Food and drink
Milk and honey
Hebrew chalav (milk), devash (honey) · “a land flowing with milk and honey”
Milk came mostly from goats, but also from sheep, cows and camels (Proverbs 27:27; Deuteronomy 32:14; Genesis 32:15). Fresh milk did not keep in the heat, so it was poured into a skin and shaken until it soured and thickened into curds and butter (Proverbs 30:33). Abraham served his guests curds and milk, and Jael opened a skin of milk for Sisera. Pressed curds rolled into balls kept for a long time — a food for journeys still made in the Middle East.
Honey was the main sweetener. Wild bees nested in rocks and trees, and Samson found a swarm in a lion’s carcass. In 2007 archaeologists at Tel Rehov in the Jordan Valley found rows of clay hives from about the 10th–9th century BC, the oldest beehives yet excavated. In some verses “honey” may also mean thick syrup boiled from dates or grapes. John the Baptist ate “locusts and wild honey” (Matthew 3:4), and “a land flowing with milk and honey” was the Bible’s way of saying the land was rich.
Key verses
I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.Then Abraham brought curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and he set them before the men and stood by them under the tree as they ate.Sisera said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a container of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him again.For as the churning of milk yields butter, and the twisting of the nose draws blood, so the stirring of anger brings forth strife.”When Samson returned later to take her, he left the road to see the lion’s carcass, and in it was a swarm of bees, along with their honey. So he scooped some honey into his hands and ate it as he went along. And when he returned to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion’s carcass.Jonathan, however, had not heard that his father had charged the people with the oath. So he reached out the end of the staff in his hand, dipped it into the honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth; and his eyes brightened.Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Food and Food Preparation: Dairy Products; Food and Food Preparation: Insects and Their Food Products; Honey
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
