Jeremiah 11:5

5. Land flowing with milk and honey Who has not felt the difficulty of this description as applied to Palestine? Three considerations tend to relieve it: 1) Its contrast with Egypt, which the Israelites of that day would set up as a standard, it being the only land with which they were acquainted when this language was at first used. Now Egypt is literally the creation of the Nile. In the immediate vicinity of that river the country is exceedingly fertile, but elsewhere a sterile desert. Palestine, with its hills and valleys, its plains and its forests, its watercourses and its seacoasts, was indeed, especially to a pastoral people, a rich land in comparison. 2) Its contrast with the Sinaitic peninsula. Forty years of experience in Arabia Petrea would prepare the people fora very keen appreciation of such a land as Palestine, which was, as compared with this, almost as “the garden of the Lord.” 3) Its contrast with itself at the present time. Twenty centuries of neglect and abuse have doubtless materially changed the face of this land.

It is not doubtful that the Canaan of the Old Testament was a very different country from the Palestine of to-day. And putting with all the rest the character of Oriental speech, which delights in pictorial phrases, we shall not find it difficult to understand the expressions which seem to many so exaggerated.

Then answered I As though the old scene so graphically described in Deuteronomy 27:14-26, was being re-enacted. The answer of the prophet is the same as the people then made, and should be translated, as there, Amen, Jehovah.