Milk (as the richness of kine)
Reading a lexicon entry
What this page is: Each lexicon entry shows the original Hebrew or Greek word behind the English translation: its meaning, its range of use, and where it appears in Scripture.
Strong's number: The Strong's code (H- or G-) is the standard reference number for this word. It connects this entry to chapter and passage language tabs.
Where it appears: The witness passages show where this word is used in context. Click any to open the study page for that passage.
This lexicon entry is part of our ongoing editorial review. If you notice missing content, unclear wording, or a possible correction, please send us a note through theConnect page. Screenshots are helpful.
The Hebrew noun ḥālāb names milk and, in some contexts, curds, cheese, or milk-derived nourishment. It appears at hospitable tables, in descriptions of livestock provision, in poetry about bodily formation and beauty, and in the recurring phrase about a land flowing with milk and honey.
Reader summary
Full entry for חָלָב (H2461) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun ḥālāb names milk and, in some contexts, curds, cheese, or milk-derived nourishment. It appears at hospitable tables, in descriptions of livestock provision, in poetry about bodily formation and beauty, and in the recurring phrase about a land flowing with milk and honey.
The BSB source-word alignment has 44 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include with milk (21), milk (5), and milk (4), of milk (3), than milk (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 18:8. Its strongest book concentrations include Deuteronomy (8), Exodus (6), Isaiah (4), Numbers (4).
The Hebrew noun ḥālāb names milk and, in some contexts, curds, cheese, or milk-derived nourishment. It appears at hospitable tables, in descriptions of livestock provision, in poetry about bodily formation and beauty, and in the recurring phrase about a land flowing with milk and honey. Milk can therefore signal daily food, agricultural abundance, welcome, and poetic richness.
Isaiah 55 places it in a gracious invitation to receive without money what truly satisfies. Yet the word does not promise wealth, health, fertility, or land to every faithful reader. Judges 5 places milk inside Jael's deadly encounter with Sisera, showing that a nourishing drink does not determine the moral meaning of the whole scene. Job's image of being poured out like milk is lamenting poetry, not a scientific account of human development.
Song of Songs uses milk within intimate praise that belongs to the poem's mutual and private setting. Responsible teaching selects the actual food or figurative force from context, preserves covenant and literary boundaries, and avoids turning milk into medical advice, spiritual rank, or a simplistic symbol of innocence.
Ḥālāb names milk and related nourishment across hospitality, land abundance, war narrative, lament, intimate poetry, and prophetic invitation. The shared food image serves different purposes, so the surrounding scene must control its meaning.
Then Abraham brought curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and he set them before the men and stood by them under the tree as they ate.
Curds and milk form part of the meal Abraham sets before his visitors, grounding welcome in prepared food and attentive service.
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 portray the land's rich provision within Israel's rescue, while the verse's named inhabitants prevent the phrase from becoming an unexamined slogan.
He asked for water, and she gave him milk. In a magnificent bowl she brought him curds.
Deborah's song remembers Jael giving Sisera milk and curds immediately before killing him, placing generous-looking provision inside a violent wartime reversal.
Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese?
Job uses milk curdling as one image in his anguished address to the God who formed and now seems to oppose him.
Your lips, my bride, drip sweetness like the honeycomb; honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garments is like the aroma of Lebanon.
The lover's private praise joins milk with honey, fragrance, and speech inside the Song's intimate poetry rather than a general rule for evaluating bodies or relationships.
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you without money, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost!
Isaiah uses water, wine, milk, and food in a free invitation to receive the Lord's life-giving covenant provision instead of spending for what cannot satisfy.
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. Milk as symbol of abundance and nourishment; distinctly marks promised land's fertility in covenantal language
Milk as symbol of abundance and nourishment; distinctly marks promised land's fertility in covenantal language
milk (as the richness of kine) BDB: milk Usage: cheese, milk, sucking.
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 1 selected witness from 44 lexical occurrence verses.
חָלָב is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Ḥālāb keeps nourishment close to embodied life. Abraham serves curds and milk to travelers, and the land flowing with milk and honey represents the agricultural provision bound to God's rescue of Israel. Judges unsettles any fixed symbolism by placing milk in Jael's encounter with Sisera, where hospitality-shaped action precedes violence. Job turns curdling milk into language for the mystery of his own formation while he protests suffering.
Song of Songs gives milk a private poetic place in lovers' praise. Isaiah 55 then invites people without money to receive wine and milk freely, redirecting desire toward God's covenant word and mercy. No one image controls the others. Milk may nourish, welcome, entice, or illustrate, but it does not independently prove innocence, maturity, wealth, or divine approval.
Faithful teaching honors food as a creaturely gift, recognizes pastoral realities such as scarcity and dietary limits, and preserves the privacy of intimate poetry. The prophetic invitation gives generosity its deepest direction: God's life-giving provision is not purchased by status or wealth, and hearers are summoned to listen and live.
Isa.55.1
Ḥālāb is a masculine Hebrew noun for milk. BSB sometimes renders the tagged form as curds, cheese, or sucking where food product or activity is contextually prominent. Translation does not make these separate hidden meanings; narrative, poetry, and collocation indicate which milk-related sense is intended.
The New Testament uses milk imagery for nourishment and teaching in its own Greek vocabulary, sometimes describing early growth and sometimes the goodness of God's word. Those passages should not be collapsed into H2461, nor should milk always be equated with immaturity. Jesus fulfills God's invitation to the thirsty, and the gospel announces grace that cannot be bought, but Isaiah 55's water, wine, and milk retain their prophetic setting.
The canonical connection lies in God as provider, hospitality as embodied care, desire redirected toward what gives life, and growth nourished by truth.