Proverbs Chapter 25 verse 16 Holy Bible
Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, Lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.
read chapter 25 in ASV
If you have honey, take only as much as is enough for you; for fear that, being full of it, you may not be able to keep it down.
read chapter 25 in BBE
Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be surfeited therewith, and vomit it.
read chapter 25 in DARBY
Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.
read chapter 25 in KJV
read chapter 25 in WBT
Have you found honey? Eat as much as is sufficient for you, Lest you eat too much, and vomit it.
read chapter 25 in WEB
Honey thou hast found -- eat thy sufficiency, Lest thou be satiated `with' it, and hast vomited it.
read chapter 25 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 16. - Hast thou found honey? Honey would be found in crevices of rocks, in hollow trees (1 Samuel 14:27), or in more unlikely situations (Judges 14:8), and was extensively used as an article of food. All travellers in Palestine note the great abundance of bees therein, and how well it answers to its description as "a land flowing with milk and honey." Eat so much as is sufficient for thee. The agreeable sweetness of honey might lead the finder to eat too much of it. Against such excess the moralist warns: Lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it. Thus wrote Pindar, 'Nem.,' 7:51 - Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἀνάπαυσις ἐν παντὶ γλυκεῖα ἔργῳκόρον δ ἔχειΚαὶ μέλι καὶ τὰ τέρπν ἄνθε Ἀφροδισια. Μηδὲν ἄγαν, Ne quid nimis, is a maxim continually urged by those who wished to teach moderation. Says Homer, 'Iliad,' 13:636 - "Men are with all things sated - sleep, and love,Sweet sounds of music, and the joyous dance."(Lord Derby.) Says Horace, 'Sat.,' 1:1, 106 - "Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines,Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum?" The honey is a figure of all that pleases the senses; but the maxim is to be extended beyond physical matters, though referring primarily to such pleasures. The mind may be overloaded as well as the body: only such instruction as can be digested and assimilated is serviceable to the spiritual nature; injudicious cramming produces satiety and disgust. Again, "To 'find honey,'" says St. Gregory ('Moral.,' 16:8), "is to taste the sweetness of holy intelligence, which is eaten enough of then when our perception, according to the measure of our faculty, is held tight under control. For he is 'filled with honey, and vomits it' who, in seeking to dive deeper than he has capacity for, loses that too from whence he might have derived nourishment." And in another place (ibid., 20:18), "The sweetness of spiritual meaning he who seeks to eat beyond what he contains, even what he had eaten he 'vomiteth;' because, whilst he seeks to make out things above, beyond his powers, even the things that he had made out aright, he forfeits" (Oxford transl.).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(16) Hast thou found honey?--A common occurrence in Palestine, where swarms of wild bees abounded in the woods. (Comp. Judges 14:8; 1Samuel 14:27.) Hence came the expression of a "land flowing with (milk and) honey."
