Deuteronomy 6:8

6:8 You should tie them as a reminder on your forearm ¹  and fasten them as symbols ²  on your forehead.

Deuteronomy 26:9

26:9 Then he brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Leviticus 20:24

20:24 So I have said to you: You yourselves will possess their land and I myself will give it to you for a possession, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God who has set you apart from the other peoples. ³ 

Numbers 13:27

13:27 They told Moses, ⁴  “We went to the land where you sent us. ⁵  It is indeed flowing with milk and honey, ⁶  and this is its fruit.

Numbers 14:8

14:8 If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us – a land that is flowing with milk and honey. ⁷ 

Joshua 5:6

5:6 Indeed, for forty years the Israelites traveled through the desert until all the men old enough to fight when they left Egypt, the ones who had disobeyed the Lord, died off. ⁸  For the Lord had sworn a solemn oath to them that he would not let them see the land he had sworn on oath to give them, ⁹  a land rich in ¹⁰  milk and honey.

Jeremiah 11:5

11:5 Then I will keep the promise I swore on oath to your ancestors to give them a land flowing with milk and honey.” ¹¹  That is the very land that you still live in today.’” ¹²  And I responded, “Amen! Let it be so, ¹³  Lord!”

Jeremiah 32:22

32:22 You kept the promise that you swore on oath to their ancestors. ¹⁴  You gave them a land flowing with milk and honey. ¹⁵ 

¹ sn Tie them as a sign on your forearm. Later Jewish tradition referred to the little leather containers tied to the forearms and foreheads as tefillin. They were to contain the following passages from the Torah: Exod 13:1-10, 11-16; Deut 6:5-9; 11:13-21. The purpose was to serve as a “sign” of covenant relationship and obedience.

² sn Fasten them as symbols on your forehead. These were also known later as tefillin (see previous note) or phylacteries (from the Greek term). These box-like containers, like those on the forearms, held the same scraps of the Torah. It was the hypocritical practice of wearing these without heartfelt sincerity that caused Jesus to speak scathingly about them (cf. Matt 23:5).

³ tc Here and with the same phrase in v. 26, the LXX adds “all,” resulting in the reading “all the peoples.”

⁴ tn Heb “told him and said.” The referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ tn The relative clause modifies “the land.” It is constructed with the relative and the verb: “where you sent us.”

⁶ sn This is the common expression for the material abundance of the land (see further, F. C. Fensham, “An Ancient Tradition of the Fertility of Palestine,” PEQ 98 [1966]: 166-67).

⁷ tn The subjective genitives “milk and honey” are symbols of the wealth of the land, second only to bread. Milk was a sign of such abundance (Gen 49:12; Isa 7:21,22). Because of the climate the milk would thicken quickly and become curds, eaten with bread or turned into butter. The honey mentioned here is the wild honey (see Deut 32:13; Judg 14:8-9). It signified sweetness, or the finer things of life (Ezek 3:3).

⁸ tn Heb “all the nation, the men of war who went out from Egypt, who did not listen to the voice of the Lord, came to an end.”

⁹ tn Some Hebrew mss, as well as the Syriac version, support this reading. Most ancient witnesses read “us.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “flowing with.”

¹¹ tn The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey” is very familiar to readers in the Jewish and Christian traditions as a proverbial description of the agricultural and pastoral abundance of the land of Israel. However, it may not mean too much to readers outside those traditions; an equivalent expression would be “a land of fertile fields and fine pastures.” E. W. Bullinger (Figures of Speech, 626) identifies this as a figure of speech called synecdoche where the species is put for the genus, “a region…abounding with pasture and fruits of all kinds.”

¹² tn Heb “‘a land flowing with milk and honey,’ as at this day.” However, the literal reading is too elliptical and would lead to confusion.

¹³ tn The words “Let it be so” are not in the text; they are an explanation of the significance of the term “Amen” for those who may not be part of the Christian or Jewish tradition.

¹⁴ tn Heb “fathers.”

¹⁵ tn For an alternative translation of the expression “a land flowing with milk and honey” see the translator’s note on 11:5.