1 Corinthians 5:7-8

5:7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough – you are, in fact, without yeast. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 5:8 So then, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of vice and evil, but with the bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. ¹ 

Psalms 22:26

22:26 Let the oppressed eat and be filled! ² 

Let those who seek his help praise the Lord!

May you ³  live forever!

Psalms 22:29

22:29 All of the thriving people ⁴  of the earth will join the celebration and worship; ⁵ 

all those who are descending into the grave ⁶  will bow before him,

including those who cannot preserve their lives. ⁷ 

Proverbs 9:5

9:5 “Come, eat ⁸  some of my food,

and drink some of the wine I have mixed. ⁹ 

The Song of Songs 5:1

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: ¹⁰ 

Eat, friends, and drink! ¹¹ 

Drink freely, O lovers!

Isaiah 25:6

25:6 The Lord who commands armies will hold a banquet for all the nations on this mountain. ¹² 

At this banquet there will be plenty of meat and aged wine –

tender meat and choicest wine. ¹³ 

Isaiah 55:1-3

The Lord Gives an Invitation

55:1 “Hey, ¹⁴  all who are thirsty, come to the water!

You who have no money, come!

Buy and eat!

Come! Buy wine and milk

without money and without cost! ¹⁵ 

55:2 Why pay money for something that will not nourish you? ¹⁶ 

Why spend ¹⁷  your hard-earned money ¹⁸  on something that will not satisfy?

Listen carefully ¹⁹  to me and eat what is nourishing! ²⁰ 

Enjoy fine food! ²¹ 

55:3 Pay attention and come to me!

Listen, so you can live! ²² 

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ²³  you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ²⁴ 

John 6:53-58

6:53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, ²⁵  unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ²⁶  you have no life ²⁷  in yourselves. 6:54 The one who eats ²⁸  my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. ²⁹  6:55 For my flesh is true ³⁰  food, and my blood is true ³¹  drink. 6:56 The one who eats ³²  my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me, and I in him. ³³  6:57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who consumes ³⁴  me will live because of me. 6:58 This ³⁵  is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the bread your ancestors ³⁶  ate, but then later died. ³⁷  The one who eats ³⁸  this bread will live forever.”

[5:8]  ¹ tn Grk “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

[22:26]  ² sn Eat and be filled. In addition to praising the Lord, the psalmist also offers a thank offering to the Lord and invites others to share in a communal meal.

[22:26]  ³ tn Heb “may your heart[s].”

[22:29]  ⁴ tn Heb “fat [ones].” This apparently refers to those who are healthy and robust, i.e., thriving. In light of the parallelism, some prefer to emend the form to יְשֵׁנֵי (yÿsheney, “those who sleep [in the earth]”; cf. NAB, NRSV), but דִּשְׁנֵי (dishney, “fat [ones]”) seems to form a merism with “all who descend into the grave” in the following line. The psalmist envisions all people, whether healthy or dying, joining in worship of the Lord.

[22:29]  ⁵ tn Heb “eat and worship.” The verb forms (a perfect followed by a prefixed form with vav [ו] consecutive) are normally used in narrative to relate completed actions. Here the psalmist uses the forms rhetorically as he envisions a time when the Lord will receive universal worship. The mood is one of wishful thinking and anticipation; this is not prophecy in the strict sense.

[22:29]  ⁶ tn Heb “all of the ones going down [into] the dust.” This group stands in contrast to those mentioned in the previous line. Together the two form a merism encompassing all human beings – the healthy, the dying, and everyone in between.

[22:29]  ⁷ tn Heb “and his life he does not revive.”

[9:5]  ⁸ tn The construction features a cognate accusative (verb and noun from same root). The preposition בּ (bet) has the partitive use “some” (GKC 380 §119.m).

[9:5]  ⁹ tn The final verb actually stands in a relative clause although the relative pronoun is not present; it modifies “wine.”

[5:1]  ¹⁰ 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.

[5:1]  ¹¹ 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).

[25:6]  ¹² sn That is, Mount Zion (see 24:23); cf. TEV; NLT “In Jerusalem.”

[25:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “And the Lord who commands armies [traditionally, the Lord of hosts] will make for all the nations on this mountain a banquet of meats, a banquet of wine dregs, meats filled with marrow, dregs that are filtered.”

[55:1]  ¹⁴ tn The Hebrew term הוֹי (hoy, “woe, ah”) was used in funeral laments and is often prefixed to judgment oracles for rhetorical effect. But here it appears to be a simple interjection, designed to grab the audience’s attention. Perhaps there is a note of sorrow or pity. See BDB 223 s.v.

[55:1]  ¹⁵ sn The statement is an oxymoron. Its ironic quality adds to its rhetorical impact. The statement reminds one of the norm (one must normally buy commodities) as it expresses the astounding offer. One might paraphrase the statement: “Come and take freely what you normally have to pay for.”

