11 (Michaelis: "_discretio rationis et judicii, ut sciant utra manus sit dextra aut sinistra_") likewise loses sight of the moral sense. But good and evil are very decidedly used in a physical sense in 2 Sam. xix. 36 (35), where Barzillai says: "I am this day fourscore years old, can I discern between good and evil, or has thy servant a taste of what I eat or drink, or do I hear any more the voice of singing men or singing women?" The connection with the eating of cream and honey, by which the good and evil is qualified, clearly proves that good and evil are, in our passage, used in a similar sense. To the same result we are led by the circumstance also, that the evil _precedes_, which must so much the rather have a meaning, that nowhere else is this the case with this phrase. The evil, the [Pg 58] bad food in the time of war, precedes; the good follows after it: Cream and honey, the good, he will eat when he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, _i.e._, when he is beyond the time where he does not yet know to make any great difference between the food, and in which, therefore, the evil, the bad food, is felt as an evil. If the good and the evil be understood in a physical sense, then, in harmony with chap. viii. 4, we must think of the period of about one year. Moral consciousness develops much later than sensual liking and disliking.--The construction of מאס and בחר with ב points to the affection which accompanies the action.--כי in ver. 16 suits very well, according to the view which we have taken, in its ordinary signification, "for." The full enjoyment of the good things of the land will return in the period of about twelve months (in chap. xxxvii. 30 a longer terra is fixed, because the Assyrian desolation was much greater than the Aramean); _for_, even before the year has expired, devastation shall be inflicted upon the land of the enemies. האדמה comprehends at the same time the Syrian and Ephraimitish land.