When we get to verse 2, what we are looking at there is a dream sequence—the woman is not really sure what is happening. Is it really happening? You've all experienced things like that, where you were in bed and you were dreaming, but the dream was so real, that you wondered whether it was reality.
What is real when you are asleep or half asleep? Half awake and yet your mind is still fogged by a state of sleep. The mind simply is not focused, and I believe that it is presented this way because many times with reality—that is when we are fully alert (I want you to think of yourself in this) and your focus is on what you are doing—there is much of what you are or what you think about, that is restrained or covered. But then when you go to sleep, your mind begins to release those things that, by your will, you have kept covered when you are awake and alert and your mind was focused. That is, the subconscious begins to express itself, when there is nothing there to restrain it.
Now that is what's happening with this young lady here. What she is finding is that her love is not as deep and true as it needs to be in order for there to be a successful marriage. In verse 2, "I sleep, but my heart is awake" and she hears the voice of her beloved, and he knocks, "Open for me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one." [She responds] "I have taken off my robe; how can I put it on again? I have washed my feet; how can I defile them?"
Let's look at her first. She lies unclothed on her bed. Can you think of a verse in Revelation 3... "...wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked." Her feet are washed; the work is over isn't it? But she will not stir herself to do what is disagreeable to her at this most inconvenient time. Now her lover is standing at the door, knocking (Revelation 3 again) and speaking. "Is this really happening to me?" That's what she telling herself. "Or am I in a dream?" You think people are not like that in the Church of God today? They wonder if what is happening is really happening?
She finally begins to respond, positively I mean. Verse 5 "I rose to open for my beloved and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, on the handles of the lock. I opened for my beloved; but my beloved had turned away and was gone." Too late. Does that remind you of the ten virgins?
The watchmen goes out into the city you see (which represents the world). What's going on when she goes out into the city, out into the world? The tribulation is going on. "The watchmen that went about the city found me. They struck me, and they wounded me: the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me." The symbol of being shamed.
You have to understand that these watchmen are worldly people. They see only with their eyes, and thus they cannot see the deep and earnest repentance and yearning that is now within her. They do not see her as the bride, but as a woman—a common woman of the streets. That's why they beat her. They see her as a prostitute. So without even bothering to find out who she is, they persecute her, tearing some of her clothing from her and it is good to remember what clothing symbolizes in the bible.
As we proceed on through in verse 8, she turns away from the people that are persecuting her—represented by the watchmen. She turns to the daughters of Jerusalem, from whom she would expect to receive sympathy, hoping that somehow or another they might relate to what she is going through. She asks them in her agony to try to help her to find her love—Christ—and we know that He is going to be gone for 3½ years. The daughters of Jerusalem respond with a question, "What is he like? Tell us about him, we don't know who he is, tell us what he is like." "What is your beloved more than another beloved, O fairest among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved, that so you charge us?"
