"He feedeth [his flock] among the lilies." Although the matter of work is touched here, the emphasis is not on the way the Lord deals with the flock, but on the relationship between the Lord and the lilies. The lilies are those who have a pure conscience. They are planted by the Lord Himself, and they are the Lord's own work. (In the heading to Psalm 45, there are the words, "upon Shoshannim," which mean "set to the lilies.") The Lord is feeding the flock among a group of people. He implies that we are the lilies and that He is feeding us. As long as we have the Lord, we are satisfied. Here the maiden pays attention to what He is to her. However, her words do not answer the Lord's question, and as such, do not satisfy the Lord.

Verse 17 says, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether." ("Roe" is "gazelle" in Darby's New Translation and in the margin of the American Standard Version, but the word is "roe" in the King James Version and the text of the American Standard Version. All three versions, have "a young hart." "The mountains of Bether" means the mountain of separation.)

By saying this, she recognizes the existence of the shadows. In a disguised way, she also admits that she cannot satisfy the Lord's heart. She knows that she has not been fully joined to the Lord, and she knows the importance of the calling of the cross, the demand of ascension, and the expression of resurrection. But she is also aware of her own insufficiencies in these matters. Hence, she asks the Lord to wait until the shadows flee away. She is looking for the day to break. She expects that the day will break and the shadows will flee away. She pleads for the return of the beloved. The word "turn," on the one hand, shows her inability to hear the beloved's call and to rise up to follow him, and on the other hand, it shows her desire for the beloved's presence. When we combine the two points, we see that she wants her beloved to be with her. Yet she wants him to be with her on her own terms—within the wall. She is still introspective with her own feelings. She only wants to enjoy his presence in her own feeling; she does not have his mountain-leaping, hill-skipping presence. In other words, she is seeking after pleasure in her feeling, and she is reluctant to participate in any activity in resurrection. Putting it in still another way, she has not yet learned the lesson, and she cannot follow the Lord everywhere and under any circumstances with just faith.

But she receives a great revelation: she is not together with the Lord in every place. Formerly, she secured the Lord's presence within herself and in her own feelings; that was the only place she could find His presence. She thought that this experience of His presence was the highest and the only one, and that there was no other kind of presence. But she has not learned to be with the Lord in her daily duties, her family, and the world in a mountain-leaping, hill-skipping way. She did not know that there could be such an experience, but after this revelation she knows. In the past she only had a certain kind of presence, the presence that could be found within herself; she had not acquired any other kind of presence. She did not have the strength to acquire the omnipresent presence. She did not learn the lesson of treasuring this kind of all-pervading presence. Not only was she too weak to acquire it, but she was too weak to want it. She knew that she could not go, and she did not ask to go. She did not see the suffering of Bether. Hence, she cooly asked the Lord to turn quickly. She knew that she could not go to the place where the Lord was. But she did not know the loss of not going with the Lord. She thought that she could be satisfied with a presence within the wall. She did not realize that there would be a loss by not going with the Lord. Therefore, she asked the Lord to turn as fast as "a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether." She did not ask the Lord to give her the strength to bring her out of the mountains of Bether (the hindrance of separation). In her mind, the mountains of Bether could remain.