January 18, 2024 Bible Study — A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 1-3.

When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, He told Moses that He had come to rescue His people from the Egyptians and to bring them into a spacious land flowing with milk and honey.  A few verses later, God tells Moses to tell the elders of Israel the same thing.  A few weeks ago I heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson say that milk and honey are the only foods which do not require something to die in order to become food.  He went on to say that he didn’t think the writers of this passage realized that when they wrote it (this was just an aside, his main topic was criticizing vegans for not eating either of these foods).  It struck me that Neil Tyson had almost touched on something profound, and that he knew that he had.  As I thought about it, I concluded that the fact that nothing needs to die for us to consume milk and honey was part of why God used that expression for the Promised Land.  If nothing else, using that expression here was foreshadowing of the New Heaven and New Earth which God will create after His plans for this earth have been completed.  Nothing will need to die for the wellbeing of those who will live in the New Heaven and the New Earth.  I do believe that when God told Moses that He would bring His people into a land flowing with milk and honey He was telling them He would bring them into a land where He would provide for them and that they would not need to use violence to have their basic needs met.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.