Bees show up in the Bible as swarms, as sweetness, and as a picture of danger. Israel’s enemies chased them “as bees do” in Deuteronomy 1:44, and a psalmist says nations “compassed me about like bees” before the LORD’s name drove them off. Samson, in Judges 14:8, found a swarm and honey inside a lion’s carcase he had passed days earlier. Most of Nave’s other verses are really about honey: manna that tasted like wafers made with honey, and a warning that too much of it is not good. Judges 14 tells the liveliest story.
14 verses
And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people.
And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, even unto Hormah.
A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;
And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion.
And honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat: for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness.
They compassed me about like bees; they are quenched as the fire of thorns: for in the name of the LORD I will destroy them.
It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory.
Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm.
And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
First mentioned in Deut. 1:44. Swarms of bees, and the danger of their attacks, are mentioned in Ps. 118:12. Samson found a “swarm of bees” in the carcass of a lion he had slain (Judg. 14:8). Wild bees are described as laying up honey in woods and in clefts of rocks (Deut. 32:13; Ps. 81:16). In Isa. 7:18 the “fly” and the “bee” are personifications of the Egyptians and Assyrians, the inveterate enemies of Israel.
William Smith, 1884
(deborah). (1:44; Judges 14:8; Psalms 118:12; Isaiah 7:18) Bees abounded in Palestine, honey being a common article of food (Psalms 81:16) and was often found in the clefts of rocks and in hollow trees. (1 Samuel 14:25,27) English naturalists know little of the species of bees that are found in Palestine, but are inclined tn believe that the honey-bee of Palestine is distinct from the honey-bee (Apis mellifica) of this country. The passage in (Isaiah 7:18) refers "to the custom of the people in the East of calling attention to any one by a significant hiss or rather hist ." We read, (Judges 14:8) that "after a time," probably many days, Samson returned to the carcass of the lion he had slain, and saw bees and honey therein. "If any one here represents to himself a corrupt and putrid carcass, the occurrence ceases to have any true similitude, for it is well known that in these countries, at certain seasons of the year, the heat will in the course of twenty-four hours completely dry up the moisture of dead camels, and that, without their undergoing decomposition their bodies long remain like mummies, unaltered and entirely free from offensive odor."--Edmann .