Proverbs 17:1
Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.
This proverb, which has an obvious literal surface meaning, is loaded with cultural and theological concepts. The keys to its contrast values are found in the words ‘dry’ and ‘sacrifice’.
To understand, we must be familiar with the ethical and cultural habits that evolved through Israel’s sacrificial system. Meal offerings were always offered with oil, so that a dry morsel represents the piece of bread that someone eats quietly at home by himself. The house full of sacrifices tells us of the leftovers of peace offering sumptuous feasts someone would take home with them.
Peace offerings were extravagant feasts. They were not for the sake of guilt or sin, but were the culmination of all the other sacrifices. Peace offerings represented final fellowship with God. Yeshua has been coined to be our ‘peace-offering’. The peace offering is the only offering were everyone partakes of the food brought to the Temple. God gets a share, the priests get a share and the ‘offerer’ gets a share. They all sit and eat together in a sumptuous party atmosphere in the Temple court. It is supposed to represent fellowship with God.
Peace offerings sometimes became lewd parties with merriment and excitement that bordered intoxication. It ended sometimes in quarrel and strife. Solomon uses the degenerating religious practices adopted by some in these celebrations in Proverbs 7 as he talks of a woman with the attire of harlot who goes out to the streets in ‘search’ for the ‘simple’ to lure him into sin. She says I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee.
This proverb reeks of comparative theology. It leaves us with the idea that the man who worships God in his own home and in a simple manner is better in the sight of God than one, who in spite of all the pretences and wealth found in his religiosity, lives a life that denotes of spiritual conceited gluttony, disobedience, and selfishness. This ‘dry morsel’ eaten quietly at home in a quiet spirit looked to God more like a true peace offering than all the sumptuous feast offered at the Temple.
May we learn from it.
Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife.
This proverb, which has an obvious literal surface meaning, is loaded with cultural and theological concepts. The keys to its contrast values are found in the words ‘dry’ and ‘sacrifice’.
To understand, we must be familiar with the ethical and cultural habits that evolved through Israel’s sacrificial system. Meal offerings were always offered with oil, so that a dry morsel represents the piece of bread that someone eats quietly at home by himself. The house full of sacrifices tells us of the leftovers of peace offering sumptuous feasts someone would take home with them.
Peace offerings were extravagant feasts. They were not for the sake of guilt or sin, but were the culmination of all the other sacrifices. Peace offerings represented final fellowship with God. Yeshua has been coined to be our ‘peace-offering’. The peace offering is the only offering were everyone partakes of the food brought to the Temple. God gets a share, the priests get a share and the ‘offerer’ gets a share. They all sit and eat together in a sumptuous party atmosphere in the Temple court. It is supposed to represent fellowship with God.
Peace offerings sometimes became lewd parties with merriment and excitement that bordered intoxication. It ended sometimes in quarrel and strife. Solomon uses the degenerating religious practices adopted by some in these celebrations in Proverbs 7 as he talks of a woman with the attire of harlot who goes out to the streets in ‘search’ for the ‘simple’ to lure him into sin. She says I have peace offerings with me; this day have I payed my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee.
This proverb reeks of comparative theology. It leaves us with the idea that the man who worships God in his own home and in a simple manner is better in the sight of God than one, who in spite of all the pretences and wealth found in his religiosity, lives a life that denotes of spiritual conceited gluttony, disobedience, and selfishness. This ‘dry morsel’ eaten quietly at home in a quiet spirit looked to God more like a true peace offering than all the sumptuous feast offered at the Temple.
May we learn from it.
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