Milk and Honey

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

This section of Deuteronomy has a passage that often cited by Pat McGeachy, the former pastor at Downtown Presbyterian Church: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.” As I recall, his take was that we are all wandering people, homeless until God brings us in from the wilderness. Something like that.

The main thrust of this passage is the first fruits idea: God gave you this land, so you bring the first fruits of the harvest to the priests. “He brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” It reminds me of Pete Seeger's version of the Norwegian folk song Oleanna: “When I first came to this land, I was not a wealthy man. But the land was sweet and good, and I did what I could.” I’ve been traveling to Iowa lately, and am reminded of the fertility of the land in an area like that which is still cultivated intensely. Driving from Des Moines I could smell the dirt, along with the drafts of manure you get out there.

The phrase “flowing with milk and honey” is strange when you think about it. Honey maybe that’s something you can just walk into a land and find, but milk comes from tending a herd. You don’t walk up to wild goats and get milk from them. And people have been tending hives a long time. No, the riches of the land are opportunity for you to work.

There is another take on this. Deuteronomy 6:10-12 describes the Promised Land as a place the people will conquer and take over, not build up:

“When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant..”

Maybe the land flows with milk and honey because of the people who were there first. The movement into the Promised Land is obviously a story of conquest, not the pioneer myth – which is really a story of conquest, but we like to think of it as Norwegians showing up in unoccupied acreage divided up into sections and ready for planting. Of course the point is so basic. Everything comes from God, from the force way past you, which allows your work to pay off.

You do have to recognize that the Bible contains a series of displacements, where God chooses to push one people aside and move his chosen people in. Of course, sometimes the tide goes the other way. But I think it is worth remembering the people who were there before, who are often the unspoken reverse side of the triumphs in the Bible. They didn’t deserve what happened to them, any more than the people of Israel deserved God’s bounty. God’s choice, both sides.