Ezekiel 20:6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

To bring them into a land that I had espied for them Which I chose out of all others to bestow it upon them. So God is said to go before them, to search out a place to pitch their tents in, Deuteronomy 1:33. The expressions import, that every step the people took, till their settlement in the land of Canaan, was under the immediate care and conduct of providence. Flowing with milk and honey Judea is often called a land flowing with milk and honey, both on account of its own fruitfulness, and also from God's peculiar blessing upon it: see Deuteronomy 11:12. The great number of inhabitants which it nourished is an evident proof of its fertility. Bochart observes, that this phrase occurs about twenty times in the Scriptures; and that it is an image frequently used in the classics: as Ρει δε γαλακτι πεδον, ρει δ ' οινω, ρει δε μελισσων νεκταρι. The land flows with milk, flows with wine, flows with nectar of bees. Eurip. Bacch. 142. Which is the glory of all lands The Hebrew, צבי היא לכל הארצות, may either mean, that this circumstance of flowing with milk and honey is a glory to all lands, namely, in which it is found; or, that Judea was the glory of all lands. The Vulgate takes it in the latter sense, rendering the clause, Quæ est egregia inter omnes tetras, which is excellent among all lands. Judea might justly be called the glory of all lands, because it was the place where the temple of the true God was fixed, Psalms 48:2-3; Daniel 11:16; Daniel 11:41; Daniel 11:45.