Unto them. Even to the elder, who did not ask it. 13. All. Everything was taken out of the father’s hands.
Took his journey (dzreS%unoev). Answering to our phrase went abroad.
Wasted (dsecxdpmicev). The word used of winnowing grain. See on Matt. xxv. 24.
With riotous living (Sav acwtws). Lit., Living unsavingly. Only here in New Testament. The kindred noun, acwréa, is rendered by the Rev., in all the three passages where it occurs, riot (Eph. v. 18; Tit. i. 6; 1 Pet. iv. 4). See note on the last passage.
14. Spent. See on cost, ch. xiv. 28.
In that land. Want is characteristic of the “far country.” The prodigal feels the evil of his environment. “ He (with a shade of emphasis) began to be in want.”
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386 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. (Cu. XV.
To be in want (icrepeic9ar). From totepos, behind. Com- pare our phrase of one in straitened circumstances, to fall be-
hind.
15. Joined himself (€coAA7j9n). The verb means to glue or cement. Very expressive here, implying that he forced homself upon the citizen, who was unwilling to engage him, and who took him into service only upon persistent entreaty. ‘The un- happy wretch is asort of appendage to a strange personality ” (Godet). Compare Acts ix. 26. Wyc., cleaved. See, also, on Acts v. 13.
To feed swine. As he had received him reluctantly, so he gave him the meanest possible employment. An ignominious occupation, especially in Jewish eyes. The keeping of swine was prohibited to Israelites under a curse.
16. He would fain (ézeIvper). Longing desire. Imperfect tense, he was longing, all the while he was tending the swine.
Filled his belly (yeuioas tiv xovXav). The texts vary. The Rev. follows the reading yoptacdjvar, “ He would fain have been filled,” using the same word which is employed of jfildeng those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matt. v. 6, see note), and of the five thousand (Matt. xiv. 20). Hehad wanted the wrong thing all along, and it was no better now. All he wanted was to fill his belly.
Husks (xepatiwv). Carob-pods. The word is a diminutive of képas, a horn, and means, literally, a little horn, from the shape of the pod. The tree is sometimes called in German Bockshornbaum, Goat’s-horn-tree. ‘The fleshy pods are from six to ten inches long, and one broad, lined inside with a ge- Jatinous substance, not wholly unpleasant to the taste when thoroughly ripe” (Thomson, “ Land and Book”). The shell or pod alone is eaten. It growsin Southern Italy and Spain, and it is said that during the Peninsular War the horses of the British cavalry were often fed upon the pods. It is also called
Cu. XV.] LUKE. 387
Saint John’s bread, from a tradition that the Baptist fed upon its fruit in the wilderness. Edersheim quotes a Jewish saying, “When Israel is reduced to the carob-tree, they become repent- ant.”
17. Came to himself. A striking expression, putting the state of rebellion against God as akind of madness. It isa won- derful stroke of art, to represent the beginning of repentance as the return of a sound consciousness. Ackermann (“ Christian Element in Plato”) observes that Plato thinks of redemption as a coming to one’s self ; an apprehending of one’s self as existent ; as a severing of the inmost being from the surrounding element. Several passages of Plato are very suggestive on this point. * He who bids a man know himself, mould have him know his soul” (“ Alcibiades,” i., 130). ‘**To see her (the soul) as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you should look upon her with the eye of reason, in her original purity, and then her beauty would be discovered, and in her image justice would be more clearly seen, and injustice, and all the things which we have described. Thus far we have spoken the truth concerning her as she appears at present; but we must remember also that we have seen her only in a condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose original image can hardly be discerned, because his natural members are broken off and crushed, and in many ways damaged by the waves; and in- crustations have grown over them of sea-weed and shells and stones, so that he is liker to some sea-monster than to his nat- ural form. And the soul is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand ills: but not there, Glaucon, not there must we look,’