What Does Song of Solomon 5:1 Mean?
I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, friends; drink, and grow drunk, beloved.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.THE KEY
The beloved is welcomed not merely to taste, but to become intoxicated by shared delight.
THE MEANING
You meet intimacy here as embodied abundance: myrrh with spice, honeycomb with honey, wine with milk, all tasted rather than held at a distance. The welcome widens to friends, and its final verb makes delight something that can saturate the senses.
THE ROOT
וְשִׁכְרוּ
weshikru
GROWS FROM
שכר
š-k-r
To become drunk or intoxicated.
“grow drunk” in this verse is weshikru. Within “drink abundantly,” the Hebrew verb carries the vivid sense of becoming intoxicated. The invitation reaches beyond quantity to a fullness that saturates the senses.
ALSO GROWS
shekhar: Strong or intoxicating drink.
שֵׁכָר
This related word makes the invitation’s language of abundance tangible in the drink itself.
shikkor: Drunk or intoxicated.
שִׁכּוֹר
This form shares the root’s sense of being overtaken by drink, echoing the verse’s final invitation.
דּוֹדִים
dodim
GROWS FROM
דוד
d-w-d
Beloved intimacy; love and caresses.
The address rendered “beloved” comes from a word-family also used for lovers’ caresses. It keeps the welcome in the verse’s sensual register, even as the feast opens outward to friends.
ALSO GROWS
dodi: My beloved.
דּוֹדִי
This form appears in the preceding invitation for the beloved to enter the garden.
dodim: Loves or caresses.
דּוֹדִים
The same form can name intimate love, giving the address a bodily warmth beyond a distant title.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures fullness as something placed within reach and opened through an invitation to partake.
You lay out a table before my face, in full view of those who press me. You make my head rich with oil; my cup is soaked full.Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters, and whoever has no silver, come, break open and eat. Yes, come, break open wine and milk, without silver and without price.And the Breath and the bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. And let the one who thirsts come. Let whoever wills take the waters of life as a gift.THE THREAD
Stir, north wind; come, south wind; breathe on my garden, that its spices may drip out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his choice fruits.The Hebrew forms דּוֹדִי (dodi, “my beloved”) here and דּוֹדִים (dodim, “beloved”) in 5:1 share the root דוד (d-w-d), naming intimate love. The invitation to enter the garden and eat its fruits becomes, in 5:1, a completed arrival and feast.
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