eating must be done with the right hand. To use the left hand in this way is as grave a breach of etiquette as to show the sole of the foot, than which few things are considered ruder in Eastern society. And to all these features there are frequent Scriptural allusions. The food of the masses in the Bible is such as I have just described. Their loaves, too, were evidently the unleavened, whole-wheat-meal, toasted cakes, about a quarter of an inch thick and some ten inches in diameter, which is the only bread eaten to-day by the Fellahheen, or peasants of Palestine. When Jesus said to His disciples, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees," those simple Fellahheen followers of His fell very naturally into the mistake of supposing that He meant the luxurious leavened loaves to be found only at rich men's houses. Again, how uniformly throughout the Old and New Testaments we read of "the breaking of bread." When feeding the five thousand with the five loaves, we read that, after a blessing, Jesus "brake and gave the loaves to His disciples, and the disciples to the multitude,' and it was the same when the four thousand were fed with the seven loaves.3 "2 At the institution of the Lord's Supper, Jesus "took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave it to the disciples." So at the supper at the village of Emmaus, "He took the bread, and blessed, and brake, and 2 Matt. xiv. 19; Mark vi. 41; Luke ix. 16. 1 Matt. xvi. 6. 3 Matt. xv. 36; Mark viii. 6. F 1 gave to them." The Early Church felt themselves bound to observe the ordinance according to its institution, and the universal custom of the East; and in the Acts we read of their "breaking bread in the several houses," that is, either in the rooms where they held worship, or, as the Revised Version renders it, "at home;" and the Apostle Paul, speaking of the Lord's Supper, says, "the bread which we break." 5 4 The allusions in Scripture to bread being "the stay" and "the staff" of the people's life are fully borne out by the fact that it is the chief main food of the peasantry; whilst the reference to grinding as a sound of constant occurrence, and the Disciples' Prayer, taught by our Lord, "Give us day by day our daily bread," point to the daily grinding of corn and the daily making of the unleavened bread. The putting the hand into the dish is plainly referred to by Boaz when he says to Ruth, "Dip thy morsel in the vinegar;" and still more explicitly by the Master Himself, as occurring at the Last Supper, for He says, "He that dips his hand with Me in the dish, the same will betray Me.' How life-like and unspeakably solemn in this view is the evident reference to a host's act of special kindness and condescension in putting a delicate morsel in the mouth of a guest, when we read in John's Gospel that Jesus said privately to him as he leaned on His breast, in answer to 1 Luke xxiv. 30. 18 Lev. xxvi. 26; Ps. cv. 16; Ezek. iv. 16; v. 16; xiv. 13; Rev. xviii. 22. 5 Job xxxi. 10; Luke xi. 3. 7 Ruth ii. 14. 8 Matt. xxvi. 23; Mark xiv. 20. 1 his question, "Lord, who is it [will betray Thee]?" "He it is to whom I shall give the sop when I have dipped it. And when He had dipped the sop, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon." This special form of "the sop" is evidently the little three-cornered bread-spoon which is dipped into the dish to bring up a delicate morsel-a constant way of conveying such a morsel to the mouth of a guest. With us, young babes are from their birth allowed the free use of their limbs. In the East they are bound hand and foot by swaddling bands into helpless mummy-like bundles. As soon as a child is born, it is washed, rubbed with salt, and then, its arms being laid by its side and its legs together, it is wound tightly round and round with cotton or linen bandages some four or five inches wide by five or six yards long. A band is even passed under the chin and round the forehead. It is in evident allusion to this that Ezekiel exclaims, "In the day thou wast born... thou wast not washed in water for cleansing; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all." Jehovah answering Job "out of the whirlwind," uses this custom as a familiar figure in the wonderfully bold and beautiful words, which imply that the mighty ocean, in the sight of God, is as small and insignificant as a new-born babe : |