Bible Trivia - 5/27/2008

Question: What 2 lands in the Bible are described as flowing with milk and honey?

Answer: Egypt and Canaan. (Exodus 3:8; Numbers 16:13)

Comments: The expression "flowing with milk and honey" has been diluted with over a millenia of English usage. "Flowing with milk and honey" was one of the first Bible expressions to make its way into the English language (circa 1000 CE). "Land of milk and honey" first appeared in Ælfric's rendering of Numbers 16:13 while "flowing with milk and honey" first appeared three centuries later in John Wycliffe (d. 1384)'s 1382 translation of Ezekiel 20:6. The phrase was evidently common in English speech by the time William Tyndale (pictured, 1494-1536) used it in translating Exodus 3:8, as he claimed never to have glanced at any other English version of the Bible before developing his own.

"So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite." (Exodus 3:8, NASB)