truth of the things there above. But once the night has passed and the dawn has arisen, the nature of things from on high is clearly seen, as if in sunlight. Then people realize: “Our life on the earth is a shadow.” Then they say, “My days, as the shadow, are in decline,” indicating how feeble and quick to vanish is temporal success. The one who says, “If there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is only one God the Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things come and through whom we exist,” can also say, “My beloved is mine, and I am his,” for the meaning is identical in each text. For anyone who renounces both gods and lords lays claim to the one God and Lord, from whom he exists and to whom he returns. “For,” it says, “for us there is one God from whom all things come and for whom we exist,” thus declaring clearly that “he is mine, and I am his.” …
Regarding the expression “the shadows move on,” it is necessary to consider … that it refers to the abrogation of the works of the law. That is the shadow frequently cited by Paul as “the law having the shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the realities,” and again “These are only a shadow of the things to come, but the substance is of Christ,” and again, “They provide a copy and a shadow of the heavenly realities,” meaning the priests that functioned according to the law. Thus it is indicated for certain that, the shadow of the law having moved on, the truth of grace now governs, established upon the rock against which “the gates of hell shall never prevail.” …
It should also be remarked that it is everywhere necessary for the Word to rest upon the mountains, or at least upon the hills. And if the Word is ever found in the valleys or chasms, he is found there by reason of his great condescension and with the intention to restore those who are down there to the higher realities, on account of his love for humankind.
