Komentaryo sa Awit ng mga Awit 8:14: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi & Ezra ben Solomon

“Hurry, my beloved” [8:14]. Make me fly from the exile, my friend, Holy One. “Swift as a gazelle” [8:14]. This means that Israel is compared to a stag. A stag, even if it runs to the ends of the earth, it always comes back to the first city from which it started. We find a story about a king called Dekeltinus who hunted several stags and covered their horns with gold and sent them to distant lands that are called Africa. After thirteen years, the stags came back to the first city where the king had hunted them and he recognized them because of their gilded horns. Similarly, Israel is compared to the stags, who even now are dispersed in the exile, from one end of the world to the other. When the Messiah will come, we will again return to the first place, to Jerusalem, as the verse says, “I will go and return to my first place.”³⁰This “verse” is a conflation of Hosea 2:9 and 5:15. This means that I will go and will again return to my first city, Jerusalem. This should be soon, in our days, and let us say amen.

Flee my beloved. From this exile, and redeem us from among them.

By means of the holy spirit he looked forward and prophesied concerning the seventh millennium, the day that is entirely Sabbath and rest, for life eternal. Souls will be bound up in the bond of life and they will be a throne for the Lord. Then the river which is the life and existence of the world, flowing forth from the Eden of Wisdom, will cease its flow. This is the meaning of Flee, my beloved: pointing to the rising of the Glory, its ascent into the upper light.

And be like a gazelle. To hasten the redemption, and to cause Your Divine Presence to rest—Upon the mountains of spices. This is Mount Moriyah and the Beis Hamikdosh, may it be rebuilt speedily and in our days, Amen.