A Land of Milk and Honey: Food in Ancient Israel

Class 1

Original URL   Sunday, January 2, 2022

Transcript

um

so i got i got this book right uh about uh food and the impact on history right right up my nerd alley for the all the history people right um and so i got to thinking about the importance obviously of food in the ancient world particularly in ancient israel when we read the bible

there are all kinds of references to food in fact in the in the torah right in the old testament the law there's a there's a huge portion of the law that has to do with what can be eaten and what can't be right the unclean verse the clean uh certain types of edible stuff was supposed to be offered to god as well animals obviously but also uh barley and and wheat and that type of they don't think about maybe about this i don't know anyway so um you know the land obviously was very important to the children of israel and that was the big promise wasn't it when they came out of the land of egypt i'm going to bring you into a land that's flowing with milk and honey right now that's obviously you know was there milk flowing around no it wasn't right it was a way of telling the children of israel that it was a land of plenty there was plenty of food to go around

you know it had good land for for vineyards it had good land for olive trees that type of thing so uh we're going to take a look at this food in the ancient world the land of milk and honey so we'll look at five things

hopefully

number one just in general food in the ancient world why are we looking at it why is it important well i think we can kind of think about some things why it's important um

foods that are mentioned in the bible foods that have a direct connection obviously to the law but also to the life of the faithful men and women in scripture and also with christ as well we're gonna find out that you know christ is gonna do a lot of his teachings uh at dinners like at dinners at um you know when people's homes he's going to feed people with the loaves and fishes well how does that you know why loaves and fishes well i'm going to find out that they're pretty they were pretty big staples in the land of israel during the roman times how did how did people in the ancient world grow store and prepare food what did the what did the children of israel eat on a regular basis you ever think of that and what did they eat what was their breakfast like what was their uh you know dinner light how do they work food into their uh everyday lives did they have a variety of foods

um well we'll find that out uh number four rich man poor man what do you think that refers to any guesses

no one's even paying attention

crazy is jim sullivan in the back please

jim thank you very much what jim said is absolutely correct what the rich would eat and what the poor would eat okay excellent job jim um yeah is there going to be differences between diets between someone that is wealthy and someone that is poor shocker there is is there a difference between the way affluent people eat today and what uh people eat you know poorer people eat yes absolutely okay even today is going to be differences and then number five the importance of ritual feasts in ancient israeli society right uh under the law there were a lot of different feasts and so a feast is you know you get together in a large group of people and food is served right so this idea of food being central this idea of

a meal

being central to uh cultural importance and also societal importance in fact brothers and sisters we every time that we partake of the bread and wine right when we remember christ it's remembering a meal right uh you know in the dipping of bread into certain you know certain bowls that type of thing are all part of that story the last supper right so we'll we'll get there as we go along this will probably be uh i want to say three classes four classes somewhere around there we'll figure it out no worries um to the right here up on one of the pictures i'd like to kind of talk about uh these pictures here but this is a kind of an aerial view of uh some vineyards in uh in israel right um you know beautiful vineyards actually doing some research you know kind of went down the rabbit hole of the different wine regions in israel right different wine regions some grow you know up in the higher elevations uh get more sunlight that type of thing the soil is different from the coastline up into the hill country or judea brother jason just perked right up he's like vineyards oh it's from rich yeah up yes

so yeah hold on let's get the microphone please

[Laughter]

go ahead so yeah israeli wine is fantastic but um

you'll notice the terracing that's done there it's not really israel is not really the best for growing anything yes you know there's not a lot of rainfall and it's very mountainous hilly rocky yeah so in order to do any of this takes a tremendous amount of work to clear create terraces and it's uh kind of interesting that that needs to be done in order to grow any food yes at the great point so you know right you know when the children of israel went into the land of canaan some of this was already done in other words they went in and they just kind of took over the vineyards and the olive all of um you know olive trees that were there as well but as brother jason said you know you're gonna have to you're gonna have to work in order to maintain this kind of stuff right there was a certain amount of work that was uh involved in keeping a vineyard i think there's there's plenty of um i think in isaiah well he actually jesus is going to use that right he's going to use that example uh of a vineyard and an owner of that vineyard going on a far journey and i think in isaiah uh god is going to use a vineyard as describing israel right that you know he had built israel and he put a nice wall around and he hedged it and he pruned it ready so for fruit to come in but the venue was all broken down no one was taking care of it so we'll get into that a little bit all right any other questions comments before we go on

