The Beloved to Her Lover:
4:16 Awake, O north wind; come, O south wind!
Blow on my garden so that its fragrant spices may send out their sweet smell. 1
May my beloved come into his garden
and eat its delightful fruit!
The Lover to His Beloved:
5:1 I have entered my garden, O my sister, my bride;
I have gathered my myrrh with my balsam spice.
I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey;
I have drunk my wine and my milk!
The Poet to the Couple: 2
Eat, friends, and drink! 3
Drink freely, O lovers!
14:22 “Lord,” Judas (not Judas Iscariot) 9 said, 10 “what has happened that you are going to reveal 11 yourself to us and not to the world?” 14:23 Jesus replied, 12 “If anyone loves me, he will obey 13 my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. 14
1 tn Heb “may flow.”
2 sn There is no little debate about the identity of the speaker(s) and the audience addressed in 5:1b. There are five options: (1) He is addressing his bride. (2) The bride is addressing him. (3) The wedding guests are addressing him and his bride. (4) He and his bride are addressing the wedding guests. (5) The poet is addressing him and his bride. When dealing with this issue, the following factors should be considered: (1) the form of both the exhortations and the addressees are plural. This makes it unlikely that he is addressing his bride or that his bride is addressing him. (2) The exhortation has an implicitly sexual connotation because the motif of “eating” and “drinking” refers to sexual consummation in 5:1a. This makes it unlikely that he or his bride are addressing the wedding guests – an orgy is quite out of the question! (3) The poet could be in view because as the writer who created the Song, only he could have been with them – in a poetic sense – in the bridal chamber as a “guest” on their wedding night. (4) The wedding guests could be in view through the figurative use of apostrophe (addressing an audience that is not in the physical presence of the speaker). While the couple was alone in their wedding chambers, the wedding guests wished them all the joys and marital bliss of the honeymoon. This is supported by several factors: (a) Wedding feasts in the ancient Near East frequently lasted several days and after the couple had consummated their marriage, they would appear again to celebrate a feast with their wedding guests. (b) The structure of the Song is composed of paired-dialogues which either begin or conclude with the words of the friends or daughters of Jerusalem (1:2-4, 5-11; 3:6-11; 5:9-16; 6:1-3, 4-13; 7:1-10) or which conclude with an exhortation addressed to them (2:1-7; 3:1-5; 8:1-4). In this case, the poetic unit of 4:1-5:1 would conclude with an exhortation by the friends in 5:1b.
3 sn The physical love between the couple is compared to eating and drinking at a wedding feast. This is an appropriate figure of comparison because it would have been issued during the feast which followed the wedding and the consummation. The term “drink” refers to intoxication, that is, it compares becoming drunk on wine with enjoying the physical love of one’s spouse (e.g., Prov 5:19-20).
4 tn Heb “will plant them in the land with faithfulness with all my heart and with all my soul.” The latter expressions are, of course, anthropomorphisms (see Deut 6:5).
5 tn Or “keeps.”
6 tn Grk “obeys them, that one is the one who loves me.”
7 tn Grk “And the one.” Here the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated to improve the English style.
8 tn Or “will disclose.”
9 tn Grk “(not Iscariot).” The proper noun (Judas) has been repeated for clarity and smoothness in English style.
10 tn Grk “said to him.”
11 tn Or “disclose.”
12 tn Grk “answered and said to him.”
13 tn Or “will keep.”
14 tn Grk “we will come to him and will make our dwelling place with him.” The context here is individual rather than corporate indwelling, so the masculine singular pronoun has been retained throughout v. 23. It is important to note, however, that the pronoun is used generically here and refers equally to men, women, and children.