tterance of Isaiah in 2 Kings xix. 30: "And the escaped of the
house of Judah, that which has been left, taketh root downward, and
beareth fruit upward."--If thus the eating of cream and honey be
rightly understood, there is no farther necessity for explaining, in
opposition to the rules of grammar, [Hebrew: ldetv] by "(only) until he
knows" (comp. against this interpretation _Drechsler's Comment._).
[Hebrew: ldetv] can only mean: "belonging to his knowledge, _i.e._,
when he knows." _Good_ and _evil_ are, as early as Deut. i. 39: "Your
sons who to-day do not know good and evil," used more in a physical
than in a moral sense. Michaelis: "_rerum omnium ignari_." The parallel
expression, "not to be able to discern between the right hand and the
left hand," in Jonah iv. 11 (Michaelis: "_discretio rationis et
judicii, ut sciant utra manus sit dextra aut sinistra_") likewise loses
sight of the moral sense. But good and evil are very decidedly used in
a physical sense in 2 Sam. xix. 36 (35), where Barzillai says: "I am
this day fourscore years old, can I discern between good and evil, or
has thy servant a taste of what I eat or drink, or do I hear any more
the voice of singing men or singing women?" The connection with the
eating of cream and honey, by which the good and evil is qualified,
clearly proves that good and evil are, in our passage, used in a
similar sense. To the same result we are led by the circumstance also,
that the evil _precedes_, which must so much the rather have a meaning,
that nowhere else is this the case with this phrase. The evil, the [Pg
58] bad food in the time of war, precedes; the good follows after it:
Cream and honey, the good, he will eat when he knows to refuse the evil
and choose the good, _i.e._, when he is beyond the time where he does
not yet know to make any great difference between the food, and in
which, therefore, the evil, the bad food, is felt as an evil. If the
good and the evil be understood in a physical sense, then, in harmony
with chap. viii. 4, we must think of the period of about one year.
Moral consciousness develops much later than sensual liking and
disliking.--The construction of [Hebrew: mas] and [Hebrew: bHr]
with [Hebrew: b] points to the affection which accompanies the
action.--[Hebrew: ki] in ver. 16 suits very well, according to the view
which we have taken, in its ordinary signification, "for." The full
enjoyment of the good things of the land will return in the period