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Alternative Daily Text for Thursday, November 28, 2013
“Then he … gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” - (Deuteronomy 26:9)
God promised to bring the Israelites into “a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deuteronomy 6:3; 11:9; 31:20) What did this mean? Is “a land flowing with milk and honey” something worth striving for? Milk is used to produce butter; hence in “a land flowing with milk and honey” there would be butter and honey to eat. Regard this, a reference work says: “’Butter and honey are what everyone left remaining in the midst of the land will eat.’ This circumstance was to result from the devastation of Judah by the Assyrians. On account of this devastation, formerly cultivated land would become choked with weeds. Therefore, those left remaining in the land would have to subsist to a considerable degree on dairy products and wild honey.” – Insight on the Scriptures, volume II, page 402.
Another book says even more clearly what life in “a land flowing of milk and honey” will be like: “’Butter and honey’ will be eaten – nothing else, no wine, no bread, no other staples.” (Isaiah’s Prophecy – Light for All Mankind, volume I, page 110) “To help them keep the proper viewpoint as they entered the land ‘flowing with milk and honey,’ Jehovah reminded them: ‘Not by bread alone does man live.’” But not even such poor man’s food would be there in abundance; rather “the Israelites would have to work hard for their ‘milk and honey.’” – The Watchtower, September 1, 1998, page 20.
The times when people had to live on butter and honey are gone fortunately. But the “land flowing of milk and honey” actually “provided a small-scale example of what Paradise under God’s Kingdom will soon mean for mankind earth wide.” (The Watchtower, August 15, 1996, page 3) Admittedly, “for many, a bowl of hot oatmeal … is hard to beat,” especially when they “cook it with milk and honey.” (Awake!, February 8, 1974, page 17) But others will share the fate of Addie Clinton Few who said: “I don’t like milk, and I don’t like honey! … I’m gonna starve to death!” – Awake!, July 22, 1974, page 20.