Why was Israel called the land of milk and honey?

This from cows, goats, sheep and camels is plentifully used in the East. It is drunk in its natural condition, or shaken up in a skin into a sour curdled state, called in scripture 'butter.' Flocks and herds were so numerous, and wild honey so plenteous, that the country was fitly called 'a land flowing with milk and honey.' Gen. 18:8; Ex. 3:8, 17; Ex. 23:19; Joel 3:18. Milk is regarded as such a necessary article of sustenance that it is associated with wine to prefigure that which grace now supplies, without money and without price, and which will be supplied to Israel in a future day. Isa. 55:1. In the description of Israel's promised glory it is said, "Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles." Isa. 60:16. In the N.T. milk is a symbol of the sustenance of God's word, 1 Peter 2:2; and is also referred to as food for infants in contrast to the solid food used by adults. 1 Cor. 3:2; Heb. 5:12-13.

God Himself describes the land as "a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." Deut. 8:7-9. Universal testimony is given to the great productiveness of the soil if it were properly cultivated; but under the judgement of God and the misrule of man comparatively little has been produced until the State of Israel was founded in the twentieth century.

Second, He declared His purpose to deliver His people from the slavery of Egypt and bring them into a land, "flowing with milk and honey." This is what Palestine was, as corroborated by the spies, in Numbers 13:27; it is what the land will be in a coming day, though for centuries it has lain desolate. The blessings of that land were earthly, but they came from the hand of God and were not won as the result of irrigation and toil as in the case of Egypt.

"For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey" (Deut. 8:7-8). God brought His people Israel out of Egypt, in order to bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey. Between Egypt and the Land they were led through the wilderness in order to be tested. The wilderness did not form part of God's purpose for them; Canaan was the land of promise. The early part of this chapter describes how God cared for His people in the wilderness. He fed them with manna that they might know that, "man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live" (Deut. 8:3). The passage at the beginning of this section refers to Canaan with all its resources. There was no shortage there-all they required was available in abundance. These verses give a glowing picture of that land. Limiting ourselves to the particular subject of our present study, we are told that the good land was a "land of oil olive." This feature was a necessary element of the richness of the land, and could not be done without.

Insisting that Israel remember to keep God's commandments, Moses gave as an incentive the promise of the Lord to bring them into "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey," in which they would have no scarcity, a land producing iron and copper (vs.6-8).

Their gospel, rung out by Caleb and Joshua, was very simple: "It is an exceeding good land." That was glad tidings, surely. But what was working in Israel's heart? Unbelief. Does it work in yours? Joshua says, "If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us: a land which flows with milk and honey" (Num. 14:8). Unbelief ever says, "We be not able." My dear friend, don't think about yourself. Do you think you are able for anything? Not at all. What is not possible with man is possible with God. You could not be saved by anything of yourself. Impossible. How could you fit yourself for God? Again, impossible, but by the work of His Son, and the testimony of His Spirit, God opens up regions of glory which faith apprehends, and the heart then deeply enjoys. The whole twelve, observe, had to own that it was a land that flowed with milk and honey. Milk is most satisfying, there is nothing more sustaining than milk. And there is nothing sweeter than honey. And all you have to do is to appropriate and taste that which God presents to and presses on you.

Salvation by such an one must be a complete salvation; and it is not complete until the land of promise is their own. Six nations are specified here as to be overthrown, — the full power of evil, and the land is a good land and a large, flowing with milk and honey. It is not a land of straitness, as Egypt is, — and heaven is not conditioned by the needs and struggles of earth. The "river" is not at strife with the desert there. There is all "fatness," which the word for milk literally means, and all sweetness, as the honey implies. Salvation for us must issue in satisfaction, or it is not salvation. Our Canaan, as we shall later learn, is to be entered upon now by faith.

The reference in the opening sentence of the Book to famine in the land is itself suggestive of the degenerate state of the chosen people. In their case, famine was not a mere physical contingency, but a mark of divine displeasure. The land which Jehovah had bestowed upon the children of Israel was "a land that flows with milk and honey" — milk from well-fed flocks and herds, and honey from luxuriant vegetation. A threat of starvation in such a fertile land implied that the chastisement of God had fallen upon the tribes because they had neglected His worship and transgressed His laws. And that for this reason God withheld rain from heaven they could have learned from the words of Moses (Deut. 11:8-15). At any rate, we read here, "And it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled (judged) that there was a famine in the land" (ver. 1). The physical fact is stated, but not its moral cause.

For forty days the land was searched and the men returned with ample evidence of the fertility of the land; that it did indeed flow with milk and honey, and bore fruit of exceptional size. The land was fully what God had declared it to be.

"For the Lord thy God brings thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates, a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass."

How fair was the prospect! How bright the vision! How marked the contrast to the Egypt behind them and the wilderness through which they had passed! The Lord's land lay before them in all its beauty and verdure, its vine-clad hills and honeyed plains, its gushing fountains and flowing streams. How refreshing the thought of the vine, the fig-tree, the pomegranate and the olive! How different from the leeks, onions and garlic of Egypt! Yes, all so different! It was the Lord's own land: this was enough. It produced and contained all they could possibly want. Above its surface, rich profusion; below, untold wealth, exhaustless treasure.

What a prospect! How the faithful Israelite would long to enter upon it! — long to exchange the sand of the desert for that bright inheritance! True, the desert had its deep and blessed experiences, its holy lessons, its precious memories. There they had known Jehovah in a way they could not know Him even in Canaan; all this was quite true, and we can fully understand it; but still the wilderness was not Canaan, and every true Israelite would long to set his foot on the land of promise, and truly we may say that Moses presents the land, in the passage just quoted, in a way eminently calculated to attract the heart. "A land," he says, "wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it." What more could be said? Here was the grand fact, in reference to that good land into which the hand of covenant love was about to introduce them. All their wants would be divinely met. Hunger and thirst should never be known there. Health and plenty, joy and gladness, peace and blessing were to be the assured portion of the Israel of God, in that fair inheritance upon which they were about to enter. Every enemy was to be subdued; every obstacle swept away; "the pleasant land," was to pour forth its treasures for their use; watered continually by heaven's rain, and warmed by its sunlight, it was to bring forth, in rich abundance, all that the heart could desire.