Psalms 4:6-7

4:6 Many say, “Who can show us anything good?”

Smile upon us, Lord! ¹ 

4:7 You make me happier ² 

than those who have abundant grain and wine. ³ 

Psalms 17:15

17:15 As for me, because I am innocent I will see your face; ⁴ 

when I awake you will reveal yourself to me. ⁵ 

Psalms 63:5

63:5 As if with choice meat ⁶  you satisfy my soul. ⁷ 

My mouth joyfully praises you, ⁸ 

Psalms 65:4

65:4 How blessed ⁹  is the one whom you choose,

and allow to live in your palace courts. ¹⁰ 

May we be satisfied with the good things of your house –

your holy palace. ¹¹ 

Psalms 145:19

145:19 He satisfies the desire ¹²  of his loyal followers; ¹³ 

he hears their cry for help and delivers them.

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: ¹⁴ 

Eat, friends, and drink! ¹⁵ 

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. ¹⁶ 

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

tender meat and choicest wine. ¹⁷ 

Isaiah 41:17

41:17 The oppressed and the poor look for water, but there is none;

their tongues are parched from thirst.

I, the Lord, will respond to their prayers; ¹⁸ 

I, the God of Israel, will not abandon them.

Isaiah 44:3

44:3 For I will pour water on the parched ground ¹⁹ 

and cause streams to flow ²⁰  on the dry land.

I will pour my spirit on your offspring

and my blessing on your children.

Isaiah 49:9-10

49:9 You will say ²¹  to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’

and to those who are in dark dungeons, ²²  ‘Emerge.’ ²³ 

They will graze beside the roads;

on all the slopes they will find pasture.

49:10 They will not be hungry or thirsty;

the sun’s oppressive heat will not beat down on them, ²⁴ 

for one who has compassion on them will guide them;

he will lead them to springs of water.

Isaiah 55:1-3

The Lord Gives an Invitation

55:1 “Hey, ²⁵  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! ²⁶ 

55:2 Why pay money for something that will not nourish you? ²⁷ 

Why spend ²⁸  your hard-earned money ²⁹  on something that will not satisfy?

Listen carefully ³⁰  to me and eat what is nourishing! ³¹ 

Enjoy fine food! ³² 

55:3 Pay attention and come to me!

Listen, so you can live! ³³ 

Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to ³⁴  you,

just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David. ³⁵ 

Isaiah 65:13

65:13 So this is what the sovereign Lord says:

“Look, my servants will eat, but you will be hungry!

Look, my servants will drink, but you will be thirsty!

Look, my servants will rejoice, but you will be humiliated!

Isaiah 66:11

66:11 For ³⁶  you will nurse from her satisfying breasts and be nourished; ³⁷ 

you will feed with joy from her milk-filled breasts. ³⁸ 

John 4:14

4:14 But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, ³⁹  but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain ⁴⁰  of water springing up ⁴¹  to eternal life.”

John 6:48-58

6:48 I am the bread of life. ⁴²  6:49 Your ancestors ⁴³  ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 6:50 This ⁴⁴  is the bread that has come down from heaven, so that a person ⁴⁵  may eat from it and not die. 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread he will live forever. The bread ⁴⁶  that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

6:52 Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus ⁴⁷  began to argue with one another, ⁴⁸  “How can this man ⁴⁹  give us his flesh to eat?” 6:53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, ⁵⁰  unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ⁵¹  you have no life ⁵²  in yourselves. 6:54 The one who eats ⁵³  my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. ⁵⁴  6:55 For my flesh is true ⁵⁵  food, and my blood is true ⁵⁶  drink. 6:56 The one who eats ⁵⁷  my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me, and I in him. ⁵⁸  6:57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who consumes ⁵⁹  me will live because of me. 6:58 This ⁶⁰  is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the bread your ancestors ⁶¹  ate, but then later died. ⁶²  The one who eats ⁶³  this bread will live forever.”

