“Honey, can you bring us some more uborka saláta (Hungarian cucumber salad)?” A funny memory from my childhood upbringing of a close family friend who often addressed his wife as “honey.” Honey as a term of endearment is found in the context of love and marriage in the biblical book of Song of Songs (cf. Sngs 4:11, 5:1).
“The land flowing with milk and honey” (cf. Ex. 3:8; etc.) is another literary usage of honey in the Bible to describe the Promised Land of Israel. Until only recently this was understood as poetic language to describe the blessing of the LORD’s goodness and the beauty, sweetness, and fertility of the Land. Then in 2007 Professor Amihai Mazar discovered the first archaeological evidence of honeybees in a domestic Israelite context at Tel Rehov, an ancient Israelite city in Northern Israel.
Evidence for honeybees at Tel Rehov was found inside the city itself in a courtyard where the Israelites built a “large-scale apiary” – a collection of beehives. The date of the apiary, confirmed with Carbon 14 dating, “corresponds with the United Monarchy of David and Solomon and the beginning of the kingdom of northern Israel” in “the 10th–early 9th centuries BCE.” This is the same time when pottery finished with a “red slip and irregular hand burnish” becomes “the hallmark of the Iron IIA period,” and is clearly connected to the historical figure of King Solomon. This type of pottery is found in abundance at Tel Rehov at this exact same time.
The imagery of “red” and “honey” returns in Song of Songs attributed to King Solomon: “Your red lips, my bride, drip sweet golden-orange honey from the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon” (Sngs 4:11).
Professor Michael V. Fox convincingly presented the evidence in his classic work, “The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs,” that among the primary sources of the Song of Songs were the ancient Egyptian Love Songs from the 19th-20th dynasties (ca. 1305-1150 BCE). One “probable” source of original composition was King Solomon (ca. 970-931 BCE) who “had both literary interests and Egyptian connections,” most notably, one of Solomon’s wives, the Daughter of Pharaoh (1 Kings 3:1, 9:16, 9:24), who dwelt in her own house on the Temple Mount near Solomon’s Palace.
Dr. Eilat Mazar supported this “probable” source of Song of Songs indirectly with her discovery of the wall of King Solomon and the monumental royal structure and tower gate complex (cf. Sngs 8:10) leading to the Temple Mount in ancient Jerusalem dated to the time of King Solomon. This royal structure is where Solomon’s wife, the Daughter of Pharaoh, probably took up “her new residence.”
In my view, Song of Songs can be read like a Hebrew wall painting-in-words similar to those found in ancient Egypt featuring pictures painted on walls. Egyptian noblewomen, like the Daughter of Pharaoh, were portrayed with golden-orange colored skin like honey as symbolic of royalty. Thus, Song of Songs as a celebration of the wedding of the Daughter of Pharaoh to King Solomon when she became King Solomon’s honey.
Peter Solomon Kovacs, M.Div, MA RPA, graduated from the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) with a MA in Field Archaeology of the Biblical Period, and Tyndale Seminary (Canada). He attends and plays the drums at Church of the Messiah, Xenia.
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