Deuteronomy 8:8

A land of wheat and barley,.... There were two harvests in it, one a barley harvest, which began at the passover, and the other a wheat harvest, which began at Pentecost: instances of the great

A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; A land of wheat, and barley.

Of olive oil, Heb. of the olive tree of oil, i.e. not of wild and barren, but of fruitful olive trees, which yield plenty of oil.

Deuteronomy 8:8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;Ver. 8. A land of wheat and barley.] Sumen totius orbis. Strabo basely slandereth this fat and fertile country as dry and barren; but Rabshakeh and Tacitus tell us otherwise. The testimony here given of it is above all exception.

Verse 8. A land of wheat, c.] On the subject of this verse I shall introduce the following remarks, which I find in Mr. Harmer's Observations on the Fertility of the Land of Judea, vol. iii., p. 243. "Hasselquist tells us that he ate olives at Joppa (upon his first arrival in the Holy Land) which were said to grow on the Mount of Olives, near Jerusalem and that, independently of their oiliness, they were of the best kind he had tasted in the Levant. As olives are frequently eaten in their repasts, the delicacy of this fruit in Judea ought not to be forgotten; and the oil that is gotten from these trees much less, because still more often made use of. In the progress of his journey he found several fine vales, abounding with olive trees. He saw also olive trees in Galilee; but none farther, he says, than the mountain where it is supposed our Lord preached his sermon. "The fig trees in the neighbourhood of Joppa, Hasselquist goes on to inform us, were as beautiful as any he had seen in the Levant. "The reason why pomegranates are distinctly mentioned, in this description of the productions of the land of promise, may be their great usefulness in forming cooling drinks, for they are used among the Asiatics nearly in the same way that we use lemons; see vol. ii., 145. "Honey is used in large quantities in these countries; and Egypt was celebrated for the assiduous care with which the people there managed their bees. Maillet's account of it is very amusing. 'There are,' says he, 'abundance of bees in that country; and a singular manner of feeding them, introduced by the Egyptians of ancient times, still continues there. Towards the end of October, when the Nile, upon its decrease, gives the peasants an opportunity of sowing the lands, sainfoin is one of the first things sown, and one of the most profitable. As the Upper Egypt is hotter than the Lower, and the inundation there goes sooner off the lands, the sainfoin appears there first. The knowledge they have of this causes them to send their bee-hives from all parts of Egypt, that the bees may enjoy, as soon as may be, the richness of the flowers, which grow in this part of the country sooner than in any other district of the kingdom. The hives, upon their arrival at the farther end of Egypt, are placed one upon another in the form of pyramids, in boats prepared for their reception, after having been numbered by the people who place them in the boats.

8. wheat and barley] Not the most characteristic products of Palestine, but put first as the staple food of man and the principal distinction of the cultivated soil from the desert, the land not sown (Jeremiah 2:2). On the distribution of wheat and barley in Palestine see Jerusalem, i. 298 f. These two grains are followed by four fruits. vines and fig trees and pomegranates … oil olives] ‘Far more than any grain the staple products of the Judaean range have been its fruit-trees and especially the great triad of the Olive, Vine and Fig, the three which in the ancient parable the trees desire in turn to make their king’ (Jerusalem, 1:299 ff. which see for the distribution of these trees and their power as factors in civilisation and human wealth). Here the Olive is taken apart from its usual companions Vine and Fig either because of its importance or for the rhythm of the prose. Oil olives, lit. the olive of oil, the cultivated and grafted, as distinguished from the wild, olive. Cp. 2 Kings 18:32 with the other word for oil, yiṣ ?har, used above Deuteronomy 7:13 (q.v.); here it is shemen. honey] See on Deuteronomy 6:3.

7, 8. A good land — In these verses Moses contrasts the sterility of the almost waterless desert with the fertility of the land they are soon to possess. They are to have a land of brooks and fountains.