John 7:37

Teaching About the Spirit

7:37 On the last day of the feast, the greatest day, ⁶⁴  Jesus stood up and shouted out, ⁶⁵  “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and

Revelation 7:16

7:16 They will never go hungry or be thirsty again, and the sun will not beat down on them, nor any burning heat, ⁶⁶ 

[4:6]  ¹ tn Heb “lift up upon us the light of your face, Lord.” The verb נסה is apparently an alternate form of נשׂא, “lift up.” See GKC 217 §76.b. The idiom “light of your face” probably refers to a smile (see Eccl 8:1), which in turn suggests favor and blessing (see Num 6:25; Pss 31:16; 44:3; 67:1; 80:3, 7, 19; 89:15; Dan 9:17).

[4:7]  ² tn Heb “you place joy in my heart.” Another option is to understand the perfect verbal form as indicating certitude, “you will make me happier.”

[4:7]  ³ tn Heb “from (i.e., more than) the time (when) their grain and their wine are abundant.”

[17:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “I, in innocence, I will see your face.” To “see” God’s “face” means to have access to his presence and to experience his favor (see Ps 11:7; see also Job 33:26 [where רָאָה (ra’ah), not חָזַה (khazah), is used]). Here, however, the psalmist may be anticipating a mystical experience. See the following note on the word “me.”

[17:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “I will be satisfied, when I awake, [with] your form.” The noun תְּמוּנָה (tÿmunah) normally carries the nuance “likeness” or “form.” In Job 4:16 it refers to a ghostlike spiritual entity (see v. 15) that revealed itself to Eliphaz during the night. The psalmist may anticipate a mystical encounter with God in which he expects to see a manifestation of God’s presence (i.e., a theophany), perhaps in conjunction with an oracle of deliverance. During the quiet darkness of the night, God examines the psalmist’s inner motives and finds them to be pure (see v. 3). The psalmist is confident that when he awakens, perhaps sometime during the night or in the morning, he will be visited by God and assured of vindication.

[63:5]  ⁶ tn Heb “like fat and fatness.”

[63:5]  ⁷ tn Or “me.”

[63:5]  ⁸ tn Heb “and [with] lips of joy my mouth praises.”

[65:4]  ⁹ tn The Hebrew noun is an abstract plural. The word often refers metonymically to the happiness that God-given security and prosperity produce (see Pss 1:1; 2:12; 34:9; 41:1; 84:12; 89:15; 106:3; 112:1; 127:5; 128:1; 144:15).

[65:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “[whom] you bring near [so that] he might live [in] your courts.”

[65:4]  ¹¹ tn Or “temple.”

[145:19]  ¹² tn In this context “desire” refers to the followers’ desire to be delivered from wicked enemies.

[145:19]  ¹³ tn Heb “the desire of those who fear him, he does.”

[5:1]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ sn That is, Mount Zion (see 24:23); cf. TEV; NLT “In Jerusalem.”

[25:6]  ¹⁷ 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.”

[41:17]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “will answer them” (so ASV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT).

[44:3]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “the thirsty.” Parallelism suggests that dry ground is in view (see “dry land” in the next line.)

[44:3]  ²⁰ tn Heb “and streams”; KJV “floods.” The verb “cause…to flow” is supplied in the second line for clarity and for stylistic reasons.

[49:9]  ²¹ tn Heb “to say.” In the Hebrew text the infinitive construct is subordinated to what precedes.

[49:9]  ²² tn Heb “in darkness” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “the prisoners of darkness.”

[49:9]  ²³ tn Heb “show yourselves” (so ASV, NAB, NASB).

[49:10]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and the heat and the sun will not strike them.” In Isa 35:7, its only other occurrence in the OT, שָׁרָב (sharav) stands parallel to “parched ground” and in contrast to “pool.” In later Hebrew and Aramaic it refers to “dry heat, heat of the sun” (Jastrow 1627 s.v.). Here it likely has this nuance and forms a hendiadys with “sun.”

[55:1]  ²⁵ 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]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ tn Heb “for what is not food.”

[55:2]  ²⁸ tn The interrogative particle and the verb “spend” are understood here by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[55:2]  ²⁹ tn Heb “your labor,” which stands by metonymy for that which one earns.

