492. Butter and Honey

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 11
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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 25:16,27, 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 17:29; Job 20:17; Song of Solomon 4:11. Honey and oil are named together in Deuteronomy 32:13.