I’m not exactly sure how old I was when I first realized that the land flowing with milk and honey didn’t actually have milk and honey flowing through it. For some reason, I always pictured it as something similar to Wonka’s factory – just a land with literal milk rivers and waterfalls with honey flowing over the cliffside.
Obviously, that wasn’t exactly what God had in mind. Metaphorically, I think the Israelites got the picture though, because when they actually take the land in Numbers 13:27, the spies affirmed that it “does indeed flow with milk and honey.”
Further complicating this idea of a “land flowing with milk and honey” are pictures that you can see of Israel today. As a kid, every picture I saw of Canaan looked the same: dry, dusty, and brown. Now I realize that there are plenty of lush areas, but for a long time, this whole concept really confused me.
Nevertheless, God tells Moses that He has heard the suffering of His people. At this point, He plans on bringing them to a land that is so full of vegetation, that the cows will be able to produce tons of milk, and the bees will have plenty of plants to find nectar. That’s what He meant by a land of milk and honey.
For a nation that has spent several generations steeped in slavery, and who had moved there originally because of the beautiful farm land in Goshen, this should have been music to their ears. But as we know, they hem-hawed around in the wilderness during the Exodus, looking for every opportunity to abandon God and Moses and head back to Egypt.
Further complicating the matters was the mention in Exodus 3:17 of the presence of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. ALL of them live there now, which means that, once they got there, they would have to clear out the area first.
Which they don’t do. Judges 1 shows a whole list of lands that are left untaken by the time of Joshua’s death, so even though this land is there for the taking, they let their own laziness or disinterest or fear or whatever keep them away.
Which kind of describes us sometimes, doesn’t it? People really haven’t changed much. We have our own land flowing with milk and honey that’s already been “conquered” and is there for the taking.
Why don’t we rise up? Why are not so excited to get there? Why do we not do whatever it takes to persevere through the wilderness of our own lives? Once we get a handle on that, we’ll have a much better idea of who these people were and why they did what they did throughout the book of Exodus.
