Luke 15:14

Luk 15:14. Αὐτὸς ἤρξατο, himself began) He was not among the last [as one might have expected from the ample means which he had taken with him to the “far country”] to feel the pressure of the famine.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk_15:14-17. The divine ordinance of external misery, however, in connection with the consequences of sin, reawakens consideration and self-knowledge and the craving after God!

ἰσχυρά] (see the critical remarks) comp. on Luk_4:25.

κατὰ τὴν χώραν] κατά of extension, throughout, as Luk_8:39. Winer, p. 356 [E. T. 499].

καὶ αὐτός] and he, on his part.

ἤρξατο] The commencement of his new state is regarded as important.

Luk_15:15. ἐκολλήθη] he clave to, attached himself to, makes the obtrusiveness of his action palpable.

καὶ ἔπεμψεν αὐτόν] The previous object becomes the subject. See Stallbaum, ad Protag. p. 320 A, B; Kühner, ad Xen. Anab. i. 4. 5; Bernhardy, p. 468.

βόσκειν χοίρους] to keep swine; what an ignominous occupation for the ruined Jew!

Luk_15:16. γεμίσαι τ. κοιλίαν αὐτοῦ] to fill his belly (comp. Themist. Or. xxiii. p. 293 D); a choice expression for the impetuous craving of the hungry man.

ἀπό] from, i.e. by means of a portion, as with verbs of eating, Winer, p. 179 [E. T. 248].

κεράτιον] Cornicle, the sweetish fruit of the locust-tree (ceratonia siliqua of Linnaeus), used as food for swine, and by the poor as a means of nourishment, Galen. VI. p. 355. See Bochart, Hieroz. I. p. 708; Rosenmüller, Morgenl. V. p. 198 f.; Robinson, Pal. III. p. 272.

κ. οὐδεὶς ἐδίδου αὐτῷ] not food (Wolf, Rosenmüller, Paulus), but, according to the context, κεράτια. When the swine driven home were fed therewith, which was the occupation of others, he was hungry even for that brutish provender, and no one gave it to him. No man troubled himself concerning the hungry one, to satisfy him even in this manner. That he should eat with the swine is appropriately not regarded as a possibility. Moreover, it is not presupposed that he received still worse food than κεράτια (Kuinoel, de Wette), but only that he received his maintenance on account of the famine in excessively small quantity, by reason whereof his hunger was so great that he, etc.

Luk_15:17. εἰς ἑαυτὸν δὲ ἐλθών] εἰς ἑαυτόν preceding, in contrast to the external misery, but having come to himself (i.e. having recovered his senses). See examples in Kypke. Comp. ἐν ἑαυτῷ γίνεσθαι, Xen. Anab. i. 5. 17; Act_12:11. It is the moral self-understanding, which had become strange and remote to him, in respect of his condition and his need.

περισς. and λιμῷ are correlative; ἄρτων is not contrasted with κερατίοις (Olshausen), but περισς. ἄρτ. is the contrast to the little bread, which did not appease his hunger. περισσεύονται (see the critical remarks) is passive. They are provided with more than enough, receive superfluity of bread, Mat_13:12; Mat_25:29. Comp. περισσεύειν τινά, 1Th_3:12; Athen. ii. p. 42 B.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk 15:14-19 . The crisis : recklessness leads to misery and misery prompts reflection.

Luk 15:14 . λιμὸς , a famine, an accident fitting into the moral history of the prodigal; not a violent supposition; such correspondences between the physical and moral worlds do occur, and there is a Providence in them. ἰσχυρὰ : the most probable reading if only because λιμὸς is feminine only in Doric and late Greek usage. ὑστερεῖσθαι : the result of wastefulness and prevalent dearth combined is dire want. What is to be done? Return home? Not yet; that the last shift.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

when he had spent all . . . a mighty famine--a mysterious providence holding back the famine till he was in circumstances to feel it in all its rigor. Thus, like Jonah, whom the storm did not overtake till on the mighty deep at the mercy of the waves, does the sinner feel as if "the stars in their courses were fighting against" him (Jdg 5:20).

