Deuteronomy 6:10-11

Exhortation to Worship the Lord Exclusively

6:10 Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you – a land with large, fine cities you did not build, 6:11 houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant – and you eat your fill,

Deuteronomy 11:10-12

11:10 For the land where you are headed ¹  is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, a land where you planted seed and which you irrigated by hand ²  like a vegetable garden. 11:11 Instead, the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy ³  is one of hills and valleys, a land that drinks in water from the rains, ⁴  11:12 a land the Lord your God looks after. ⁵  He is constantly attentive to it ⁶  from the beginning to the end of the year. ⁷ 

Exodus 3:8

3:8 I have come down ⁸  to deliver them ⁹  from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a land that is both good and spacious, ¹⁰  to a land flowing with milk and honey, ¹¹  to the region of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. ¹² 

Nehemiah 9:24-25

9:24 Their descendants ¹³  entered and possessed the land. You subdued before them the Canaanites who were the inhabitants of the land. You delivered them into their hand, together with their kings and the peoples of the land, to deal with as they pleased. 9:25 They captured fortified cities and fertile land. They took possession of houses full of all sorts of good things – wells previously dug, vineyards, olive trees, and fruit trees in abundance. They ate until they were full ¹⁴  and grew fat. They enjoyed to the full your great goodness.

Psalms 65:9-13

65:9 You visit the earth and give it rain; ¹⁵ 

you make it rich and fertile ¹⁶ 

with overflowing streams full of water. ¹⁷ 

You provide grain for them, ¹⁸ 

for you prepare the earth to yield its crops. ¹⁹ 

65:10 You saturate ²⁰  its furrows,

and soak ²¹  its plowed ground. ²² 

With rain showers you soften its soil, ²³ 

and make its crops grow. ²⁴ 

65:11 You crown the year with your good blessings, ²⁵ 

and you leave abundance in your wake. ²⁶ 

65:12 The pastures in the wilderness glisten with moisture, ²⁷ 

and the hills are clothed with joy. ²⁸ 

65:13 The meadows are clothed with sheep,

and the valleys are covered with grain.

They shout joyfully, yes, they sing.

Ezekiel 20:6

20:6 On that day I swore ²⁹  to bring them out of the land of Egypt to a land which I had picked out ³⁰  for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, ³¹  the most beautiful of all lands.

[11:10]  ¹ tn Heb “you are going there to possess it”; NASB “into which you are about to cross to possess it”; NRSV “that you are crossing over to occupy.”

[11:10]  ² tn Heb “with your foot” (so NASB, NLT). There is a two-fold significance to this phrase. First, Egypt had no rain so water supply depended on human efforts at irrigation. Second, the Nile was the source of irrigation waters but those waters sometimes had to be pumped into fields and gardens by foot-power, perhaps the kind of machinery (Arabic shaduf) still used by Egyptian farmers (see C. Aldred, The Egyptians, 181). Nevertheless, the translation uses “by hand,” since that expression is the more common English idiom for an activity performed by manual labor.

[11:11]  ³ tn Heb “which you are crossing over there to possess it.”

[11:11]  ⁴ tn Heb “rain of heaven.”

[11:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “seeks.” The statement reflects the ancient belief that God (Baal in Canaanite thinking) directly controlled storms and rainfall.

[11:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it” (so NIV); NASB, NRSV “always on it.”

[11:12]  ⁷ sn From the beginning to the end of the year. This refers to the agricultural year that was marked by the onset of the heavy rains, thus the autumn. See note on the phrase “the former and the latter rains” in v. 14.

[3:8]  ⁸ sn God’s coming down is a frequent anthropomorphism in Genesis and Exodus. It expresses his direct involvement, often in the exercise of judgment.

[3:8]  ⁹ tn The Hiphil infinitive with the suffix is לְהַצִּילוֹ (lÿhatsilo, “to deliver them”). It expresses the purpose of God’s coming down. The verb itself is used for delivering or rescuing in the general sense, and snatching out of danger for the specific.

[3:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “to a land good and large”; NRSV “to a good and broad land.” In the translation the words “that is both” are supplied because in contemporary English “good and” combined with any additional descriptive term can be understood as elative (“good and large” = “very large”; “good and spacious” = “very spacious”; “good and ready” = “very ready”). The point made in the Hebrew text is that the land to which they are going is both good (in terms of quality) and large (in terms of size).

[3:8]  ¹¹ tn This vibrant description of the promised land is a familiar one. Gesenius classifies “milk and honey” as epexegetical genitives because they provide more precise description following a verbal adjective in the construct state (GKC 418-19 §128.x). The land is modified by “flowing,” and “flowing” is explained by the genitives “milk and honey.” These two products will be in abundance in the land, and they therefore exemplify what a desirable land it is. The language is hyperbolic, as if the land were streaming with these products.

[3:8]  ¹² tn Each people group is joined to the preceding by the vav conjunction, “and.” Each also has the definite article, as in other similar lists (3:17; 13:5; 34:11). To repeat the conjunction and article in the translation seems to put more weight on the list in English than is necessary to its function in identifying what land God was giving the Israelites.

[9:24]  ¹³ tn Heb “the sons.”

[9:25]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “they ate and were sated.” This expression is a hendiadys. The first verb retains its full verbal sense, while the second functions adverbially: “they ate and were filled” = “they ate until they were full.”

[65:9]  ¹⁵ tn The verb form is a Polel from שׁוּק (shuq, “be abundant”), a verb which appears only here and in Joel 2:24 and 3:13, where it is used in the Hiphil stem and means “overflow.”

[65:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “you greatly enrich it.”

[65:9]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “[with] a channel of God full of water.” The divine name is probably used here in a superlative sense to depict a very deep stream (“a stream fit for God,” as it were).

[65:9]  ¹⁸ tn The pronoun apparently refers to the people of the earth, mentioned in v. 8.

[65:9]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “for thus [referring to the provision of rain described in the first half of the verse] you prepare it.” The third feminine singular pronominal suffix attached to the verb “prepare” refers back to the “earth,” which is a feminine noun with regard to grammatical form.

[65:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “saturating” [the form is an infinitive absolute].

[65:10]  ²¹ tn Heb “flatten, cause to sink.”

[65:10]  ²² tn Heb “trenches,” or “furrows.”

[65:10]  ²³ tn Heb “soften it,” that is, the earth.

[65:10]  ²⁴ tn Heb “its vegetation you bless.” Divine “blessing” often involves endowing an object with special power or capacity.

[65:11]  ²⁵ tn Heb “your good,” which refers here to agricultural blessings.

[65:11]  ²⁶ tn Heb “and your paths drip with abundance.”

[65:12]  ²⁷ tn Heb “drip.”

[65:12]  ²⁸ tn That is, with rich vegetation that brings joy to those who see it.

[20:6]  ²⁹ tn Heb “I lifted up my hand to them.”

[20:6]  ³⁰ tn Or “searched out.” The Hebrew word is used to describe the activity of the spies in “spying out” the land of Canaan (Num 13-14); cf. KJV “I had espied for them.”

[20:6]  ³¹ sn The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey,” a figure of speech describing the land’s abundant fertility, occurs in v. 15 as well as Exod 3:8, 17; 13:5; 33:3; Lev 20:24; Num 13:27; Deut 6:3; 11:9; 26:9; 27:3; Josh 5:6; Jer 11:5; 32:23 (see also Deut 1:25; 8:7-9).