Hezekiah's Collection
It is not good to eat too much honey or to search out one’s own glory. Proverbs 25:27 · Berean Standard Bible
Too much of even something good, like honey, becomes sickening. The same goes for constantly seeking your own honor and glory—it becomes excessive and ultimately hollow.
In Solomon's world, honey was one of the sweetest, most valuable things available. But a child who eats too much honey gets sick. He's using this everyday observation to warn against two excesses: literal indulgence and the spiritual indulgence of self-promotion. Both seem good in small doses but become pathological when they're all you pursue.
Solomon, offering practical wisdom about the danger of excess in any form, including the pursuit of status.
This fits into the biblical theme of moderation and the dangers of pride and self-seeking. It prefigures Jesus's teachings about humility and his warnings that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, while those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Excessive indulgence in pleasures—here symbolized by honey—and self-aggrandizing ambition both constitute forms of destructive overreach.
The proverb employs parallelism to link gluttony and vanity as structurally similar failures—both involve losing measure and proportion. Honey (דְבַשׁ, devash) in biblical literature represented the highest pleasure and reward (Psalm 119:103; Judges 14:8-9); yet excessive consumption causes nausea and harm. The second clause, 'to search out one's own glory' (חֵקֶר כְּבוֹדָם, cheqer k'vodam), invokes the theological principle that glory belongs properly to God; human pursuit of honor becomes what Thomas Aquinas termed superbia—the elevation of self as ultimate value. Medieval interpreters like Maimonides understood this verse as teaching the virtue of moderation in all things, resonating with Aristotelian mean ethics that influenced Jewish and Christian thought in the medieval period.
The wisdom tradition, articulating the principle of measure and proportion as constitutive of human flourishing.
This participates in Christianity's long wrestling with asceticism and desire—from the Desert Fathers through medieval monasticism to Reformation teachings on Christian liberty. The principle is not that pleasure is evil but that boundless self-seeking corrupts the soul.
25Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.
26Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked.
27It is not good to eat too much honey or to search out one’s own glory.
28Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who does not control his temper.
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