Idiom
a land flowing with milk and honey
Meaning
A place of great abundance, comfort, and prosperity.
Examples
“The settlers were promised a land flowing with milk and honey.”
“The brochure sold the region as a land flowing with milk and honey, though the reality was mostly dust.”
“Recruiters described the new city as a land flowing with milk and honey — high wages, cheap housing, endless work — and neglected to mention the winters.”
Examples
simple
“The settlers were promised a land flowing with milk and honey.”
contextual
“The brochure sold the region as a land flowing with milk and honey, though the reality was mostly dust.”
complex
“Recruiters described the new city as a land flowing with milk and honey — high wages, cheap housing, endless work — and neglected to mention the winters.”
Origin
This is how God describes Canaan to Moses at the burning bush, in Exodus 3:8, and again in Deuteronomy 6:3: "a good land and a large, a land flowing with milk and honey." The phrase is the promise held out to a people who have known only slavery and the desert.
The image is deliberately sensory rather than statistical. Milk means grazing herds and settled pasture; honey means wild abundance, sweetness that costs nothing. Together they paint a land so fertile it seems to overflow of its own accord.
English kept the phrase for exactly that picture of plenty. A land flowing with milk and honey is any place of abundance and ease — a boom town, a fertile valley, or, often with a note of irony, a promised paradise that turns out to be less generous on arrival.
Stories
Exodus & the Promised Land · See all Biblical origin
Israel's escape from Egypt and the long march to Canaan.
the promised land — A long-awaited goal or destination that promises freedom, reward, or a better life.
manna from heaven — An unexpected benefit or help that arrives just when it is needed most.
let my people go — A demand for the freedom of an oppressed group from those who hold power over them.
scapegoat — a person or group that people blame for something bad, even if it is not their fault. You use this when someone else is punished to make a problem go away.
olive-branch — A sign or offer of peace, reconciliation, or goodwill.
- Level
- C1 · Advanced
- Updated