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Bible Encyclopedias
Honey
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or In the Scripture there are three words denoting different sweet substances, all of which are rendered by 'honey' in the Authorized Version. These it is necessary to distinguish.
1. Yaar, which only occurs in;;;; and denotes the honey of bees, and that only.
2. Nopeth, honey that drops, usually associated with the comb, and therefore bee-honey. This occurs in;;;; .
3. Debesh. This is the most frequent word. It sometimes denotes bee-honey, as in , but more commonly a vegetable honey distilled from trees, and called manna by chemists; also the syrup of dates, and even dates themselves. It appears also sometimes to stand as a general term for all kinds of honey.
We shall here confine our remarks to honey in general, and that of bees in particular, referring for the vegetable honey to Manna, and for the date-honey to Drink, Strong.
It is very evident that the land of Canaan abounded in honey. It is indeed described as a 'land flowing with milk and honey' (, etc.); which we apprehend to refer to all the sweet substances which the different Hebrew words indicate, as the phrase seems too large to be confined to the honey of bees alone. Yet the great number of bees in Palestine has been noticed by many travelers; and they were doubtless still more common in ancient times when the soil was under more general cultivation [BEE; FOOD].
The 'wild honey' which, with locusts, formed the diet of John the Baptist, was probably the vegetable honey, which we refer to Manna.
Honey was not permitted to be offered on the altar (). As it is coupled with leaven in this prohibition, it would seem to amount to an interdiction of things sour and sweet. Aben Ezra and others allege that it was because honey partook of the fermenting nature of leaven, and when burnt yielded an unpleasant smell—qualities incompatible with offerings made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord. But Maimonides and others think it was for the purpose of making a difference between the religious customs of the Jews and the heathen, in whose offerings honey was much employed. The first fruits of honey were, however, to be presented, as these were destined for the support of the priests, and not to be offered upon the altar.
Under the different heads to which we have referred, the passages of Scripture relating to honey are explained. The remarkable incident related in , requires, however, to be here noticed. Jonathan and his party coming to the wood, find honey dropping from the trees to the ground, and the prince extends his rod to the honeycomb to taste the honey. On this the present writer is unable to add anything to what he has stated elsewhere (Pictorial Bible, in loc.), which is to the following effect:—First, we are told that the honey was on the ground, then that it dropped, and lastly, that Jonathan put his rod into the honeycomb. From all this it is clear that the honey was bee-honey, and that honeycombs were above in the trees, from which honey dropped upon the ground; but it is not clear whether Jonathan put his rod into a honeycomb that was in the trees or shrubs, or into one that had fallen to the ground, or that had been formed there.
Where wild bees are abundant they form their combs in any convenient place that offers, particularly in cavities, or even on the branches of trees. In India particularly, and in the Indian islands, the forests often swarm with bees. We have good reason to conclude, from many allusions in Scripture, that this was also, to a considerable extent, the case formerly in Palestine. The woods on the western coast of Africa, between Cape Blanco and Sierra Leone, and particularly near the Gambia, are full of bees, to which the negroes formerly, if they do not now, paid considerable attention for the sake of the wax. They had bee-hives, like baskets, made of reeds and sedge, and hung on the out-boughs of the tree: which the bees easily appropriated for the purpose of forming their combs in them. In some parts these hives were so thickly placed that at a distance they looked like fruit. There was also much wild honey in the cavities of the trees. As to the other supposition, that the honeycomb had been formed on the ground, we think the context rather bears against it; but the circumstance is not in itself unlikely, or incompatible with the habits of wild bees. For want of a better resource they sometimes form their honey in any tolerably convenient spot they can find in the ground, such as small hollows, or even holes formed by animals.
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Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Honey'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/h/honey.html.
