Numbers 14:7-8

14:7 They said to the whole community of the Israelites, “The land we passed through to investigate is an exceedingly good land. 14:8 If the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into this land and give it to us – a land that is flowing with milk and honey.

Numbers 14:36

14:36 The men whom Moses sent to investigate the land, who returned and made the whole community murmur against him by producing an evil report about the land,

Numbers 33:53

33:53 You must dispossess the inhabitants of the land and live in it, for I have given you the land to possess it.

tn The repetition of the adverb מְאֹד (mÿod) is used to express this: “very, very [good].”

tn The subjective genitives “milk and honey” are symbols of the wealth of the land, second only to bread. Milk was a sign of such abundance (Gen 49:12; Isa 7:21,22). Because of the climate the milk would thicken quickly and become curds, eaten with bread or turned into butter. The honey mentioned here is the wild honey (see Deut 32:13; Judg 14:8-9). It signified sweetness, or the finer things of life (Ezek 3:3).

tn The verb is the Hiphil infinitive construct with a lamed (ל) preposition from the root יָצָא (yatsa’, “to bring out”). The use of the infinitive here is epexegetical, that is, explaining how they caused the people to murmur.