in want--the first stage of his bitter experience, and preparation for a change.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 14. A mighty famine in that land] As he was of a profligate turn of mind himself, it is likely he sought out a place where riot and excess were the ruling characteristics of the inhabitants; and, as poverty is the sure consequence of prodigality, it is no wonder that famine preyed on the whole country.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(14) There arose a mighty famine in that land.—This again was no unwonted incident. The famine which “came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar” (Act_11:28) was more extensive and memorable than others, but it was far from standing alone. And now the pinch came. His treasure was gone, and for the fulness of bread there was hunger and “cleanness of teeth” (Amo_4:6). In the individual interpretation of the parable, the mighty famine is the yearning of the soul’s unsatisfied desire, the absence of its true food, of “the bread that cometh down from heaven.” (See Notes on Joh_6:32.) In its wider range it is the craving of humanity for what it cannot find when appetites are not satisfied, and their wonted supply ceases—the famine, not of bread and of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord (Amo_8:11); the want of a message from the Eternal Father to sustain the life of His children.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

14. And when he had spent all] Historically,

“On that hard Roman world, disgust And secret loathing fell;

Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell.”

M. Arnold.

Individually, “The limits are narrow within which, by wasting his capital, a man obtains a supply of pocket-money.” G. Macdonald.

there arose a mighty fa7nine in that land] God has given him his heart’s desire and sent leanness withal into his bones. The worst famine of all is “not a famine of bread or a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amo_8:11); and in such a famine even “the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst” (Amo_8:13). “They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns; broken cisterns, that can hold no water,” Jer_2:13.

he began to be in want] The whole heathen world at this time was saying, “Who will shew us any good?” Weariness, despair, and suicide were universal. Individually this is the retributive anguish of those who have wasted the gifts of life.

“My days are in the yellow leaf,

The flowers and fruits of love are gone,

The worm, the anguish, and the grief

Are mine alone.

The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some volcanic isle;

No torch is kindled at its blaze—

A funeral pile.”

Byron.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And when he had spent all,.... Sin strips a man of all that is good and valuable; of the image of God, of the knowledge of divine things, of natural holiness, of moral righteousness, and of strength to perform moral good; hence man is in a wretched and miserable condition, he is poor, and blind, and naked: and if man has spent all, and sin has stripped him of all, where is his free will? there is no good thing in man, but what comes from the grace of God; nor has he any thing to recommend him to God, or to offer to his creditor, to compound his debts with; nor can he prepare himself for conversion, or any good work:

there arose a mighty famine in that land; sin brings men into a starving and famishing condition; for in the far country, the land of sin, there is a famine of the word: though the Gospel is preached, it is only food to spiritual persons; unregenerate men have no desire to it, but neglect and despise it; and if they attend it, it has no place in them: they that are in this land, are aliens from the ordinances of God, the breasts of consolation, the goodness and fatness of his house; they are in a pit, wherein is no water; their taste is vitiated to every thing that is spiritually good; they live on bread of deceit, and labour after that which satisfies not; wherefore they look like skeletons, and are as the dry bones in Ezekiel's vision:

and he began to be in want; or was in want: when the above is the case, the sinner may be truly said to be in want; an unregenerate man is in want of every thing that is good; of wisdom and knowledge, of grace and holiness, of righteousness or clothing, of food, and of all the necessaries of life: and he may be said to "begin" to be in want, because man was not originally so, but was possessed of a natural fulness; and because sin is the beginning of want, as soon as one takes place, the other does: moreover, this man now began to see and feel himself to be in want, though as yet he was not rightly and truly sensible of his wants, at least of the way to redress them.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

14 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.

Ver. 14. And when he had spent all] And left himself nothing at all, praeter coelum et coenum, but air to breathe in and earth to tread on, as that Roman prodigal boasted; who had made his own hands his executors, and his own eyes his overseers, drawing much of his patrimony through his throat, and spending the rest upon harlots, who left him as bare as crows do a dead carcase. Ruin follows riot at the heels.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

A mighty famine - Famines were common in Eastern nations. They were caused by the failure of the crops - by a want of timely rains, a genial sun, or sometimes by the prevalence of the plague or of the pestilence, which swept off numbers of the inhabitants. In this case it is very naturally connected with the luxury, the indolence, and the dissipation of the people in that land,

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

14. Spent all—In the original squandered all, just as he had previously (Luk_15:13)

gathered all. A mighty famine—The apostacy of man from God, of which this course of the son is an emblem, is the source of the evils which afflict human life, and the purpose of these evils is to bring the wanderer home first to himself and then to his father God.