[55:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “for what is not food.”

[55:2]  ¹⁷ tn The interrogative particle and the verb “spend” are understood here by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[55:2]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “your labor,” which stands by metonymy for that which one earns.

[55:2]  ¹⁹ tn The infinitive absolute follows the imperative and lends emphasis to the exhortation.

[55:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “good” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[55:2]  ²¹ tn Heb “Let your appetite delight in fine food.”

[55:3]  ²² tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.

[55:3]  ²³ tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”

[55:3]  ²⁴ tn Heb “the reliable expressions of loyalty of David.” The syntactical relationship of חַסְדֵי (khasde, “expressions of loyalty”) to the preceding line is unclear. If the term is appositional to בְּרִית (bÿrit, “covenant”), then the Lord here transfers the promises of the Davidic covenant to the entire nation. Another option is to take חַסְדֵי (khasde) as an adverbial accusative and to translate “according to the reliable covenantal promises.” In this case the new covenantal arrangement proposed here is viewed as an extension or perhaps fulfillment of the Davidic promises. A third option, the one reflected in the above translation, is to take the last line as comparative. In this case the new covenant being proposed is analogous to the Davidic covenant. Verses 4-5, which compare David’s international prominence to what Israel will experience, favors this view. In all three of these interpretations, “David” is an objective genitive; he is the recipient of covenantal promises. A fourth option would be to take David as a subjective genitive and understand the line as giving the basis for the preceding promise: “Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, because of David’s faithful acts of covenantal loyalty.”

[6:53]  ²⁵ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[6:53]  ²⁶ sn Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood. These words are at the heart of the discourse on the Bread of Life, and have created great misunderstanding among interpreters. Anyone who is inclined toward a sacramental viewpoint will almost certainly want to take these words as a reference to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, because of the reference to eating and drinking. But this does not automatically follow: By anyone’s definition there must be a symbolic element to the eating which Jesus speaks of in the discourse, and once this is admitted, it is better to understand it here, as in the previous references in the passage, to a personal receiving of (or appropriation of) Christ and his work.

[6:53]  ²⁷ tn That is, “no eternal life” (as opposed to physical life).

[6:54]  ²⁸ tn Or “who chews”; Grk ὁ τρώγων (Jo trwgwn). The alternation between ἐσθίω (esqiw, “eat,” v. 53) and τρώγω (trwgw, “eats,” vv. 54, 56, 58; “consumes,” v. 57) may simply reflect a preference for one form over the other on the author’s part, rather than an attempt to express a slightly more graphic meaning. If there is a difference, however, the word used here (τρώγω) is the more graphic and vivid of the two (“gnaw” or “chew”).

[6:54]  ²⁹ sn Notice that here the result (has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day) is produced by eating (Jesus’) flesh and drinking his blood. Compare John 6:40 where the same result is produced by “looking on the Son and believing in him.” This suggests that the phrase here (eats my flesh and drinks my blood) is to be understood by the phrase in 6:40 (looks on the Son and believes in him).

[6:55]  ³⁰ tn Or “real.”

[6:55]  ³¹ tn Or “real.”

[6:56]  ³² tn Or “who chews.” On the alternation between ἐσθίω (esqiw, “eat,” v. 53) and τρώγω (trwgw, “eats,” vv. 54, 56, 58; “consumes,” v. 57) see the note on “eats” in v. 54.

[6:56]  ³³ sn Resides in me, and I in him. Note how in John 6:54 eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood produces eternal life and the promise of resurrection at the last day. Here the same process of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood leads to a relationship of mutual indwelling (resides in me, and I in him). This suggests strongly that for the author (and for Jesus) the concepts of ‘possessing eternal life’ and of ‘residing in Jesus’ are virtually interchangeable.

[6:57]  ³⁴ tn Or “who chews”; Grk “who eats.” Here the translation “consumes” is more appropriate than simply “eats,” because it is the internalization of Jesus by the individual that is in view. On the alternation between ἐσθίω (esqiw, “eat,” v. 53) and τρώγω (trwgw, “eats,” vv. 54, 56, 58; “consumes,” v. 57) see the note on “eats” in v. 54.

[6:58]  ³⁵ tn Or “This one.”

[6:58]  ³⁶ tn Or “forefathers”; Grk “fathers.”

[6:58]  ³⁷ tn Grk “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not just like your ancestors ate and died.” The cryptic Greek expression has been filled out in the translation for clarity.

[6:58]  ³⁸ tn Or “who chews.” On the alternation between ἐσθίω (esqiw, “eat,” v. 53) and τρώγω (trwgw, “eats,” vv. 54, 56, 58; “consumes,” v. 57) see the note on “eats” in v. 54.