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Phrase: Land of milk and honey
Religion has played a considerable part in creating the English language.
Although for Christians, the eighth commandment is ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ the English language ‘borrows’ and never gives back.
Is that stealing?
Only if it is intentional, I suppose.
Anyways, the phrase the land of milk and honey means a place with abundant food, where the money is plentiful, and life is not hard.
It comes from the book of Exodus in the Old Testament.
Moses led the Jewish people out of Egypt to the promised land, “…a land flowing with milk and honey.”
Funnily enough, immigrants have travelled to North America for more than 200 years believing it to be a land of milk and honey.
Both Canada and the USA are countries of opportunity.
Whether they landed at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada or Ellis Island, New York, New York, USA, they believed they had stepped foot in the promised land; the land of milk and honey.
It wasn’t until much later that they realized milk is expensive and honey is hard to come by.
Just because opportunities are everywhere, that doesn’t mean life is easy.
Even the Godfather, Vito Corleone, had to work hard to build up his family.
For every person born with a silver spoon in their mouth in the land of milk and honey, there are 50,000 more who have worked their fingers to the bone for everything they have.
Whether you are a Jewish person headed for Israel or an immigrant on your way to North America, I hope your image of the land of milk and honey includes hard work.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 70.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.