Commentaire sur Le Cantique des Cantiques 2:8: Rachi, Rambam, Ibn Ezra et plus

The voice of my beloved. The poet returns to the earlier topics, like a person who was brief with his words and later says, “I did not tell you the beginning of these events.” He started by saying, “The king has brought me into his chambers,”¹⁵Above 1:4. but did not tell how He had remembered them in Egypt with an expression of affection. And now he returns and says, “this attraction that I told you about, that my Beloved drew me and I ran after Him, happened as follows: I had despaired any redemption until the completion of the four hundred years that were [fore]told [in the Covenant] Between the Parts,”¹⁶See Bereishis 15:13. and—

Hark! My beloved!: The words of the shekhinah. This was on the twentieth of Iyyar when the cloud arose from the tabernacle of the covenant.⁷³See Numbers 10:11: “In the second year, on the twentieth day of the second month, the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle of the Covenant and the Israelites set out on their journeys from the wilderness of Sinai.”

The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes. Before the end of the appointed time, as one skipping over the mountains and jumping over the hills.¹⁷God, as it were, skipped and jumped over the barriers of time and redeemed the Bnei Yisroel one hundred and ninety years before completion of the prophecy of the four hundred years of bondage.