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Pro_15:17; Pro_23:20
The inference derivable from this text, that the substantial diet of the great body of the people was vegetable, is confirmed by many other passages, as well as by existing facts. In the East, and, indeed, throughout Southern Europe, the great mass of the people very rarely taste any kind of animal food; and, in the season of fruits, even dispense with dressed vegetables, and live almost entirely on bread and fruit, especially grapes. But we need scarcely go farther than our nearest neighbors to find satisfactory illustrations of this. In the north, we have the Scotch peasant, to whom oatmeal porridge is the staff of his life, as the potato is to the Irishman on the other side the western channel, and as vegetable soups are to the Frenchman beyond the channel on the south. This diet of the French peasantry may offer more real illustration than would be readily supposed. In Scripture we seldom read of meat being used except on somewhat extraordinary occasions, such as on high festivals, or for the entertainment of strangers; whereas the few indications of the preparation of ordinary meals, point to vegetable soups or pottages. It was a mess of lentil pottage that Jacob prepared for his own supper, and for which Esau sold his birthright; and it was a pottage of field herbs which was prepared in the great crock for the ordinary dinner of the sons of the prophets at Jericho. By this last instance we learn that for such “a dinner of herbs,” not only cultivated but wild herbs, were used—for the young man who collected them for this meal, gathered a noxious plant by mistake, and people do not cultivate unwholesome things in their gardens. Under such circumstances, numerous plants are known to be good for food, the useful properties of which are unknown or forgotten among those with whom a different rule of diet prevails. We are apt to think much of the large variety of our culinary vegetables; but in fact the variety is very small in comparison with those that are used for food in the different countries where vegetable diet prevails. And even in these, only a small proportion of the plants, really fit for food, are used. Indeed the probability is, that by far the greater part of the plants of every country (including even the leaves of many trees) would form excellent food when suitably prepared; even many plants and roots, unpleasant or unwholesome in their crude state, would become nutritive and pleasant when boiled in a pottage. It has long been our own opinion, confirmed by all the experience which observation, travel, and reading have enabled us to acquire, that no one need hunger, far less starve, were the useful properties of many common vegetables generally known. As it is, many do perish in the midst of available plenty, literally “for lack of knowledge.”
Meat doubtless made its appearance, and that largely too at the tables of persons in flourishing circumstances; and this fact, indeed, gives point to the contrast intended in the present proverb—a dinner of meat being clearly signified as a mark of high prosperity, if not luxury. But the daily necessity for animal food is not at all recognized in the East, though often indulged in beyond all reasonable bounds when it can be obtained.
And this leads us to another text further on (Pro_23:20), where “riotous eaters of flesh” are classed with “wine-bibbers.” This expression, which seems strange to us, could hardly apply but in a country where flesh meat does not enter into the ordinary diet of the people—where, in short, it is counted as a luxury, and as a luxury is extravagantly indulged in, when it can be had, by those not in the constant habit of using it. We have often had occasion to witness a meal of meat indulged in under such circumstances to a degree of inconceivable intemperance, and enjoyed with a degree of hilarity very much like that which attends the consumption of strong drink in our northern climates. We have the Arabs more especially, but not exclusively, in view; for it is in connection with this people that the present expression, “riotous eaters of flesh,” has been brought most forcibly to our mind, on beholding the strong and irrepressible satisfaction with which a party of this people would receive the present of a live sheep, and on witnessing the haste with which it was slaughtered and dressed, the voracity with which it was devoured, and the high glee, not unattended with dance and song, which seasoned the feast. We are almost afraid to say how much an unstinted Arab will eat when the opportunity is given. It is commonly considered that an Arab can dispose of the entire quarter of a sheep without inconvenience; and we have certainly seen half a dozen of them pick the bones of a large sheep very clean.
Perhaps, however, the sacred writer, under that feeling with respect to the use of animal food which has been explained, means here to indicate the frequent eating of flesh as a wasteful extravagance.
Let us add, that in eastern travel we have come to many considerable places—small towns and extensive villages—where no meat but poultry could be procured. As meat will not keep, it is not killed where there is not enough of certain demand to ensure an immediate sale, and the one or two in such places who might wish for meat at their tables, will not incur the extravagance of killing a sheep every time they want a meal. They also, therefore, dispense with it, or content themselves with a fowl—only providing—a sheep or lamb when special occasions occur. In fact, it is only in large towns that meat—and that always mutton—is to be found in the markets, or that the trade of the butcher exists.