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The seven deadly sins
Gluttony
Latin gula · Greek gastrimargia, “belly-madness” · set against it: temperance
The Bible enjoys feasts and wine; Jesus’ critics even called him “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19). What it warns against is a life ruled by appetite. “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat,” says Proverbs 23:20, and Paul writes of people whose “god is their belly” (Philippians 3:19). Two stories were read as warnings. Esau came in famished from the field and sold his birthright for bread and lentil stew (Genesis 25:29–34); Hebrews calls him one “who for a single meal sold his birthright” (Hebrews 12:16). In the wilderness the people craved meat, and the place where they buried their dead was named Kibroth-hattaavah, the graves of craving (Numbers 11:34).
Evagrius put gluttony first, since the desert monks lived by fasting. Gregory the Great named five ways of it: eating too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly and too daintily. Later lists set temperance against it. On Dante’s sixth terrace the gluttons pass, thin and hungry, beneath trees of sweet-smelling fruit they cannot reach. Artists gave Gluttony a pig or a boar.
Key verses
Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat. For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe them in rags.Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.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.See to it that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his birthright.Meanwhile, the rabble among them had a strong craving for other food, and again the Israelites wept and said, “Who will feed us meat?The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at this glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is vindicated by her actions.”All verses on this topic
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 — Esau; Birthright; Lentils; Kibroth-Hattaavah; Wine: Wine in the Old Testament; Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 6–14 (late 4th century); Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 30.18 (c. 578–595); Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, cantos 10–27 (c. 1308–1320)
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.
