ith milk and honey
is, according to Numb. xiv. 7, 8, a "very good land." The _cream_ is,
as it were, a gradation of _milk_. Considering the predilection for fat
and sweet food which we perceive everywhere in the Old Testament, there
can scarcely be anything better than cream and honey; and it is
certainly not spoken in accordance with Israelitish taste, if _Hofmann_
(_Weiss_, i. S. 227) thus paraphrases the sense: "It is not because he
does not know what tastes well and better (cream and honey thus the
evil!), that he will live upon the food which an uncultivated land can
afford, but because there is none other." In Deut. xxxii. 13, 14, cream
and honey appear among the noblest products of the Holy Land. Abraham
places cream before his heavenly guests, Gen. xviii. 8. The plenty in
honey and cream appears in Job xx. 7, as a characteristic sign of the
divine blessing of which the wicked are deprived. It is solely and
exclusively vers. 21 and 22 that are referred to for establishing the
erroneous interpretation. It is asserted that, according to these
verses, the eating of milk and honey must be considered as an evil, as
the sad consequence of a general devastation of the hind. But there are
grave objections to any attempt at explaining a preceding from a
subsequent passage; the opposite mode of proceeding is the right one.
It is altogether wrong, however, to suppose that vers. 21, 22, contain
a threatening. In those verses the Prophet, on the contrary, allows, as
is usual with him, a _ray of light_ to fall upon the dark picture of
the [Pg 57] calamity which threatens from Asshur; and it could, indeed,
_a priori_, be scarcely imagined that the threatening should not be
interrupted, at least by such a gentle allusion to the salvation to be
bestowed upon them after the misery (comp. in reference to a similar
sudden breaking through of the proclamation of salvation in Hosea, Vol.
I., p. 175, and the remarks on Micah ii. 12, 13); but then he returns
to the threatening, because it was, in the meantime, his principal
vocation to utter it, and thereby to destroy the foolish illusions of
the God-forgetting king. It is in the subsequent prophecy only, chap
viii. 1; ix. 6 (7) that that which is alluded to in vers. 21, 22 is
carried out. The little which has been left--this is the sense--the
Lord will bless so abundantly, that those who are spared in the divine
judgment will enjoy a rich abundance of divine blessings. Parallel is
the u