Want—Happy for him that he was in want of what his father’s house could alone supply.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And when he had spent all. True of many a soul in all times, but especially in that age of excessive luxury and splendour and of unbridled passions. "On that hard Roman world, disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell. (Matthew Arnold.)

There arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. The "mighty famine" may be understood to represent difficult times. Wax or political convulsions, so common in those days, may have speedily brought about the ruin of many like the prodigal of our story, and his comparatively small fortune would quickly have been swallowed up. Selfish evil-living, excesses of various kinds, had gained him no real friends, but had left him to meet the ruin of his fortune with enfeebled powers, homeless and friendless; hence the depth of the degradation in which we speedily find him. Not an unusual figure in the great world-drama, this of the younger son the man who had sacrificed everything for selfish pleasure, and soon found he had absolutely nothing left but suffering. Very touchingly the greatest, perhaps, of our English poets writes of this awful soul-famine. In his case fortune and rank still remained to him, but everything that can really make life precious and beautiful had been wasted. "My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the anguish, and the grief, Are mine alone. "The fire that on my bosom preys Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze A funeral pile! (Byron.)

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

He began to be in want - All his worldly pleasures failing, he grew conscious of his want of real good.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Folly and repentance:

v. 14. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.

v. 15. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

v. 16. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him.

v. 17. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my fathers have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!

v. 18.I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee,

v. 19. and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.

The young fellow, after the manner of his kind, undoubtedly had friends in droves while his money lasted and he was willing to spend it recklessly. His indulgence may at first have whetted the edge of appetite, but overindulgence wears out the power of enjoyment. When his money was gone, his so-called friends, after the immemorial manner of their kind, evaporated into thin air, leaving him severely alone. And the poor fellow, no longer a good fellow, having literally destroyed all that he had, found himself face to face with direst extremity and most distressing poverty, since a great famine came into that same land. The result of wastefulness and lack of food combined is dire want. He was at the point of starvation. And so he attached himself to a citizen of that country which he had thought to bless with his presence. The man did not want him, could not use him, in fact; to feed another mouth in the time of dearth is no easy matter. He now had work, that of a swineherd, despised above all other occupations by the Jews, and he could sleep out in the stable; but the amount of food he received from his master was inadequate for keeping body and soul together. He was soon reduced to such straits that he would have been glad to fill his spoiled stomach with husks, the pods of a wild fruit, that of the carob-tree. That was the food of the pigs entrusted to him; but he was denied even the roughage of the beasts. That is the result of sin. It is not only a reproach to the sinner, but it leads to the destruction of both body and soul. The sinner must find out what misery and anguish he brings upon himself if he leaves the Lord, his God. In his misfortune he is forsaken by God and man, he has no comfort nor support, the abyss of despair yawns before him. Or if fortune seems to smile upon him and good days fall to his lot, he still lacks peace of mind and a satisfied conscience: there is no peace in his soul. Happiness is possible only in communion with God; to leave that means to give up true happiness.

At last the heaping up of miseries and griefs had some effect upon the young man. He realized the situation; he came to his true, sane self; he awoke as from a deep, unpleasant dream; he saw himself and his whole life in the true light; he began once more to judge things according to the standards of a well instructed conscience. He called to mind the laborers of his father that were now, in comparison with his own miserable situation, living in affluence, having more bread than they needed, while he was actually starving to death by degrees. His pride was broken, his unruliness a matter of the past. He decided to go at once to his father and make a full, an unequivocal confession of his sin, that he had transgressed against God in heaven, whom every sin strikes, in the first place, and against his father. He feels his utter unworthiness to be called a son of such a father any longer, he has forfeited all filial claims; the best he can hope for, if his father would be so merciful, is to be given a position as hired workman on the farm. That is true contrition and repentance, when the sinner searches his own heart and being, fully acknowledges his transgressions, admits the justice of the divine punishment without restriction, and is fully persuaded as to his own unworthiness. There must be no palliation, no equivocation. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy, Pro 28:13.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

14. δαπανήσαντος δὲ αὐτοῦ πάντα. Historically,

“On that hard Roman world, disgust

And secret loathing fell;

Deep weariness, and sated lust

Made human life a hell.”

M. ARNOLD.

Individually, “The limits are narrow within which, by wasting his capital, a man obtains a supply of pocket-money.” G. Macdonald.

