Milk and Honey!!
This morning I woke up with a sore throat for the water stays cold eventhough it's not refrigirated...so I decided to have some milk and honey! I never thought that they can go together but believe me they blend really well...Milk and Honey...what a combination...
This drove home something that goes like this in translation "a land flowing with milk and honey" [Ex 33, 3] - a figurative name referring to the Promised Land - which in such way describes a place of great abundance...abundance abundance...that's how He gets to deal with us!! He does know no other way...but to shower us with great abundance of love! That's His only way! He knows no other!
Indeed, this time of year also recalls this image of a perfect land so fertile, its green hills flow with honey dripping from its hives, like liquid gold in the sunlight. A spacious land covered with pink hawthorn, red cyclamen, and white rockrose. There are the flowers of its myriad wild fruits, and the warm valley air smelling of their nectar.
Gushing — somehow — from the land itself, there are springs of pure milk white as snow, and bright streams of it flowing through the hills, as if the milk of an eternally vibrant earth mother in her fruitful cycle of multiplication. It is, "the beauty of all lands" — a paradise whose people would lack nothing.
For us, "milk and honey" originates in the Hebrew Bible in God's description of the country lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, namely, Canaan. It is first described as "a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey" — and in this way alone — when God commissions Moses to lead the Israelites to it.
We generally accept the received definition of "milk and honey" as a metaphor meaning all good things — God's blessings; and that the Promised Land must have been a land of extraordinary fertility. The phrase "flowing with milk and honey" is understood to be hyperbolically descriptive of the land's richness; hence, its current use to express the abundance of pure means of enjoyment.
The original Hebrew (transliterated) is "e-retz za-vat ha-lav oo–d'vash"; literally, land (e-retz) flowing with (za-vat) milk (ha-lav) and (oo–) honey (d'vash). The word translated as "flowing" comes from the verb "zoov" which means to flow or gush. Key to understanding this word in the biblical context is an appreciation of its human sexual associations, given that variants of it are used elsewhere in the Bible to denote the bodily fluids issued from the genitals of either a woman or a man.
Thus, in the Hebrew, the word "za-vat" suggests the idea of the land's gushing milk and honey in a sudden and copious flow, as well as its oozing them, and dripping them.
Another instance and context whereby this pair word of milk and honey is mentioned in Hebrew Scriptures is in the Song of Songs [xir ha xirim] in 4, 11 : "milk and honey are under your tongue" it has a very sensual meaning...which the sacred author depicts with all these figurative particles...well it's the way love is being expressed...and there are no inhibitions...the author is not in any way arrested in words...and provides us with a work that is as seductive...
Indeed, that's the only way God gets to deal with us...he is a seductive lover who is ever abundant in his love...he is a honeycomb who is always dripping...
Off to lick off some honey!!!
This drove home something that goes like this in translation "a land flowing with milk and honey" [Ex 33, 3] - a figurative name referring to the Promised Land - which in such way describes a place of great abundance...abundance abundance...that's how He gets to deal with us!! He does know no other way...but to shower us with great abundance of love! That's His only way! He knows no other!
Indeed, this time of year also recalls this image of a perfect land so fertile, its green hills flow with honey dripping from its hives, like liquid gold in the sunlight. A spacious land covered with pink hawthorn, red cyclamen, and white rockrose. There are the flowers of its myriad wild fruits, and the warm valley air smelling of their nectar.
Gushing — somehow — from the land itself, there are springs of pure milk white as snow, and bright streams of it flowing through the hills, as if the milk of an eternally vibrant earth mother in her fruitful cycle of multiplication. It is, "the beauty of all lands" — a paradise whose people would lack nothing.
For us, "milk and honey" originates in the Hebrew Bible in God's description of the country lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, namely, Canaan. It is first described as "a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey" — and in this way alone — when God commissions Moses to lead the Israelites to it.
We generally accept the received definition of "milk and honey" as a metaphor meaning all good things — God's blessings; and that the Promised Land must have been a land of extraordinary fertility. The phrase "flowing with milk and honey" is understood to be hyperbolically descriptive of the land's richness; hence, its current use to express the abundance of pure means of enjoyment.
The original Hebrew (transliterated) is "e-retz za-vat ha-lav oo–d'vash"; literally, land (e-retz) flowing with (za-vat) milk (ha-lav) and (oo–) honey (d'vash). The word translated as "flowing" comes from the verb "zoov" which means to flow or gush. Key to understanding this word in the biblical context is an appreciation of its human sexual associations, given that variants of it are used elsewhere in the Bible to denote the bodily fluids issued from the genitals of either a woman or a man.
Thus, in the Hebrew, the word "za-vat" suggests the idea of the land's gushing milk and honey in a sudden and copious flow, as well as its oozing them, and dripping them.
Another instance and context whereby this pair word of milk and honey is mentioned in Hebrew Scriptures is in the Song of Songs [xir ha xirim] in 4, 11 : "milk and honey are under your tongue" it has a very sensual meaning...which the sacred author depicts with all these figurative particles...well it's the way love is being expressed...and there are no inhibitions...the author is not in any way arrested in words...and provides us with a work that is as seductive...
Indeed, that's the only way God gets to deal with us...he is a seductive lover who is ever abundant in his love...he is a honeycomb who is always dripping...
Off to lick off some honey!!!
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