Honey (from its stickiness ); by analogy, syrup
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The Hebrew noun dĕbaš names honey and can also cover a sweet syrup or honey-like product. Scripture presents it as food found in the land, a gift carried or traded, a source of quick refreshment, and a familiar standard of sweetness.
Reader summary
Full entry for דְּבַשׁ (H1706) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun dĕbaš names honey and can also cover a sweet syrup or honey-like product. Scripture presents it as food found in the land, a gift carried or traded, a source of quick refreshment, and a familiar standard of sweetness.
The BSB source-word alignment has 54 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include and honey (28), honey (12), . . . (2), than honey (2), with honey (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 43:11. Its strongest book concentrations include Deuteronomy (8), Ezekiel (6), 1 Samuel (5), Exodus (5).
The Hebrew noun dĕbaš names honey and can also cover a sweet syrup or honey-like product. Scripture presents it as food found in the land, a gift carried or traded, a source of quick refreshment, and a familiar standard of sweetness. The phrase about a land flowing with milk and honey describes rich agricultural provision within God's promise to bring Israel out of Egyptian oppression.
Poetry compares the Lord's instruction and gracious words with honey, while Proverbs also warns that even a good sweetness can be consumed beyond what is fitting. Ezekiel tastes the prophetic scroll as sweet honey before carrying a difficult message. The noun does not make sweetness a guarantee of ease, wealth, or divine approval, and it does not turn every honey reference into a spiritual symbol.
Responsible teaching distinguishes actual food from poetic comparison, reads land language within its covenant and historical setting, and refuses to use promised abundance as a modern territorial claim or prosperity formula. Honey can invite gratitude, disciplined enjoyment, attention to God's word, and care for hungry people without supplying medical advice or a universal promise of material plenty.
Dĕbaš names nourishing sweetness and becomes a vivid measure for delight, abundance, refreshment, and excess. Its stories and poems keep honey grounded as actual food even when its sweetness carries a comparison.
I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
Milk and honey describe the good land within the Lord's rescue of Israel from Egypt, while the verse also names peoples already living there and requires the covenant narrative's full moral and historical context.
When Samson returned later to take her, he left the road to see the lion’s carcass, and in it was a swarm of bees, along with their honey.
Honey appears unexpectedly inside the lion's carcass and becomes the material behind Samson's riddle, secrecy, and escalating conflict.
Jonathan, however, had not heard that his father had bound the people with the oath. So he reached out the end of the staff in his hand, dipped it into the honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth, and his eyes brightened.
Honey restores Jonathan's strength after Saul's rash oath has left the troops faint, exposing the human cost of unwise leadership commands.
They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.
The psalm compares the Lord's judgments with the highest familiar sweetness and value while celebrating their truth, clarity, and warning.
If you find honey, eat just what you need, lest you have too much and vomit it up.
Wisdom treats honey as genuinely good yet capable of excess, using appetite to teach proportion rather than rejection of pleasure.
“Son of man,” He said to me, “eat and fill your stomach with this scroll I am giving you.” So I ate, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth.
The scroll tastes sweet before Ezekiel carries a hard prophetic commission, so pleasant reception does not mean an easy message or ministry.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Honey as sweetness and stickiness combined—captures both taste appeal and binding adhesive quality in biblical metaphor
Honey as sweetness and stickiness combined—captures both taste appeal and binding adhesive quality in biblical metaphor
honey (from its stickiness); by analogy, syrup BDB: honey Usage: honey(-comb).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 4 selected witnesses from 54 lexical occurrence verses.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Dĕbaš gives biblical writers a concrete sweetness readers can taste in imagination. Exodus uses milk and honey to describe the good land bound to Israel's rescue and covenant story. In Judges, honey found in a carcass becomes part of Samson's private knowledge and destructive riddle. In First Samuel, a small taste brightens Jonathan's eyes while revealing how Saul's rash oath weakened the army.
Psalms make honey a comparison for the delight and value of God's instruction, but Proverbs insists that delight needs proportion. Ezekiel's scroll is sweet in his mouth even though the commission that follows is weighty and resisted. Together these passages prevent a shallow theology of pleasantness. Sweet gifts can nourish, refresh, and teach, yet sweetness may accompany moral complexity, difficult obedience, and the need for restraint.
Faithful application receives food with gratitude, refuses prosperity promises detached from covenant context, and does not confuse emotional pleasure with truth. God's word may be delightful because it is good, even when receiving it commits a servant to costly faithfulness.
Ps.19.10
Dĕbaš is a masculine Hebrew noun commonly rendered honey. The licensed lexical record also allows syrup, which cautions against assuming that every land-abundance phrase specifies comb honey. Immediate narrative or poetic context determines whether the focus is food, trade, sweetness, provision, or comparison.
The New Testament continues to use sweetness, food, land, and seed imagery, but it does not turn H1706 into a direct code for gospel prosperity. John the Baptist eats wild honey, and Revelation gives John a scroll sweet in the mouth but bitter in the stomach, echoing Ezekiel's prophetic reception while adding its own commission. Jesus offers Himself as the true source of life, and the apostles call believers to desire God's word, yet each passage must govern its own vocabulary.
The canonical connection holds together gift, truth, restraint, and costly witness rather than promising uninterrupted pleasantness.