A biblical theology of honey speaks a chastening word to both sides of today’s sugar divide. Apart from the guidance from God’s word, we are prone to gravitate to extremes: misusing God’s good gift through presumption and overconsumption, or misguided avoidance and overreaction, treating as evil, or simply toxic, what he has given as good.

His eyes became bright. Jonathan put his sugar-coated hand to his mouth and displayed the power of one of God’s good gifts in his created world. It’s a power we all have known, indeed tasted, and yet many of us have grown so accustomed to it as to hardly recognize it anymore.

At that moment, what the weary, hungry army of Israel needed was fast energy. They “had been hard pressed that day” as they pursued the fleeing enemy, but their king, Saul, Jonathan’s father, made a rash vow: “Cursed be the man who eats food until it is evening and I am avenged on my enemies” (1 Samuel 14:24). In hot pursuit of their foe, the men entered a forest and found themselves surrounded by God’s provision: “behold, there was honey on the ground” (1 Samuel 14:25). Golden, viscous, liquid sugar — like the manna, which tasted of honey, that covered the ground for God’s people each morning in the wilderness (Exodus 16:14). God had provided. But Saul had made his foolish oath.

Jonathan, however, had not heard his father’s words. So he walked into the forest, received the divine gift, and “his eyes became bright” (1 Samuel 14:27). Just the quick energy he needed to finish off the foe. Just what the whole army needed.

Saul’s army did catch the enemy, and overcome them, but because of Saul’s rash vow not to eat, “the people were very faint.” In victory, they lost self-control, and “pounced on the spoil and took sheep and oxen and calves and slaughtered them on the ground. And the people ate them with the blood” (1 Samuel 14:31–32). What pain and misery they would have been spared if only, like Jonathan, they had “tasted a little honey” (1 Samuel 14:29, 43) to brighten their eyes and revive their strength.

In the end, their victory is not without grave and unnecessary difficulties. The people do redeem Jonathan from falling victim to the vow, and he declares his father’s folly:

My father has troubled the land. See how my eyes have become bright because I tasted a little of this honey. How much better if the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies that they found. For now the defeat among the Philistines has not been great. (1 Samuel 14:29–30)

Twice Jonathan says “a little honey.” Just a little did the trick. Too much would have made him all the worse for war. Yet, here, in this seemingly minor episode in the history of Israel, we have what might be an unnerving peek into our modern world, where we are surrounded by honey and have great difficulty limiting ourselves to just a little.

Spoonfuls of Sugar

From a historical perspective, it is stunning how much sugar we consume today. What came in a golden, sticky ooze in biblical times comes to us today as refined, white, granulated table sugar, already baked and boiled in excessive proportions into many of the foods and drinks we commonly consume. According to Jay Richards, “In 1700, Westerners ate very little sugar — say, four pounds per year. Even in 1850, we averaged only a few pounds per person per year. Now, each of us, on average, eats well over one hundred pounds of sugar per year . . . much of it in processed foods that don’t even taste sweet to us” (Eat, Fast, Feast, 42–43).

Estimates do vary. “Americans consume as much as 77.1 pounds of sugar and related sweeteners per person per year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture data” — but still — “That’s nearly twice the limit the department recommends, based on a 2,000-calorie diet” (“The Barbaric History of Sugar in America”). But what no one questions is that objectively, demonstrably, and almost without exception, we consume far more sugar today than humans have throughout history, barring only the last century.

Obesity among Americans has grown nearly 30 percent in just the last three decades, while the rate of diabetes has almost tripled. It would be naïve to consider sugar the only cause. And perhaps just as naïve to not consider the overconsumption of sugar to have played a significant, if not the major, part. And of course, none of us wants to hear that, because it just tastes so good.

Heavier, Slower, More Unhealthy

For many readers, this is not news. For more than a generation, a growing chorus of voices has been suspecting that “we are consuming way more sugar than our bodies are equipped to handle” (“What’s Wrong with the Modern Diet?”). “Equipped” — don’t miss that. By whom?

When dealing with the human body, it’s difficult for even the most ardent of evolutionists to avoid words like “equipped,” “built,” and “designed.” The human body and brain, with its abilities to move and adapt, is the most impressive masterpiece in all of physical creation, the crowning jewel, and culminating creation, of those first six days (Genesis 1:26–31).

God’s good design comes equipped to handle sugar — both the slow-release of glucose as digestion breaks down complex carbohydrates and its fast release from simple carbohydrates (none faster, and more difficult to handle, than when we drink sugar-water — soft drinks and juices).

Glucose, from sugar, can be a source of needed energy to the muscles, but it is toxic in the bloodstream. Our brains summon insulin to the rescue to remove it from our blood, and when muscles, which have little storage, are already well supplied, the sugar is converted to fat and stored in a nice central location — the waist and hips. Despite the popular myth that eating fat makes our bodies fat, it is the overconsumption of sugar, for most of us on the modern diet, that contributes far more to our undesired fat stores.

Tragically, generation by generation, those commissioned to image God in his created world are becoming heavier, slower, lazier, and more unhealthy, while a growing train of maladies like obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and cancer shorten and encumber this vapor’s breath of our lives even more than they already are.

Little Theology of Honey

Many today might be surprised to find that the Scriptures have timeless truths to speak into our modern malaise about sugar.

Sugarcane was rare in the Middle East in biblical times, and may receive an obscure reference in one or two texts (“sweet cane” in Isaiah 43:24; Jeremiah 6:20). But what was not obscure, and is one of the great concentrated sources of glucose still, with the same essential sweetness as table sugar, is honey. There is “a little theology of honey” in the pages of Scripture — and those of us confused today about what to do, and not do, for ourselves and for our children, might get some fresh help and orientation from the biblical principles.

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