Verse 6 says, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense."
Song of Songs 3:6-11 shows us the maiden's union with the Lord. Verses 1 through 5 of chapter four show us the result of the union—the Lord's satisfaction. The Lord now considers her beauty. In the first section (1:2—2:7), we mainly see the maiden praising the King. The King's praise for the maiden is very simple. In the first section, the maiden speaks much concerning herself. Before a person has experienced anything deep in the Lord, and before he is thoroughly dealt with by the Lord, he likes to speak to others about his own spiritual experience, his own spiritual condition, his progress, and what he has acquired. At the same time, he likes to talk about his fellowship with the Lord, the Lord's love, His promises, and His answer to prayers. He loves to bring up matters between himself and the Lord. He does not necessarily have the experience of the third heaven, but whatever he has, he cannot wait fourteen years before speaking about it. He has not been dealt with by the Lord. His speech exposes his superficiality. After he has passed through the wilderness, he speaks less and less. As a result, a third party speaks in 3:6-11, and the King speaks in 4:1-5.
She has developed enough capacity to not speak about her experience and her relationship with the King. Not only can she remain silent, but she can listen as well. Actually, only those who remain silent can listen. She has passed through the cross, and by the Holy Spirit she knows how to control herself and her feelings. This is why she can remain silent. At the same time, the same work of the cross and the same restraint by the Holy Spirit enables her to hear the Lord's praise without being excited or proud. In fact, this praise from the Lord invokes in her a sense of feebleness and a realization of the necessity of a deeper work of the cross. How different this is from her former condition! After the narration by the third party, she does not bring up experiences that the third party failed to mention. After the King's praise, she does not deliberately try to be humble or to say something to show off her goodness. She only makes a short statement calmly.
"Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense." From this short word, we see that she realizes her present condition and her future needs. She says, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away." She realizes that she has not reached perfection and that her day has not yet broken; she feels that she is still living in the shadows. She has not forgotten her condition in spite of the praises she has received. Is not her oneness with the Lord very real? Is not her life a beautiful one? The evaluation of the Holy Spirit and the praises of Christ show that she has reached a high attainment before God. There is no barrier between her and the Lord, and the Lord has not found any imperfection in her. But this is on the Lord's side. Every experienced believer realizes that, although a mature and perfected believer can be without a shadow before the Lord and fully bask in the Lord's morning light, it is still possible that he may have shadows in himself and that the morning has not dawned. The more a person is in the light, the more he realizes the meaning of the shadows. The more perfect a person becomes, the more imperfection he sees. The more he walks in God's light, the more he feels the need for the cleansing of all his sins by the blood of Jesus His Son. Although the maiden has received praise from the Lord, she cannot help but feel that her spiritual dawn has not arrived yet. Shadows are still present, and there does not seem to be much difference between the present and the former days when she wandered in the wilderness.
What should she do now? Before the day breaks and the shadows flee away, she has to go to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense. She will not leave these places until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
The full experience of daybreak and the fleeing away of the shadows must wait until the coming of the Lord. Her only salvation is to go to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense. Although the Lord praises her, and although the Holy Spirit recognizes her total union with the Lord, she still feels her own weakness, corruption, wickedness, and uselessness. Before perfection arrives, we must go on in the way of the cross, and we must apply the Lord's life in the Spirit. When the maiden left the wilderness, she merely perfumed herself with myrrh. Now she has to go to the mountain of myrrh. Formerly, she perfumed herself with frankincense. Now she is going to the hill of frankincense. If the perfuming of the myrrh and the frankincense will bring us into a fuller union with the Lord and will make us more beautiful in the Lord's eyes, we will from this time on go to the mountain of myrrh and dwell in the hill of frankincense. If the suffering and death of the cross will deliver us from a life in the wilderness, we will from this time on seek for a deeper union with the cross. We are willing to suffer greater pains and deeper deaths until the dawn rises upon us. If by living by the Lord's life, our footsteps can be brought upward step by step, we will fully deny our own life and fully live by the Lord's life, until He no longer finds a trace of the old creation in us.
If we compare our former experience with the experience we are about to go through, we will find that the myrrh and frankincense that we experienced before were but drops of perfuming spices. From now on, the myrrh and frankincense will be as great as a mountain and a hill. From now on, our transcendency, strength, far-reaching insight, intimacy with God, and detachment from the world (mountain and hill signifying transcendency) must all come through the Lord's death and resurrection.