why locusts and wild honey

[Tbenz]

Thank you for that. I have been trying to find out the Spiritual or Heavenly reasoning behind why the Locust and Wild honey even to the point of his wearing of the Camel hair and leather belt I pray that some day the Lord may reveal the signiant purposes reason for this this I may gain the Wisdom in this that I so believe He desires me to have for I know as you do that this is not something that was added to just to be added it somewhat seems to me as some sort of Fast of the Lord that he was put on just as Samson as a Nazirite took a vow from certain worldly things and to consecrate himself to God ( Num 6:1-8 ). I have come to learn that John the Baptist was a Nazirite. Among the Hebrew people anyone could take this vow; there where no tribal restrictions as in the case of the priest. Rich or poor, man or woman, master or slave- all where free to become Nazerites.
Nazeritites did not withdraw from society and live as hermits; however, they did agree to follow certain regulations for a specific period of time. Samson, Samual, and John the baptist where the only "Nazerite for life" recorded in the Bible. Before they where born, their vows where taken for them by their parents.

[COPLAND 3]

According to Cornelius a Lapide the locusts were like grasshoppers, and were plentiful, ceremonial clean, and could also be dried and kept up to a year.

[CHRISTINE77]

Originally Posted by Publisher

As I understand the locusts were dried and made into a powder....they were then mixed with the honey and eaten as "cakes"...they could be carried and they were nutritious.

not to doubt you, but where did you get that information from?

[CHRISTINE77]

Originally Posted by TimothyH

I'll add to my previous post above (number 8) that the prophet Joel has some things to say about Locusts...

What the cutter left, the locust swarm has eaten; What the locust swarm left, the grasshopper has eaten; And what the grasshopper left, the devourer has eaten. (Joel 1:4)

All refer to various species of locusts and the book of the prophet Joel is worth reading.

The stuff in the new testament wasn't just stuff that was made up or stuff that happened for no reason. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John didn't just decide to add in little interesting things about what John ate and what he wore because they found this information interesting and thought it would be cool if we posted about it on CAF twenty centuries later. The primary author of scripture is God, and he has a message he want's us to know, again, not just because they are interesting facts. God wants us to apply what he is trying to tell us to our daily lives, to help us be holy and perfect, so that we can spend eternity with him.

The fact that John at locusts and honey is significant as is the fact that he lived in the land of milk and honey. The prophet Joel tells us about an army of locusts and John tells us in the Book of Revelation about locusts with hair like women and metal breastplates like armor. This all means something more than just a notation about John's diet.

And I don't know what it means. But it is there for a reason, that much is sure, and I'll let everyone know if I figure it out.


-Tim-

Thanks for you answers Tim. They are very insightful, and make me want to discover more!

[Publisher]

Originally Posted by CHRISTINE77

not to doubt you, but where did you get that information from?

I read it years ago in a biblical history of NT characters...I don't even remember the name of the book. I always wondered how one ate locusts....it made sense that they'd dry them, pound or ground them into a powder and mix with honey to make "cakes"..."wafers"....that they could carry with them in their travels.

To me it was an oddity.

[_Abyssinia]

Originally Posted by MarkRA

it sounds cool but was there any reason John ate locusts and wild honey (other than that it had been prophecied that he would)?

This is not a Catholic website but it shows the diet of locusts and honey likely have a deeper meaning than just a diet, but symbolising his role in redemptive history:

http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/bibl...usts-and-honey

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by Publisher

I read it years ago in a biblical history of NT characters...I don't even remember the name of the book. I always wondered how one ate locusts....it made sense that they'd dry them, pound or ground them into a powder and mix with honey to make "cakes"..."wafers"....that they could carry with them in their travels.

To me it was an oddity.

Well, you could always roast or boil them. I mean, that's how the Japanese eat locusts, they boil 'em in soy sauce. And yes, Japanese cuisine originally included locusts in its diet (it still does today apparently, though not in the same extent that it once did) - you get to kill the nasty things feeding on the rice crops, and you get to eat something for lunch. Two birds with one stone.

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by TimothyH

Recall that during the divided kingdom, the ten tribes in the north (Land of Israel) were seperated and to a certain extent at war with the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin (Land of Judah). At the very beginning of the divided kingdom, right after Solomon died, king Rehoboam in the north, set up two golden calfs, one in Bethel and one in Dan, saying...

"The kingdom will return to David's house. If now this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, the hearts of this people will return to their master, Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me." After taking counsel, the king made two calves of gold and said to the people: "You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough. Here is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt." And he put one in Bethel, the other in Dan. (1 Kings 12:26-29)

King Rehoboam basically took the ten northern tribes back to the time of worshipping the golden calf at Mt. Sinai, throwing away centuries of mosaic law and abandoning God's laws about temple worship. Spiritually, the north was dead and Bethel became a center of the worst kind of pagan worship. Elijiah and Elisha the prophets were from the south but operated in the north, preaching to the pagans there.

