The Land of Milk and Honey

Abstract

Although the familiar phrase ‘a land oozing milk and honey’ is traditionally understood as being a hyperbolic description of lush fertility, this study attempts to demonstrate that it is a meliorative expression signifying uncultivated land. Such topography is well suited for pasturing, but not for agriculture. This unirrigated land produces natural vegetation according to the vicissitudes of annual precipitation, thereby allowing only a tenuous subsistence economy. Although ‘a land oozing milk and honey’ is markedly superior to wilderness regions, it is markedly inferior to irrigated agricultural areas. Consequently, rather than being an invariable blessing, a ‘milk and honey’ economy in biblical literature frequently signifies the aftermath of catastrophe and the disruption of a thriving agricultural society. It is the very precariousness of the ‘land oozing milk and honey’ that makes Israel's obeying its Covenant with God an absolute necessity for continued survival in the Promised Land. The phrase is invariably used with reference or allusion to the Covenant, for Israel's subsistence is conditional upon its ongoing loyalty and God's reciprocal bestowal of rainfall to assure the natural vegetation required to sustain life.