So plentiful indeed was the wild honey that it was exported to other countries, and in the palmy days of Israel formed part of a regular trade with Tyre. See Ezek. xxvii. 17: "Judah and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants: they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm."
In one or two passages honey is mentioned as being eaten with butter. (See, for example, 2 Sam. xvii. 29.) When David and his followers were wearied at Mahanaim, the people brought presents to him, among which are specially mentioned butter and honey.
Then there is the familiar prophecy, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good." The same image is repeated in the same chapter: "And it shall come to pass for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land" (ver. 22).
This mixture is at the present day a favourite one. All Orientals are fond of sweets, and in the composition of many of their favourite sweetmeats use honey instead of sugar. But an extemporized sweetmeat is often made by mixing together honey and butter, and eating it without further preparation.
It is right to mention here that there is a substance which is sometimes called honey, but which is not made by Bees. This is still used in Palestine under the name of "dibs," a word which is almost identical with the Hebrew d'bash. A very excellent account of this preparation is given by Mr. Urquhart in his "Lebanon." "The dibs, the honey of Scripture, which Jacob sent to Joseph, is the inspissated juice of the grape. It is of two sorts: one dark and liquid, resembling molasses—this is the racon; the other is thick, and of a yellow brown, and is called dibs (jibes). In every village there is an establishment for making it, some of them bearing marks of great antiquity. There are vats for pressing, and troughs cut in the rock for holding the juice, and a furnace for boiling it.
"The grapes are not trodden by the feet, but laid in a heap and pressed by a beam, of which one end is fixed in the wall, and a heavy stone attached to the other, as the oil seems anciently to have been expressed, judging from the relics I observed near Tyre. The juice is then boiled in the iron pan for an hour, then poured back into the trough. After it has cooled it is again returned into the pan and boiled—if for the racon for three hours, if for the jibes four.
"The process is thus complete for the first; the second is still liquid, and is conveyed home, where, during a month, it is daily for an hour turned or beaten with a fresh branch of fig-tree, or botun. This property of the fig-tree is curious.... The racon takes four okes of grapes to make one oke; the jibes five. The first is worth forty paras, and the second sixty."
The Hebrew word donag, which has been rightly interpreted as wax, occurs very seldom in the Old Testament. No mention is made of any use to which it was put, and in every instance it is employed simply as a metaphor.