I think you mean Jeroboam. Rehoboam is Solomon's son and heir to the throne, of the "I will whip you with scorpions" fame.

Now I think there's another possible way of looking at the sin of Jeroboam (and possibly Aaron's as well). The bull was a common symbol of strength and virility in the ANE, and many gods in different Semitic religions were portrayed with bovine attributes (with horns, with bull's heads, riding on bulls, as bulls themselves, etc). It is also possible that the idol of the bull - which the text mockingly denigrates to "calf" - is meant to be a representation of Yhwh or His divine vehicle (like the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant and the more larger ones in Solomon's Temple). Jeroboam's sin is not so much then about introducing a foreign deity per se, but building illicit places of worship for Yhwh, all in the name of preventing his subjects from going to Jerusalem.

[patrick457]

After the Babylonian exile, the vast majority of the ten northern tribes didn't even bother to come home. They had completely abandoned their identity as part of the nation of Israel and thus as God's chosen people. They had become like the nations around them in diet, language, and pagan religion and just stayed in Babylon. Most of the nation of Judah however, returned to the land in the south to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple and to begin temple worship again. And that, I think, is the background for John the Baptist eating locust and wild honey.

It was the Judahites who were exiled to Babylon. The northern kingdom was attacked by the Assyrians, although the Neo-Assyrian Empire had indeed been conquered by the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Neo-Babylonians had in turn been conquered by the Medo-Persians (the Achaemenid Empire).

According to 2 Chronicles 15:9, members of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh and Simeon fled to Judah during the reign of Asa (913/10 BC-873/69 BC). Whether these groups were absorbed into the population or remained distinct groups, or returned to their tribal lands is not indicated.

In the thirty-ninth year of Azariah king of Judah, Menahem the son of Gadi began to reign over Israel, and he reigned ten years in Samaria. [...] Pul the king of Assyria came against the land, and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that he might help him to confirm his hold on the royal power. Menahem exacted the money from Israel, that is, from all the wealthy men, fifty shekels of silver from every man, to give to the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned back and did not stay there in the land. [...] And Menahem slept with his fathers, and Pekahiah his son reigned in his place.

In the fiftieth year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekahiah the son of Menahem began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and he reigned two years. [...] And Pekah the son of Remaliah, his captain, conspired against him with fifty men of the people of Gilead, and struck him down in Samaria, in the citadel of the king's house with Argob and Arieh; he put him to death and reigned in his place.

In the fifty-second year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekah the son of Remaliah began to reign over Israel in Samaria, and he reigned twenty years. [...] In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and he carried the people captive to Assyria. Then Hoshea the son of Elah made a conspiracy against Pekah the son of Remaliah and struck him down and put him to death and reigned in his place, in the twentieth year of Jotham the son of Uzziah. [...]

In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel, and he reigned nine years. And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, yet not as the kings of Israel who were before him. Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria. And Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to So, king of Egypt, and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison. Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it.

In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

With the Assyrian invasion of 722-20 BC and the deportation of Israelites came the end of the northern kingdom. It would seem though that not all were deported: 2 Chronicles 30:1-11 mentions northern Israelites (in particular, members of Dan, Ephraim, Manasseh, Asher and Zebulun) during Hezekiah's reign and how members of the latter three went to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem at that time. Israel Finkelstein recently estimated that only a fifth of the population (about 40,000) were actually resettled out of the area during the two deportation periods under Tiglath-Pileser III and his successor Sargon II.

[patrick457]

For the record, I was thinking, "There has to be a book about this," and sure enough, there was! James A. Kelhoffer's The Diet of John the Baptist: "Locusts and Wild Honey" in Synoptic and Patristic Interpretation.

[TimothyH]

Originally Posted by patrick457

I think you mean Jeroboam. Rehoboam is Solomon's son and heir to the throne, of the "I will whip you with scorpions" fame.

Yes, thank you. Rehoboam famously said, "My little finger is thicker than my father's loins."

I probably have my dates and events pretty mixed up. I'm an amateur.


-Tim-

[nordskoven]

According to legend, carob pods were the “locusts” that sustained St. John the Baptist as he preached throughout the desert wilderness. For this reason, carob pods are commonly called St. John's Bread and, less often, locust bean. Of course, the preacher didn’t actually eat insects as suggested by the term locust, which was later ascribed to swarming grasshoppers. Some scholars speculate that reference to the word may stem from two factors: the translation of kerátiοn, the Greek word for the genus name of the carob tree, the root of which means “horn”; and the simple fact that, like locusts, the tree is highly resistant to the harsh environmental conditions of its native climate. This means that carob likely represented a reliable food source during times of famine triggered by drought or war. In fact, this idea is expressed in the parable of the Prodigal Son, who, after squandering his father’s wealth, is tempted to consume the carob pods used as swine fodder because he is starving--spiritually as well as physically. Aside from the moral lesson gained from the story, feeding carob pods to agricultural animals eased the burden of the poor farmer—a boon during the social and political turmoil of the Biblical period. However, carob pods proved to be a life-saving food source to regional inhabitants of other eras, such as the residents of Malta during World War II.

