492. Butter and Honey

From: Manners and Customs of the Bible By: James M. Freeman

• 1 min. read • grade level: 11

Isaiah 7:15¹⁵Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. (Isaiah 7:15). Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

See also verse 22. Honey is frequently mixed with various forms of milk preparations and used upon bread. The Arabs in traveling often take leathern bottles full of honey for this purpose. It is considered very palatable, especially by the children. The context shows that the reference in the text is made particularly to the days of childhood. The fourteenth verse refers to the birth of a son, and the sixteenth to his early infancy. It is of this child that it is said, “Butter and honey shall he eat.”

There may be in the mixture of these two substances a propriety founded on physiological facts. Wood, in speaking of the Musquaw, or American Black Bear, after giving an account of its method of obtaining the wild honey which is found in hollow trees, adds: “The hunters, who are equally fond of honey, find that if it is eaten in too great plenty it produces very unpleasant symptoms, which may be counteracted by mixing it with the oil which they extract from the fat of the bear” (Illustrated Natural History, vol.1, p. 397). We find in Proverbs 25:16,27¹⁶Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it. (Proverbs 25:16)
²⁷It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory. (Proverbs 25:27), allusion to the disagreeable consequences of eating too much honey, and it is possible that experience had proved the oily nature of the butter a corrective of the honey.

Butter is mentioned in connection with honey in 2 Samuel 17:29²⁹And honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat: for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness. (2 Samuel 17:29); Job 20:17¹⁷He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter. (Job 20:17); Song of {s 22221}Solomon 4:11¹¹Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. (Song of Solomon 4:11). Honey and oil are named together in Deuteronomy 32:13¹³He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; (Deuteronomy 32:13).

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