ἐγένετο λιμὸς ἰσχυρὰ κατὰ τὴν χώραν ἐκείνην. God has given him his heart’s desire and sent leanness withal into his bones. The worst famine of all is “not a famine of bread or a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amo 8:11); and in such a famine even “the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst” (id. Luk 15:13). “They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water,” Jer 2:13.

ἰσχυρά. Λιμὸς is made fem. as in Doric.

ἤρξατο ὑστερεῖσθαι. The whole heathen world at this time was saying, “Who will shew us any good?” Weariness, despair, and suicide were universal. Individually this is the retributive anguish of those who have wasted the gifts of life.

“My days are in the yellow leaf,

The flowers and fruits of love are gone,

The worm, the anguish, and the grief

Are mine alone.

The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some volcanic isle;

No torch is kindled at its blaze—

A funeral pile.”

BYRON.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

14-16.] His misery is set forth in these verses. He soon spends all:—there is a fine irony, as Stier remarks, in δαπανήσαντος, as compared with διεσκόρπισεν before—he spent his money for that which was no bread.

14. λιμὸς ἰσχ.] On λιμός fem., see note on ref. Acts.

This famine is the shepherd seeking his stray sheep—the woman sweeping to find the lost. The famine, in the interpretation, is to be subjectively taken; he begins to be in want (no stress on αὐτός, which is inserted on account of the change of subject from the last clause),—to feel the emptiness of soul which precedes either utter abandonment or true penitence.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

14. The working of Providence is manifested in coincidences. Just when he had spent everything, a famine, and a severe one, arose in precisely that land to which he had gone to enjoy himself, and throughout (κατά) the land. And he himself (καὶ αὐτός), as well as the country, began more and more to be in want.

λιμὸς ἰσχυρά. See small print on 4:25. For καὶ αὐτός see on 1:17, 5:14, 6:20. For ὑστερεῖσθαι, “to feel want” (mid.), comp. 2Co 11:9; Php 4:12; Ecclus. 11:11. Syr-Sin. omits the clause.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Spent. See on cost, ch. 14 28.

In that land. Want is characteristic of the "far country." The prodigal feels the evil of his environment. "He (with a shade of emphasis) began to be in want."

To be in want [υστερεισθαι] . From usterov, behind. Compare our phrase of one in straitened circumstances, to fall behind.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 14-16.

The liberty of self-enjoyment is not unlimited, as the sinner would fain think; it has limits of two kinds: the one pertaining to the individual himself, such as satiety, remorse, the feeling of destitution and abjectness resulting from vice (when he had spent all); the other arising from certain unfavourable outward circumstances, here represented by the famine which occurs at this crisis, that is, domestic or public calamities which complete the subduing of the heart which has been already overwhelmed, and further, the absence of all divine consolation. Let those two causes of misery coincide, and wretchedness is at its height. Then happens what Jesus calls ὑστερεῖσθαι, to be in want, the absolute void of a heart which has sacrificed everything for pleasure, and which has nothing left but suffering. We can hardly avoid seeing, in the ignoble dependence into which this young Jew falls under a heathen master, an allusion to the position of the publicans who were engaged in the service of the Roman power. But the general idea which corresponds to this touch is that of the degrading dependence, in respect of the world, to which the vicious man always finds himself reduced in the end. He sought pleasure, he finds pain; he wished freedom, he gets bondage. The word ἐκολλήθη has in it something abject; the unhappy wretch is a sort of appendage to a strange personality. To feed swine, the last business for a Jew. Κεράτιον denotes a species of coarse bean, used in the East for fattening those animals. At Luk 15:16, the Alex. Mjj. are caught in the very act of purism; men of delicate taste could not bear the gross expression, to fill the belly with...There was therefore substituted in the public reading the more genteel term, to satisfy himself with...; and this correction has passed into the Alex. text. The act expressed by the received reading is that, not of relishing food, but merely of filling a void. The smallest details are to the life in this portraiture.

During this time of famine, when the poor herdsman’s allowance did not suffice to appease his hunger, he was reduced to covet the coarse bean with which the herd was carefully fattened, when he drove it home: the swine were in reality more precious than he. They sold high, an image of the contempt and neglect which the profligate experiences from that very world to which he has sacrificed the most sacred feelings.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.