Proverbs 25:16 - Exposition

Hast thou found honey? Honey would be found in crevices of rocks, in hollow trees ( 1 Samuel 14:27 ), or in more unlikely situations ( 14:8 ), and was extensively used as an article of food. All travellers in Palestine note the great abundance of bees therein, and how well it answers to its description as "a land flowing with milk and honey." Eat so much as is sufficient for thee. The agreeable sweetness of honey might lead the finder to eat too much of it. Against such excess the moralist warns: Lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it. Thus wrote Pindar, 'Nem.,' 7.51—

ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἀνάπαυσις ἐν παντὶ γλυκεῖα ἔργῳκόρον δ ἔχει

καὶ μέλι καὶ τὰ τέρπν ἄνθε ἀφροδι . σια .

΄ηδὲν ἄγαν , Ne quid nimis , is a maxim continually urged by those who wished to teach moderation. Says Homer, 'Iliad,' 13.636—

"Men are with all things sated—sleep, and love,

Sweet sounds of music, and the joyous dance."

(Lord Derby.)

Says Horace, 'Sat.,' 1.1, 106—

" Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines,

Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum? "

The honey is a figure of all that pleases the senses; but the maxim is to be extended beyond physical matters, though referring primarily to such pleasures. The mind may be overloaded as well as the body: only such instruction as can be digested and assimilated is serviceable to the spiritual nature; injudicious cramming produces satiety and disgust. Again, "To 'find honey,'" says St. Gregory ('Moral.,' 16.8), "is to taste the sweetness of holy intelligence, which is eaten enough of then when our perception, according to the measure of our faculty, is held tight under control. For he is 'filled with honey, and vomits it' who, in seeking to dive deeper than he has capacity for, loses that too from whence he might have derived nourishment." And in another place (ibid; 20.18), "The sweetness of spiritual meaning he who seeks to eat beyond what he contains, even what he had eaten he 'vomiteth;' because, whilst he seeks to make out things above, beyond his powers, even the things that he had made out aright, he forfeits" (Oxford transl.).