Augustine of Hippo : I ask whether we should take the land flowing with milk and honey spiritually, since, according to the proper sense, this phrase does not describe the land that was being given to the people of Israel. Or is it a figure of speech that is used to praise the richness and sweetness of the land? — QUESTIONS ON Exodus 4 Augustine of Hippo : Indeed, unless that land which was styled the land that flowed with milk and honey signified something great, through which, as by a visible token, he was leading those who understood his wondrous works to invisible grace and the kingdom of heaven, they could not be blamed for scorning that land, whose temporal kingdom we also ought to esteem as nothing, that we may love that Jerusalem which is free, the mother of us all, which is in heaven, and truly to be desired. — EXPLANATION OF THE Psalms 106.20 Tertullian : … Jesus Christ was to introduce the second people (which is composed of us nations, lingering deserted in the world previously) into the land of promise, "flowing with milk and honey" (that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter). This had to come about not through Moses (that is, not through the law's discipline) but through Joshua (that is, through the new law's grace), after our circumcision with "a knife of rock" (that is, with Christ's precepts, for Christ is in many ways and figures predicted as a rock). Therefore the man who was being prepared to act as an image of this sacrament was inaugurated under the figure of the Lord's name, even so as to be named Jesus. — ANSWER TO THE JEWS 9.22