Song of Solomon 5:1

Song of Solomon 5:1. The great question regarding this verse is how the perfect tenses in it are to be understood. Some maintain that they must be rigorously taken as perfects; others think that they should be understood in one or other of the modified perfect senses which this tense may have in Heb. Grammatically we may render either, I have come, or I come(cp. Ges. Gr. § 106 i); or lastly I will come, perf. of confidence (Ges. § 106 n). Those who, like Delitzsch, suppose that the marriage has taken place, take the first; Budde, who regards the song as one sung after the marriage has been celebrated, but during the week of festivities, takes the second; those who regard the marriage as still in the future cannot but take the perfs. in the third sense. In that case the words indicate that after what the bride has revealed of her love, the bridegroom feels that the marriage is as good as accomplished.

I have gathered my myrrh with my spice Rather, I have plucked my myrrh with my balsam.

eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved The chief difficulty here is whether dôdhîm, the word translated -friends," should not be rendered -caresses," as it has meant hitherto throughout the book, or whether it is to be taken in the sense of -beloved friends," as its parallelism to rç-îmwould suggest. That dôdhîmmay have this latter meaning seems clear, for in many languages the abstract word, -love," is used in a concrete signification. On the whole this rendering beloved friendsseems the best here. Siegfried seeks to establish a distinction between dôdhîmwritten defectively (רדים), and the same word written fully (רֹודים), the former being used, he says, only of caresses, the latter of friends, quoting König, Lehrgeb. vol. 11. 2, 262 b. He translates, "Eat ye too, O companions, and intoxicate yourselves, O friends," and says that the clause would mean in prose, -do ye marry also." But in that case some way of emphasising the yewould have been expected. It seems preferable to understand the words of an invitation to his friends to come to the marriage feast he has spoken of as being as good as made (Ewald).

drink abundantly That the bridegroom should invite them to drink to satiety is in accord with what would appear to have been the custom, viz. to shew sympathy at such a feast by departing from the habitual abstemiousness of the East in regard to wine. Cp. John 2:10, the marriage at Cana of Galilee. That shâkharmay mean merely to drink to satiety, not to drunkenness, is proved by Haggai 1:6, "Ye eat, but ye have not enough, ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink"; where lěsŏbhâhis parallel to lěshokhrâh. Some prefer to take the last clause as an address by the daughters of Jerusalem (Ginsburg), or by the poet to the young pair (Hitzig).