390 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. XV.
proaches the trough where the swine are feeding, extends his hand, and seems to ask food of a surly swineherd, who points him to the trough. In the left-hand corner a young boor is playing on a pipe, a sorrowful contrast to the delicious music of the halls of pleasure. Salvator Rosa pictures him in a land- scape, kneeling with clasped hands amid a herd of sheep, oxen, goats, and swine. Rubens, in a farm-stable, on his knees near a trough, where a woman is feeding some swine. He looks im- ploringly at the woman. One of the finest examples of the treatment of the return is by Murillo, in the splendid picture in the gallery of the Duke of Sutherland. It is thus described by Stirling (Annals of the Artists of Spain”): “The repentant youth, locked in the embrace of his father, is, of course, the principal figure ; his pale, emaciated countenance bespeaks the hardships of his husk-coveting time, and the embroidery on his tattered robe the splendor of his riotous living. A little white dog, leaping up to caress him, aids in telling the story. On one side of this group a man and a boy lead in the fatted calf; on the other appear three servants bearing a light-blue silk dress of Spanish fashion, and the gold ring; and one of them seems
(eye) to be murmuring at the honors in preparation for the lost one.”
25. Music (cupdevias). Symphonies: concerted music. 26. Inquired (éuvSdvero). Imperfect. Began to inquire.
27. Is come—safe and sound. Compare és alive—is found. “ How nice is the observance of all the lesser proprieties of the narration. The father, in the midst of all his natural affection, is yet full of the moral significance of his son’s return—that he has come back another person from what he was when he went, or while he tarried in that far land; he sees into the deep of his joy, that he is receiving him now indeed a son, once dead but now alive; once lost to him and to God, but now found alike by both. But the servant confines himself to the more external features of the case, to the fact that, after all he has gone through of excess and hardship, his father has yet received him safe and sound” (Trench).
Cu. XVL.] LUKE. 391
28. He was angry (a@pyicIn). Not with a mere temporary fit of passion, but, as the word imports, with a deep-seated wrath.
29. Kid (&pudov). Some read the diminutive, épéfiov, “a little kid.” In any event a contrast is intended between the kid and the fatted calf.
30. This thy son. Not my brother, but with the bitterest sarcasm.
Was come (i\Jev). He says came, as of a stranger. Not returned.
Devoured (xatudayov). We say “eat up;” the Greek said “eat down” (kata). The word is suggested, no doubt, by the mention of the calf, the kid, and the feasting.