Food and drink
Lentils and everyday food
Hebrew adashim (lentils) · beans, vegetables, herbs, roasted grain
Most people ate a plain diet of bread, vegetables, fruit and dairy food; meat was for feasts, sacrifices and honored guests. Lentils, among the first crops ever farmed, were a staple. The small, flat seeds grow in pods on a low plant, and the optical lens is named after them, from the Latin lens, “lentil”. Esau sold his birthright for “bread and lentil stew” (Genesis 25:34) — a red stew. Beans and lentils could also be ground and mixed into bread (Ezekiel 4:9).
In the wilderness the Israelites remembered the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic of Egypt (Numbers 11:5). Cucumber fields had a watchman’s shack (Isaiah 1:8). Roasted grain made a quick meal for harvesters (Ruth 2:14). Mint, dill and cumin grew in gardens, and locusts were allowed as food (Leviticus 11:22). In hungry times people gathered wild herbs — the prophets at Gilgal found “death in the pot” from wild gourds — and in Jesus’ parable the hungry younger son longed for the pods fed to pigs.
Key verses
Then Jacob gave some bread and lentil stew to Esau, who ate and drank and then got up and went away. Thus Esau despised his birthright.They brought beds, basins, and earthen vessels, as well as wheat, barley, flour, roasted grain, beans, lentils,But take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt; put them in a single container and make them into bread for yourself. This is what you are to eat during the 390 days you lie on your side.We remember the fish we ate freely in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic.At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here; have some bread and dip it into the vinegar sauce.” So she sat down beside the harvesters, and he offered her roasted grain, and she ate and was satisfied and had some left over.One of them went out to the field to gather herbs, and he found a wild vine from which he gathered as many wild gourds as his garment could hold. Then he came back and cut them up into the pot of stew, though no one knew what they were. And they poured it out for the men to eat, but when they tasted the stew they cried out, “There is death in the pot, O man of God!” And they could not eat it.Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Food and Food Preparation: Vegetables and Seasoning; Food and Food Preparation: Animal Products; Plants: Lentil (Lens esculenta); Bread: Other Seeds
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
