Some Thoughts on Honey...
What Does Honey tell us about the Good News in the Bible?
I am currently reading about beekeeping. While I am still deciding whether I want to embark on this adventure, I have always loved honey and the idea of how it’s produced by bees in hives. One of my first stops at a farmer’s market is the local beekeeper. I find it fascinating looking at the different types of honey based on color and taste determined by what the bees are eating around the location of their hive.
Honey is mentioned an astonishing 61 times throughout the canon of the Bible. The sweet golden liquid is found in the commonly known phrase, “flows with milk and honey.” The relationship between the people of Israel and bees, and others in the ancient Near East, is an amazing development within the linear timeline of the Bible. In the Pentateuch, the bee is wild, and honey found in “clefts of rocks, hence the ‘honey out of the rock’ of Dt 32:13, in hollow tree-trunks (1 S 14:26, … and even, on occasion, in the skeleton of an animal (Jg 14:8ff.).”[1] The New Testament, regarding John the Baptist in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, the bible reader finds John feasting on wild honey. Naturally, the distinction indicates a domestication of the honeybee into local apiaries.
The use of honey in Sacred Scripture is often applied in simile and metaphor because of its consideration of “the bee is little, but her fruit is the chief of sweet things. (Sir 11:3).[2] The reader finds in the Psalms; the taste of honey is identified with ultimate felicity—an encounter with God Himself. The Psalm 119 illustrates this encounter of felicity is what gives meaning and order to the world:
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.[3]
The Wisdom Literature of Ancient Israel echoes the foundation of God’s promises and the good news in metaphor:
13 My son, eat honey, for it is good,
and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste.
14 Know that wisdom is such to your soul;
if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off. [4]
There are variations in manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke (Lk. 24:42) regarding Jesus’ appearance to His disciples after the resurrection. Jesus asks His disciples for something to eat and in some manuscripts Jesus is given broiled fish and honeycomb. The combination makes sense with the combination of protein and sugar to fuel energy into the muscles, but there is something deeper, the request is preceded with the reader being informed the disciples are in a state of joy by encountering the Risen Lord.
The notion of honey in simile and metaphor in Sacred Scripture echoes our journey of life this side of the eschaton. It is the experience of the wandering people of Israel searching for the promise land—the land flowing with milk and honey. The gospel of Luke is framed in a journey, a pilgrimage, from Galilee to the depths of the Dead Sea to the mount of Golgotha. So, what is the gospel—the good news? The good news is our journey doesn’t end with a bitter curse of trial and pointless journey through life. Our journey has purpose. We have a destination. The destination is the felicity of sweetness like milk and honey of one day being together with our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a state of unimaginable happiness.
May God grant us this grace.
[1] James Hastings et al., Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 360–361.
[2] James Hastings et al., Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 361.
[3] English Standard Version Catholic Edition (n.p.: Augustine Institute, 2019), Ps 119:103–104, ESV-CE
[4] Pr 24:13–14, ESV-CE
Thanks for the article and I listened to it today on the app as I was driving. I hope you get the honey bees and if you do decide to do it, maybe you can write about the whole process.