[55:2]  ³⁰ tn The infinitive absolute follows the imperative and lends emphasis to the exhortation.

[55:2]  ³¹ tn Heb “good” (so NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[55:2]  ³² tn Heb “Let your appetite delight in fine food.”

[55:3]  ³³ tn The jussive with vav (ו) conjunctive following the imperative indicates purpose/result.

[55:3]  ³⁴ tn Or “an eternal covenant with.”

[55:3]  ³⁵ 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.”

[66:11]  ³⁶ tn Or “in order that”; ASV, NRSV “that.”

[66:11]  ³⁷ tn Heb “you will suck and be satisfied, from her comforting breast.”

[66:11]  ³⁸ tn Heb “you will slurp and refresh yourselves from her heavy breast.”

[4:14]  ³⁹ tn Grk “will never be thirsty forever.” The possibility of a later thirst is emphatically denied.

[4:14]  ⁴⁰ tn Or “well.” “Fountain” is used as the translation for πηγή (phgh) here since the idea is that of an artesian well that flows freely, but the term “artesian well” is not common in contemporary English.

[4:14]  ⁴¹ tn The verb ἁλλομένου (Jallomenou) is used of quick movement (like jumping) on the part of living beings. This is the only instance of its being applied to the action of water. However, in the LXX it is used to describe the “Spirit of God” as it falls on Samson and Saul. See Judg 14:6, 19; 15:14; 1 Kgdms 10:2, 10 LXX (= 1 Sam 10:6, 10 ET); and Isa 35:6 (note context).

[6:48]  ⁴² tn That is, “the bread that produces (eternal) life.”

[6:49]  ⁴³ tn Or “forefathers”; Grk “fathers.”

[6:50]  ⁴⁴ tn Or “Here.”

[6:50]  ⁴⁵ tn Grk “someone” (τις, tis).

[6:51]  ⁴⁶ tn Grk “And the bread.”

[6:52]  ⁴⁷ tn Grk “Then the Jews began to argue.” Here the translation restricts the phrase to those Jews who were hostile to Jesus (cf. BDAG 479 s.v. ᾿Ιουδαῖος 2.e.β), since the “crowd” mentioned in 6:22-24 was almost all Jewish (as suggested by their addressing Jesus as “Rabbi” (6:25). See also the note on the phrase “the Jews who were hostile to Jesus” in v. 41.

[6:52]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “with one another, saying.”

[6:52]  ⁴⁹ tn Grk “this one,” “this person.”

[6:53]  ⁵⁰ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[6:53]  ⁵¹ 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]  ⁵² tn That is, “no eternal life” (as opposed to physical life).

[6:54]  ⁵³ 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]  ⁵⁴ 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]  ⁵⁵ tn Or “real.”

[6:55]  ⁵⁶ tn Or “real.”

[6:56]  ⁵⁷ 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]  ⁵⁸ 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]  ⁵⁹ 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]  ⁶⁰ tn Or “This one.”

[6:58]  ⁶¹ tn Or “forefathers”; Grk “fathers.”

[6:58]  ⁶² 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]  ⁶³ 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.

[7:37]  ⁶⁴ sn There is a problem with the identification of this reference to the last day of the feast, the greatest day: It appears from Deut 16:13 that the feast went for seven days. Lev 23:36, however, makes it plain that there was an eighth day, though it was mentioned separately from the seven. It is not completely clear whether the seventh or eighth day was the climax of the feast, called here by the author the “last great day of the feast.” Since according to the Mishnah (m. Sukkah 4.1) the ceremonies with water and lights did not continue after the seventh day, it seems more probable that this is the day the author mentions.

[7:37]  ⁶⁵ tn Grk “Jesus stood up and cried out, saying.”

[7:16]  ⁶⁶ tn An allusion to Isa 49:10. The phrase “burning heat” is one word in Greek (καῦμα, kauma) that refers to a burning, intensely-felt heat. See BDAG 536 s.v.