Luke 15:16

γεμίσαι τὴν κοιλίαν αὐτοῦ�. אBDL, &c. Other MSS. have softened it into χορτασθῆναι ἐκ. See note.

16. ἐπεθύμει. “He was longing.”

γεμίσαι τὴν κοιλίαν αὐτοῦ� … Vulg[291] cupiebat implere ventrem suum. The plain expression—purposely adopted to add the last touch to the youth’s degradation—gave offence to some copyists, who substituted for it the verb ‘to be fed.’ The reading adopted in our text is, however, certainly the true one, and perhaps implies that from such food nothing could be hoped for but to allay the pangs of famine. He only hopes to ‘fill his belly,’ not to sate his hunger. Even the world’s utmost gorgeousness and most unchecked sensuality could not avail to raise the soul of men or of nations out of utter misery.

[291] Vulg. Vulgate.

τῶν κερατίων ὧν ἤσθιον οἱ χοῖροι. “The carob-pods of which the swine were eating.” κεράτια (whence our carat) means ‘little horns,’ i.e. the long, coarse, sweetish, bean-shaped pods of the carob tree (ceratonia siliqua, St John’s bread-tree), which were only used by the poorest of the population. Some (incorrectly) give the same meaning to the ἀκρίδες (‘locusts’) which formed the food of St John the Baptist.

καὶ οὐδεὶς ἐδίδου αὐτῷ. No one ‘was giving,’ or ‘chose to give’ him either the husks or anything else. Satan has no desire for, and no interest in, even the smallest alleviation of the anguish and degradation of his victims. Even the vile earthly gifts, and base sensual pleasures, are withheld or become impossible. “Who follows pleasure, pleasure slays.” When Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, &c. explain the ‘husks’ to mean ‘secular doctrines’; ‘the famine lack of the word of truth’; the swine ‘demons’ &c., they vulgarise the whole parable, and evaporate its exquisite poetry to leave no residuum but the dull “after-thoughts of theology.”