S.S. 4:6
Till the day doth break forth, And the shadows have fled away, I will get me unto the mountain of myrrh, And unto the hill of frankincense.
Phil. 3:7-11
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Having received all these affirming words about her emerging maturity the Shulamites response is amazing. She says that until the day breaks she is going to go to the place of prayer, intimacy, and worship, where death to self and resurrection life takes place.
Myrrh and frankincense are both important ingredients used in making incense. Throughout the Bible incense speaks of prayer and worship, so the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense are referencing the secret place, that she was going to retreat to, where the Lord could do an even deeper work in her. Myrrh is the burial spice, and therefore speaks of a deeper work of exposing new areas of the self-life and releasing it to the Cross where Jesus took it, and frankincense is always a reference to resurrection or newness of life coming forth. You see, it is in the secret place where the Holy Spirit does the deeper work in our hearts. It is there that we behold His beauty and come to deeper places of surrender and resurrection.
Instead of being content with the Lord’s affirmation and praise of how she’s growing in Him, she declares that she is hungry for more. She longs to be conformed to His image at a higher level. Simply put, she wants more. More than anything else in this world she wants to be more like Him, and to carry His presence in fullness. May we all be like her, always longing to go further up and further in.