Eat, Friends; Drink Deep, O lovers!": The Narrator's Interjection in Song of Songs (5:1)

As the Song of Songs is a collection of monologues spoken by a man and woman, the reader faces the challenge of identifying the speaker in each poem and, occasionally, in each verse. Usually, it is easy to identify the speaker as a man or a woman based on language or content. One of the verses that pose particular difficulty in identifying the speaker is the second half of 5:1. This article contends that this sentence was spoken by neither the man nor the woman, but rather are the words of the book's author who functions in this verse as the narrator. The literary contribution of the author's interjection into the book relates to the molding of the special intimacy shared by the couple described in the book.