Until it pleases
“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field, that ye awaken not, nor stir up love, until it please.”
— Song of Songs 2:7הִשְׁבַּעְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלִַם, בִּצְבָאוֹת, אוֹ, בְּאַיְלוֹת הַשָּׂדֶה: אִם-תָּעִירוּ וְאִם-תְּעוֹרְרוּ אֶת-הָאַהֲבָה, עַד שֶׁתֶּחְפָּץ.
(שיר השירים ב’, ז)איך באַשװער אײַך, טעכטער פֿון ירושלים,
בײַ די הירשן אָדער בײַ די הינדן פֿון פֿעלד,
אױב איר װעט װעקן
און אױב איר װעט אױפֿװעקן די ליבשאַפֿט,
ביז זי װעט באַגערן.
— Song of Songs 2:7, (In the sacred cadence of Yehoash’s Yiddish translation…)
We are living in a time of dangerous awakenings and fragile hopes. Again and again, we return to this verse from the Song of Songs, a plea wrapped in tenderness and restraint, whispered through centuries and liturgies: do not awaken love until it pleases. Or rather — as the original Hebrew allows us to hear — until He pleases. Until the Beloved, or God, desires. In a world engineered to accelerate reaction, this old wisdom now feels strangely radical.
This verse becomes not only poetic but prophetic — a refrain of spiritual timing in an age of technological immediacy. In the biblical text, it is repeated insistently, almost liturgically. The voice pleads not with warriors or kings, but with the daughters of Jerusalem — the quiet ones, the watchers, those who carry future and memory. Love, the verse insists, cannot be commanded. It must rise of its own accord.
The Hebrew צְבָאוֹת/tzva’ot, often translated “gazelles,” is also the word for “hosts,” or “armies.” A dual meaning emerges — both natural and martial. Love, like a gazelle, is graceful and elusive; like an army, it can become overwhelming if awakened prematurely. The text stands against manipulation — emotional, spiritual, political. It calls us to restraint, reverence, and readiness.
In the Eastern Christian tradition, to wait does not mean to remain passive. It is to watch with the heart. The Hesychast saints of Byzantium and Russia did not flee the world, but listened to it in silence. In the writings of St. Isaac the Syrian and the Philokalia (1), love is not forced, but received in stillness. Grace does not respond to demands. It comes when the soul is ready.
Moreover, restraint is not repression. It is ascesis — a sacred vigilance, the art of watching the heart until it is ready to receive. In the monastic literature of the desert fathers and in the luminous Hesychast theology of the East, one hears echoes of this verse. The soul must not storm the heavens. It must be attentive, sober. It must wait for the coming of grace, not manufacture it.
St. Isaac the Syrian writes: “Do not desire to swim in the sea before you have learned to walk upon the shore.” This is the same spiritual rhythm: love cannot be awakened by the will. It comes, gently, through purification and presence. The fundamentals of Hassidut include the same roots, curiously unshared but developed in common East-European and lands of ancient Jewish and Christened backgrounds.
This echoes the liturgical rhythm of Orthodoxy itself. The Bridegroom services of Holy Week, the vigils before Pascha (Easter), the long anticipation of feasts — they teach the soul to wait. Not with anxiety, but with hope. The one who comes will come. But not when we shout. When He pleases.
St. Seraphim of Sarov, the quiet ascetic of the Russian forest, was visited by wild bears — not because he tamed them, but because he offered no threat. His patience, his prayer, his peace made room for communion. Love cannot be stirred by force — neither in hearts nor in bears.
Consider the Svalbard polar bear — isbjørn, the ice-bear. Once the ruler of the Arctic, it now lives in shrinking margins. As the ice melts, so does its realm. It is protected — and yet every inhabitant of Svalbard, very close to the North Pole, is required to carry a firearm. The bear is sacred and feared, beautiful and dangerous, mourned and armed against. It is a symbol of what we long to preserve — but are always prepared to kill. The Spitzberg archipelago is a Norwegian territory, with free access with a visa for any foreign visitor. It was shared with the Russians for quite a long time. They are back as the war between NATO and European countries affects the Polar islands and Northern conquered lands.
The same paradox haunts the grizzlies of British Columbia. Majestic and untamed, they sometimes wander peacefully into towns. And yet, with no warning, they may strike. The gaze of a child through a window may be their last. Coexistence is no guarantee of safety. But it is still possible — if we wait, observe, and respect distance.
These bears mirror our spiritual and emotional landscapes: instinctive, unmastered, capable of both raw violence, destruction and intimacy. They remind us that not all wildness is evil. But it must never be rushed.
In Jewish tradition, especially in Yiddish-speaking memory, the bear is not merely wild. It is kin. The Yiddish ber/בער, derived from the Hebrew dov/דוב, remains a name of affection and strength. The proper first name is often double, Hebrew-Yiddish: DovBer/דוב-בער. Paired with Yehudah-Ber/יהודה-בער, it was the name of the tribe, of the lion-bear, of exile made flesh. In Slavic tongues, medved’/медведь” (as in Slovenian, Russian, Czech, Serbian and Slovak), – “honey-eater” — reveals a gentler relation to the beast.
In a time when the world teeters between ecological collapse and spiritual numbness, we are reminded to wait, be patient. To observe. To recognize the sacred pacing of all things. The gazelle leaps, the bear prowls, the soul watches.
The love that must not be awakened too soon is not only romantic. It is cosmic. Still, the longing for harmony must not be rushed, for when we rush it, we turn it into domination. But when we wait — when we watch as saints once watched for bears, as lovers once watched for signs — then love arrives on its own terms. And it lasts.
The world increasingly runs on predictive logic. AI now guides military operations, anticipates threats, and can recommend strikes in milliseconds. Where once a human conscience hesitated — the pause before pulling the trigger, the trembling before retaliation — now automation acts. Apparently, there is no space for “until He pleases.” There is only now, data, execution. Up-to-the-minuteness is built on long-prepared instinct and competence.
Gazelles are fragile and swift. They survive not by aggression, but by alertness. Their power lies in response, not in prediction.
In ancient texts, the gazelle was not only a metaphor for grace, but for the timing of grace. To awaken love too early is to destroy it. To react too quickly is to forfeit wisdom. This applies as much to war as to the soul.
The Eastern Christian tradition calls this nepsis/νέψης — watchfulness. It is the practice of delay, of interior alertness, of refusing the tyranny of the immediate. It is also a kind of protest — against the automation of war, the commodification of attention, the collapse of discernment.
Patience, then, is not passivity. It is resistance — against the violence of haste. It is fidelity to divine timing, refusing to awaken what only God can rightly awaken. Thus, it expresses the courage to stand firm and deeply hope until He pleases — not until we predict or provoke.
In a world where emotional responses are engineered, where desire is manipulated by algorithmic systems, war can be initiated by a calculation. Waiting shows the way how to protect the sacred.
In terms of the historical development of time, waiting means something else: love is not a function of speed, whatever context concerned. It is a mystery. Life is not programmable. It is a gift.
To begin with, the soul is not a system. It is a field where the gazelle may yet leap, where the bear may still come near, and where the Beloved — when He pleases — may finally arrive.
(1) The Philokalia is a collection of writings, on how to practice the spiritual virtues. It is all very popular book in all the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine communities.