Deuteronomy 8:7

Hebrew Bible

5 Be keenly aware that just as a parent disciplines his child, so the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 So you must keep his commandments, live according to his standards, and revere him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of brooks, springs, and fountains flowing forth in valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, 9 a land where you may eat food in plenty and find no lack of anything, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper.

2 Kings 18:32

Hebrew Bible

30 Don’t let Hezekiah talk you into trusting in the Lord when he says, “The Lord will certainly rescue us; this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.” 31 Don’t listen to Hezekiah!’ For this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Send me a token of your submission and surrender to me. Then each of you may eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, 32 until I come and take you to a land just like your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey. Then you will live and not die. Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, “The Lord will rescue us.” 33 Have any of the gods of the nations actually rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Indeed, did any gods rescue Samaria from my power?

 Notes and References

"... “Each man will eat of his own vine” is a tempting contrast with the threat of verse 27, and promises the Judeans security and peace. Wartime propaganda of this kind is very common in the history of warfare, and hardly to be taken at its face value. “And drink from his own well” is a counterpart to the first comment. The book of Proverbs uses this notion as a metaphor of marital faithfulness (Proverbs 5:15-20), and this might be a double entendre here. Often after a siege the fate of women was to be raped, then taken as hostages to the victor’s country (see Amos 7:17). The promise then is that the soldiers will be able to remain with their wives and families. The appeal is clever, if typical propaganda. Discussions in commentaries on the precise location of such good things are out of place and miss the tenor of the speech. The possibility of these promises ever being fulfilled even if the inhabitants of Jerusalem were to surrender is extremely remote ... This delay of Sennacherib at Lachish is regarded as temporary. In spite of the promises, forcible transmigrations of peoples are never pleasant, certainly not as depicted here. In the writer’s mind the comments of Rabshakeh are a parody of Deuteronomy 8:7-9. The threefold repetition in the description of the land is also found of the wilderness in Jeremiah 2:6, and might reflect a popular form of speech ..."

Hobbs, T. R. Word Biblical Commentary: 2 Kings (p. 259) Zondervan, 2015

 User Comments

Do you have questions or comments about these texts? Please submit them here.