The seeds of the tree were used by the ancient Romans as a weight comparison against pieces of gold. Over time, a standardized method of determining the purity of the metal was established based on the fact that a single gold coin called a solidus was the same weight as 24 kerátiοn, or carob seeds. Eventually, the term for this unit of measurement evolved into carat, and a label of 24-carat meant the object was 100% pure gold.

Carob was once the primary source of sugar until cane sugar became widely available. Today, it’s a substitute for chocolate, which contains an enzyme called theobromine that is highly toxic to dogs and some people.


The above represents the translation speculation part of the "locusts and wild honey" diet of Jesus Christ's relative, the mighty John the Baptist. When next the midwest gets a swarm of grasshoppers eating their way through my garden, I will consider netting a few and trying with a Bit O' Honey.

[CHRISTINE77]

Originally Posted by nordskoven

According to legend, carob pods were the “locusts” that sustained St. John the Baptist as he preached throughout the desert wilderness. For this reason, carob pods are commonly called St. John's Bread and, less often, locust bean. Of course, the preacher didn’t actually eat insects as suggested by the term locust, which was later ascribed to swarming grasshoppers. Some scholars speculate that reference to the word may stem from two factors: the translation of kerátiοn, the Greek word for the genus name of the carob tree, the root of which means “horn”; and the simple fact that, like locusts, the tree is highly resistant to the harsh environmental conditions of its native climate. This means that carob likely represented a reliable food source during times of famine triggered by drought or war. In fact, this idea is expressed in the parable of the Prodigal Son, who, after squandering his father’s wealth, is tempted to consume the carob pods used as swine fodder because he is starving--spiritually as well as physically. Aside from the moral lesson gained from the story, feeding carob pods to agricultural animals eased the burden of the poor farmer—a boon during the social and political turmoil of the Biblical period. However, carob pods proved to be a life-saving food source to regional inhabitants of other eras, such as the residents of Malta during World War II.

The seeds of the tree were used by the ancient Romans as a weight comparison against pieces of gold. Over time, a standardized method of determining the purity of the metal was established based on the fact that a single gold coin called a solidus was the same weight as 24 kerátiοn, or carob seeds. Eventually, the term for this unit of measurement evolved into carat, and a label of 24-carat meant the object was 100% pure gold.

Carob was once the primary source of sugar until cane sugar became widely available. Today, it’s a substitute for chocolate, which contains an enzyme called theobromine that is highly toxic to dogs and some people.


The above represents the translation speculation part of the "locusts and wild honey" diet of Jesus Christ's relative, the mighty John the Baptist. When next the midwest gets a swarm of grasshoppers eating their way through my garden, I will consider netting a few and trying with a Bit O' Honey.

Hmmmmmm.... the plot thickens!

[Pimmeruski]

I had searched this one out for years... I always found it so intriguing. Then the other day I simply prayed: "Lord, would you please reveal to me what you're hoping to communicate?" I believe He did!

The first mention we have of locusts is of God's judgement upon Egypt.

"So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 4 If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. 5 They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. "
(Exodus 10:3-4)

The first significant mention we have of honey is, as many stated before, "The land of milk and honey..." the promised land from which God drew Israel out of Egypt. In contrast to Egypt, a place of judgement. the land of Israel is to be a land of grace!

"So I have decided to lead you up out of your affliction in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey. "
(Exodus 3:17)

John's diet is reflective of the message he brings: repentance for the forgiveness of sins! Think of the honey like the mustard on a hot dog. He eats LOCUSTS and HONEY because it shows what the Lord intends to do, he wants to cover JUDGEMENT with GRACE. I can assure you that one is sweeter than the other!

You could also see it in a similar but slightly different way... its a progression from one to the other. From locusts, to honey. From judgement to grace!

Praise be to our God!

[cvmd33]

I too have heard honey restores muscle tissue. I love culinary foods as well, turns out the bibble may also have given us some hidden treasures on how to eat. The locusts are high in protein per what I read. Due to their natural habitat either dessert or green grass. I wonder if it's safe to say adding the same greens locusts eat to our diet and honey will help us maintain or gain clarity in what ever the bible describes is happening. Also Jesus shared fish with us and a type of wholegrain almost like cracker bread, what is found in fish oil helps with alzeimer's, weight, acne, blood flow and cancerous to name a few. Our diets and low exercise levels help clog our mind with sinful pleasure. I sometimes wish we had businesses that are still standing from when Jesus roamed this world to serve the foods of back then. This will probably help us feel like them and understand the message. With so much technology we have now we use it for bad at times and it bothers me. You would think we can come up with the best answers now since we can look up things from a website and back then all was just being started. It's all tainted and disturbed with our daily struggles of providing for our families. Big companies thrive on us the little people .