Seasoned with Salt
Day 228 – 16 August
Honey That Never Spoils
“Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.” (Proverbs 16:24, KJV)
The Jar That Outlived the Pharaohs
Archaeologists opening Egyptian tombs have famously lifted out pots of honey some three thousand years old and found the contents still perfectly edible. Nothing else in the larder can do this. Grain dusts, wine sours, oil turns, and meat is out of the question, but honey, sealed and left alone, simply waits, its chemistry so hostile to decay that the centuries pass through it without leaving a mark. Now notice that you own a jar of the same substance. Somewhere in your memory sits a kind sentence somebody spoke to you years ago, a teacher’s word, a grandmother’s blessing, a friend’s steadying line at a graveside, and it is still edible today; you can take it down this very morning, taste it, and find it as sweet as the day it was poured. Unkind words keep too, which is the tragedy of the tongue, but the crown of this week stands on the brighter half of the truth: words can be made of honey, and honey keeps. Solomon put it in a single golden verse, and the verse turns out to be a pantry holding the whole month’s stores.
The Verse’s Own Pantry
Open the Hebrew and the shelves are full of words we have already met. Pleasant words, Solomon wrote, are a צוּף־דְּבַשׁ (tsuf-devash, honeycomb, a flowing of honey), and צוּף (tsuf, flowing comb) appears exactly twice in all of Scripture: here, and in the psalm this month crowned on its first Sunday, where the judgments of the LORD are sweeter than honey and the צוּפִים (tsufim, drippings of the comb). The words themselves are אִמְרֵי־נֹעַם (imrei-noam, words of pleasantness), and אִמְרֵי (imrei, utterances) is the very noun David laid on the altar in that same psalm, while נֹעַם (noam, pleasantness, delightfulness) is among the loveliest nouns in the language: the beauty of the LORD that David asked to gaze upon all his days, the favour of the Lord prayed down upon our work, the name Zechariah gave to a shepherd’s staff. Such words are מָתוֹק (matoq, sweet) to the נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, soul), and matoq is Marah’s word, the sweetness the bitter pool took on when the tree went in, met by us on the day of the springs; even the neighbouring proverb had already used its cousin, for verse twenty-one says the sweetness of the lips increases learning. And they are מַרְפֵּא (marpe, healing) to the עֶצֶם (etsem, bone), a noun born of רָפָא (rapha, to heal), the root of the healing tongue that is a tree of life two chapters earlier, of the wise tongue that heals where rash words pierce, and of the name by which God introduced Himself at that same sweetened pool: I am the LORD who heals you. Sweetness and healing stood together beside Marah’s water, and they stand together in this verse, and modern medicine has quietly caught up with the pairing, for medical-grade honey now dresses wounds on hospital wards, its antibacterial chemistry doing genuine clinical work. Solomon’s simile was dispensary as well as dessert, and the vocabulary of the whole month has walked home into one sentence.
Six Crafts, One Comb
Which is precisely what a crown is for, because the week now gathers the way nectar gathers into comb. On Monday the word was seasoned, salt measured to each dish; on Tuesday it was built, sound timber raised to the need in front of us; on Wednesday it was timed, gold rolled out in its silver moment; on Thursday it was softened, coolant poured on rising heat; on Friday it learned the written rest, silence played with intent; and on Saturday a sentry was posted at the gate to pass only words on the King’s business. Six days, six crafts, and today the verse names the finished product of them all: honeycomb, sweetness for the soul and medicine for the frame of everyone who receives it. The old commentators saw the same gathering, stringing this proverb together with the seasoned speech of Colossians, the building words of Ephesians, the golden apples, the soft answer, and David’s guarded door as one family of texts. And Scripture supplies the taste test. Jonathan, battle-worn in the woods of Michmash, dipped the end of his rod into a honeycomb, put his hand to his mouth, and his eyes brightened; one taste, and the light came back into an exhausted soldier’s face. Every weary person you will meet this week is that soldier, and a mouthful of comb from your mouth can do for their eyes what the woodland honey did for his.
The Pleasant LORD
Yet the comb in our hands is decanted from a larger store, for honey is the Bible’s own chosen figure for the words of God. Sweeter than honey and the drippings of the comb, sang David of the LORD’s judgments; how sweet are Your words to my taste, sings the longest psalm, sweeter than honey to my mouth; and when Ezekiel ate the scroll he was given, it was in his mouth as honey for sweetness. Taste and see that the LORD is good, the psalter invites, and Peter answers across the Testaments that we come to Him having tasted that the Lord is gracious. The figure, mark it, is a figure: God keeps no apiary and needs no substance, and the honey teaches the effect of His speech, delight that nourishes and heals, upon everyone who receives it. His pleasantness is His own, the noam (pleasantness) of the LORD that David made his one request to gaze upon, and it is a pleasantness with holiness intact, sweet and true at once, never the false sugar of flattery, for even His hard sayings heal, and when many turned away from one of them, Peter spoke for every believer since: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. There is the crown’s final joint: the Healer who announced Himself beside water made sweet now fills the mouths of His children from His own comb, and the family that has tasted such words has plenty to serve. Grace on the lips, this whole week has been saying, is grace from His lips passed on; ask, receive, and speak the family dialect.
Declaration
A kind sentence spoken to me years ago is still edible in my memory, and it has never once spoiled. Today I stock other people’s shelves the same way. My words will go out as comb, sweetness for the soul and medicine for the frame, pleasant without flattery and healing without sting. Where the weary cross my path with darkened eyes, one taste from my mouth should brighten them. I have tasted the sweetest words there are, so I have plenty to draw from, and may something I say today still be sweet on somebody’s tongue in thirty years.
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