As the footnotes in Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation indicate, the Masoretic Text says “all the land” instead of all the people. Many interpreters think that the Hebrew text of this part of the verse is not original and makes little sense. Various suggested corrections have been proposed. Some interpreters claim that the Hebrew word usually rendered forest may also mean “honeycomb.” This argument seems to be the basis for the New Revised Standard Version translation, which says “All the troops came upon a honeycomb; and there was honey on the ground.”

The note in La Bible Pléiade argues that the word translated “in the forest” should be corrected to read “and they fasted.” La Bible Pléiade therefore says “none of the people tasted food and all those of the country began to fast. But there was honey on the surface of the fields.”

Other translations leave the first part of the verse untranslated. Compare “There was honeycomb in the countryside” (Revised English Bible); “Indeed there was a honeycomb lying on the ground” (New American Bible). Klein simply places dots at the beginning of the verse and leaves the words untranslated: “… And there was a honeycomb on the ground.”

Hebrew Old Testament Text Project does not discuss this matter, since the problem is not really a textual problem but rather a difficulty in understanding the meaning of the Masoretic Text. The Masoretic Text should be followed, and the meaning appears to be that the soldiers came into the wooded area in the hills of Ephraim (see verse 22).

Honey: nearly all translations render the Hebrew term as honey here, but the precise nature of this substance is not certain. Some suggest that it may have been a sweet secretion of plant parasites. If it refers to honey, which is most likely, then it is wild honey and not honey made in man-made hives. See also comments on verse 27.

Quoted with permission from Omanson, Roger L. and Ellington, John E. A Handbook on the First and Second Books of Samuel, Volume 1. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2001. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .