Food In The Bible; Meat

Ever hear, “I’m a meat and potatoes person.” Or “Give me a burger and I’ll be just fine” Meat is definitely something prominent in today’s society, (even though meat substitutes and the choice of abstaining from meat entirely is becoming more popular) meat has always been a timeless, staple figure in cuisines. The animals, from birth to their eventual deaths, have a purpose. Whether it's for milk, their hides, their meat, or their physical labor, there is always use found in animals. In 1st Kings, it is mentioned that oxen

were killed, then the yoke used for them was burned to cook the ox meat and there was a feast. The modern-day Mediterranean diet consists of leaner meats, such as turkey, chicken, lamb. (You can also get protein from other sources, but we’ll visit that later.) 4 These are the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, 5 the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the mountain goat, the antelope, and the mountain sheep. Deuteronomy 14:4-5 The Food Column in The Post Gazette mentions a book by Douglas Neel and Joel Pugh called “The Food and Feasts of Jesus: Inside the World of First-Century Fare” (Which I’m definitely going to have to take a look at.. but based on the column writers reading, they wrote: Unless a family was wealthy, large cuts of meat tended to be reserved for important meals. Meats of the day included goat, lamb, small fowl such as pigeon, and for those close to the water, fish. There also were a variety of nuts, herbs, and spices to choose from, and people did make cheese and yogurt. So their diet, assuming they weren't extremely poor, was nutritionally sound and more varied than we might realize.”

9 Go now to the flock and bring me from there two choice kids of the goats, and I will make savory food from them for your father, such as he loves. Genesis 27:9 Goats, as we all know, will eat anything. While there was an excessive number of goats in the ancient Israel days,

those goats have been blamed for quite a few of the barren hills in modern-day Israel. While they made the hills less than pretty, they actually were valuable to the Israelites. They were a source of milk and milk products (Such as cheese) They ate their meat, goat hair was woven into coarse cloth, their skin was used for leather and water bottles. In the scripture, eating goat really isn’t mentioned a lot but it’s a prominent animal in this story, one of the most prominent being Genesis 27:9. The Smithsonian magazine explains, “In biblical times, most foods would have been parboiled in cauldrons or cooked in clay pots over an open fire, fried on hot stones or hard earth with coals set on top, or baked in makeshift ovens.” Pork, something that has been a debate for a while, was forbidden in the old testament but was made clean in the new testament. Which, I’m happy about that because.. bacon. Jesus said that it wasn’t what went into your mouth that defiles the body, but what goes into your heart and comes out of the body that defiles a man. Centuries later, this still stands. It also goes to show that, even outside of food, what we put into our heads, what we put into our hearts, what we put our hands in.. we have to make sure we’re honoring God with those every step of the way.