Milk and Honey

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The Bible calls Canaan “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Sounds messy, doesn’t it?

The familiar words imply that, like the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Promised Land so richly feeds its inhabitants it’s as if it flows with food and drink.

But what exactly are “milk” (Hebrew haµlaµb) and “honey” (debasð)? The first may refer to actual milk, in those days mostly from goats, or to a milk-based product such as yogurt or butter (also called hem’aÆ). “Honey” in the Bible is sometimes bees’ honey, but more often syrup or molasses made from grapes or dates. (That is why honey is listed as one of the seven plant species of the Holy Land [Deuteronomy 8:8].)

Milk and honey are paired in diverse biblical contexts.¹ According to 2 Samuel 17:29, butter and honey were among the foods offered by David’s loyalists to his exhausted troops fleeing Jerusalem. And the prophet Isaiah says of the child-to-be-born Immanuel, “Butter and honey he will eat, till (?) he knows to reject the bad and to choose the good [i.e., attains the age of discernment]. For before the child will know to reject the bad and to choose the good, the soil will be abandoned” (Isaiah 7:15–16); only a faithful remnant will remain in the land to “eat butter and honey” (Isaiah 7:22). Here milk and honey connote baby food (literally) and prosperity (figuratively). By horrific antithesis, Job 20:16–17 also associates milk and honey with infancy, specifically with breast-feeding: “Cobra venom he will suck…he will not behold streams, rivers, brooks of honey and butter.” On the other hand, Song of Songs 5:1 compares ingesting honey, wine and milk to sex: “I ate my honeycomb with my honey, I drank my wine with my milk.” And Song of Songs 4:11 applies the image to saliva exchanged during kissing: “Your lips drip honey, O Bride; milk and honey are under your tongue” (compare Song of Songs 1:2, 7:10).

In these biblical verses, milk and honey convey both bliss and sustenance. They were Israelite comfort food, perhaps the first solids offered to babies as they were being weaned from the breast.² Milk and honey symbolize the primal oral gratification—nursing—and its two later surrogates—eating and drinking for nourishment and pleasure, and kissing strictly for pleasure.

How do these parallels illuminate “a land flowing with milk and honey”?

The phrase is particularly characteristic of Deuteronomy, where it appears six times. The last occurrence, Deuteronomy 31:20, introduces and paraphrases a final, poetic reference to honey and dairy products in the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:1–43):

And he [God] made him [Israel] mount on the land’s heights,
And he [Israel] ate the field’s produce;
And he [God] suckled him [Israel] with honey from a crag,
With oil from a rock’s hard stone,
Cattle’s butter and sheep’s milk,
With fat of rams and of mountain goats
Of Bashan, and of billy goats,
With wheat’s kidney-fat,
And grape’s blood you drank as wine.³

Deuteronomy 32:13–14

In the preceding verses of the song (Deuteronomy 32:10–12), God finds Israel in the wilderness and cherishes him with the love of a mother bird for her offspring.⁴ Then God makes Israel mount or ride “on the land’s heights,” that is, the hills of Canaan.

The word bomoátayim does not literally mean “heights,” but rather “back” or “chest”—what anatomists call the “thorax.” The reference here is to the chest area: God suckles Israel with honey, oil, butter, etc. Moreover the phrase “the field’s produce” (tenuÆboµt s’aµdaµy) is a graphic pun: One could also read “my breasts’ produce” (tenuÆbot sðaµdaµy), since the letters sin (sŒ) and shin (sð) were not distinguished in Hebrew script until the Middle Ages. The highlands of Canaan are giant breasts or a row of teats, providing complete nutrition and sensual bliss for infant Israel. In many cultures and languages, mountains are likened to breasts or udders; our local example is the Grand Teton range (Teton=Big Teat in Spanish).⁵

Is the land of Canaan God’s wet nurse, a sort of demythologized Mother Goddess? Or do the breasts belong to God him/herself? The latter is less far-fetched than one might think. Deuteronomy 32:11–12, as we have seen, compares God to a mother bird, while 32:18 explicitly calls Yahweh “the rock who bore you…the God who birthed you.” And in Isaiah 66:7–14, Zion and God together give birth to Israel, who sucks at Zion’s “breast of consolation…the teat of her splendor,” whereupon peace and prosperity flow into Israel: “Like a man whose mother comforts him, so I [God] shall comfort you…and your bones will grow like the grass.” Nursed by God, Israel is pacified and grows robust.⁶

The notion that the Canaanite highlands are God’s breasts potentially illuminates how Israelites interpreted the obscure epithet ’eµl sðadday traditionally rendered “God Almighty.” The first word indeed means “God”; the second has been understood by some as referring to breasts (sðaµdayim)⁷ and 054by others as betokening mountains.⁸ The best evidence for the Bible’s understanding of the term Shadday is another poem, the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:2–27). Amid many uncertainties, Genesis 49:25–26 associates Shadday with fatherhood, rain and groundwater, breasts and mountains:

From God your father, who strengthens you,
And Shadday, who blesses you,
With blessings of Heaven above,
Blessings of the deep lying beneath,
Blessings of breasts (sðaµdayim) and of womb.
May your father’s blessings be stronger
Than my own parents’ blessings,
As high as the peaks of eternal hills.⁹

God the procreative Father. God the Mighty Warrior. God the kindly Old Man. These we have long known. Modern theologians are now broadening their image of the Divine, pursuing Yahweh’s elusive femininity. In this context, even the most familiar passages may take on new significance.¹⁰

The Bible calls Canaan “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Sounds messy, doesn’t it?