My favorite word in ancient Greek is μελιηδής, most often translated “honey-sweet.”¹ I stumbled upon it in Book VI of the Odyssey as a descriptor of the grass eaten by mules. In this instance, it serves as a literal description: the grass is sweet, pleasant to eat. The word struck me simply because it is phonetically beautiful―pronounced meliedes―and because its translation, “honey-sweet,” has a beautiful ring in English. Later, I discovered that the Odyssey uses “honey-sweet” to describe not only the taste of grass and wine, but the pleasure of sleep and the joy of Odysseus’ long-awaited homecoming. We have entered the realm of figurative language. We are talking, now, of a sweetness tasted not by the tongue but by the heart, the soul.
The Bible mentions more than once a sweetness that isn’t literally tasted but rather heard: “sweet melody” (Isa. 23:16), “the sweet lyre” (Ps. 81:2), “sweetness of speech” (Prov. 16:21), “sweet counsel” (Ps. 55:14). David was called “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Sam. 23:1). Sweetness in the Bible describes song, speech, and music―audible sound―more often than it describes actual taste. As much as we derive the meaning of “sweet” from flavor and scent, it is especially apt to capture the pleasure of hearing something harmonious. In fact, the English words “melodious,” “melody,” and “mellifluous” are formed from the ancient Greek meli, meaning honey. The sugary, smooth richness of honey, as tasted on the tongue, is embedded in the language we use for beautiful sounds. A pleasant song is like a bit of honey.
But even more than music or voice, the Word of God is sweet―supremely so. God’s words are “sweeter than honey to my mouth” (Ps. 119:103). Both Ezekiel and John, in prophetic visions, swallow scrolls “sweet as honey” (Ezek. 3:3, Rev. 10:9-10). If it is like honey in its sweetness, the Word is not only good and right and important, not only inerrant and infallible and authoritative, but pleasurable, delightful, and desirable. You don’t eat honey for its nutrition value. You eat honey because of its thick, sticky sweetness. Honey is like gold, valued not because of its functional utility but because of its intrinsic ability to bring enjoyment. Indeed, the psalmist compares God’s written words to both honey and gold, side by side: “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Ps. 19:10). Inherent to both gold and honey is a kind of richness, an abundance of delight.
A full response to the Word, then, is more than mere affirmation or belief in propositional truth, more than acquisition of knowledge, and more than conviction and trembling before the Lord. To be sure, these are also necessary and good responses. But the fullest reception of the Word evokes a desire and a joy that, in John Piper’s words, “sees and savors.”² If the Word of God is sweeter than honey, we ought to taste it.
The Puritan preacher Thomas Manton distinguished between “knowledge by sight” and “knowledge by taste.” We grasp truth far better as “knowledge by taste.” The difference? Knowledge by taste is acquired by love, for “love discovers more than reason can ever know.”³ To taste the sweetness of Scripture is to know and love the truth of Scripture. Tasting its sweetness, then, involves our love―our affections.
Two observations follow. The first is straightforward: the Word of God should move our affections. We are settling for less than a complete knowledge of God if we stop at comprehension and never reach the kind of delight that the psalmist finds in his Word: “reviving the soul” and “rejoicing the heart” (Ps. 19:7, 8). Do we find Scripture sweet to the soul? Do we take pleasure in reading and hearing the Word? Do we enjoy and savor God’s revelation of himself? Is this experience ours?
The second observation: when we use the word “sweet,” we are more than often saying something about delight. Of course, many things are literally and simply sweet―my mind goes immediately to the taste of a perfectly ripe white peach at the height of summer (one of my peculiar joys). But we rightly call many other things sweet, things like encouraging words and occasions of hospitality and thoughtful gifts. These are sweet because they are lavish and abundant sources of spontaneous enjoyment. Our affections are plucked into delight. We mean something more than mere statement of fact when we deem something “sweet.”
A week ago, I visited a local church in D.C. that sang together so heartily and joyfully that I teared up. There are few things as sweet to me as whole-hearted congregational singing―the melody of a hymn carried by countless voices united in song. It is a beautiful gift. I savor its sweetness. And what I mean, when I call this sweet, is that I have received something so unnecessarily and richly good, something that makes delight easy and light. So while I try not to overuse words to the point of becoming trite, I often find myself grasping for the word sweet to describe the Lord’s particular kindnesses to me: friends who have taught me to hug often and tightly, evenings of prayer with my parents, the gracious generosity of the church I am interning at this summer. I can use no other word but sweet.
And I have found, increasingly, that when I say “sweet,” I mean not only that a person or gift or favor is kind, but more so that the Lord has been kind to me through these extra graces. By sweet, I mean that the Lord is shockingly kind to me simply because he desires to be. He does not only provide what is sufficient or needed, but far more than I could ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20). By sweet, I mean that because I know that every good and perfect gift comes from above, I know the love and pleasure of my Father in every little providence and provision (Jas. 1:17). In The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, Jeremiah Burroughs describes the condition of one who has contentment: “if God raises his estate, he has the love of God in it, and then it is abundantly more sweet than . . . if he had not the love of God in it.”⁴ It is not the gift itself, but knowing that the gift comes from the love of God, that makes it sweet. It is not the gift itself, but the Giver, that is truly sweet to me.
So it is more than fitting that Isaac Watts writes, “How sweet and awful is the place with Christ within the doors . . . ‘Twas the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in.”⁵ Where Christ dwells and draws us in with love: this is where we may rightly say we know what sweetness tastes like. And such provision is undeserved―that is, gracious―as in John Newton’s words, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!”⁶ If anything of the Lord deserves to be called sweet, surely the first is the sound of grace for sinners. For this is the kindness of all kindnesses, a gift to put every other to shame―like the taste of honey, the loving grace of our Lord is almost too rich, too much, too sweet.
Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, “μελιηδής,” in A Greek–English Lexicon, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/#eid=68170.
John Piper, “Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, Session 1,” Desiring God, April 21, 2007, desiringgod.org/messages/seeing-and-savoring-jesus-christ-session-1.
Charles Spurgeon, Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden: Illustrations and Meditations gathered from Thomas Manton’s Exposition of Psalm 119 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, [1883] 2022), 55.
Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Moscow: Canon Press, [1645] 2002), 150.
Isaac Watts, “Divine Love Making a Feast,” Hymnary.org, 1707, hymnary.org/text/how_sweet_and_aweful_is_the_place.
John Newton, “Amazing Grace,” Hymnary.org, 1779, hymnary.org/text/amazing_grace_how_sweet_the_sound.