all right uh i threw this in here because it's important as we go on when we're looking at that to kind of look at uh human needs right and you may be familiar with this if you've ever taken a psychology course you've taken a sociology course this is uh going to be some you know kind of a fundamental idea right called maslow's hierarchy of needs you may see this um have seen this uh pyramid uh before but what i do want to focus on today is the bottom parts of it right uh physiological needs air water food shelter sleep clothing reproduction right safety needs personal security employment resources health property and so when we're talking about the ancient world

we're in this hierarchy of needs where did the majority of people fall and what they were concerned about anyone want to venture a guess

yeah but i would say the bottom rung right the bottom couple runs were really what people were concerned about did that mean that there weren't you know uh people in the ancient world that were concerned about love and belonging of course everybody was but as far as food safety right food security i think we use that term today right food security we have people in the united states and throughout the world that they may not be starving right but they do have food insecurity they don't know you know if they're going to have a regular amount of food people in the ancient world particularly in israel were concerned about food security that was a major thing so a lot of their thought process and a lot of their concerns really weren't about self-actualization you know you know what type of person can i be i need to really really focus on being the best i can possibly be right there wasn't a whole lot of that there was a whole lot of you know is this crop going to grow am i going to have enough food um you know throughout the year is there going to be a famine what's the what you know what's the weather going to be like all of these things really took up a considerable amount of brain power and concern and anxiety okay so just kind of keep this in mind the majority of people uh i don't can you see that no safety needs uh physiological needs maseratis hierarchy of needs

all right um let's talk about where we are and what what location we're talking about um so these maps a couple things number one the fertile crescent we're talking about three main areas in the ancient world all right you may have seen this number one egypt

the land of canaan and mesopotamia okay and so this is called the fertile crescent oh oh it's a little crescent right goes up from egypt canaan mesopotamia all right kind of like a half moon a crescent roll you put a nice little crescent roll up there nice and hot right out of the toaster oven put a little about a little jam delicious

okay things are going to happen in this area that are going to

um transform

from uh you know an area where they're just kind of you know they're they're gathering different things okay they're gonna start setting up villages they're gonna start setting up um cities as well and these cities are going to be based upon farming

is going to become the the number one thing or the foundational thing to civilization all right now on the right hand side you can see all these different dots here the squares the black dots the black dot within a white dot the white dot these are all the different types of um of ancient settlements right villages

that have agricultural um

you know different types of agricultural things that indicate that people in this area were um farming okay and this is where farming is going to come out the idea of farming the idea of staying in one location the idea of using resources around you

to further your production of food all right and so this is going to become very important because with the advent of farming you're also going to have the advent of organized religion as well now some people kind of some archaeologists kind of go back and forth you know did farming was farming a byproduct of uh religious beliefs in other words you wanted to kind of stay in one cl one location and build some kind of structure to your god and while you were doing that you started kind of building fields and stuff like that uh who knows but anyways social stratification as well at the top who was uh who was at the top in the ancient society

the people false

the king right the king was at the top and then you know you had the five percent of people who were kind of the ruling elite and then everybody else kind of fell into that um you know other category all right so we're gonna we'll look at a couple things we'll look at what the elites would eat delicious foods all kinds of different foods a wide variety of foods a lot of meat in their diet the poor

not so much right they're going to have there's going to be certain staples that they're gonna eat every single day like sister lee gets on me because i like to eat soup all the time i'm a soup guy

all right that's like a staple for me soup put a little pasta right have a delicious meal then she gets upset if i use too much parmesan cheese

right it's a lot of issues

[Laughter]

but anyways that would be a staple for me okay

all right we talked about this uh as well okay so food scarcity was a real issue in the ancient world where's our next meal gonna come are the locusts gonna come we don't have enough rain as brother jason said you know israel is not known for its rainfall does get some rain but not to the you know it can be very difficult you have to store water someplace all right um and that was always a big thing do we have enough do we have enough water for our for our crops as well and so that's going to push the ancient israelites into a certain direction as to what types of food

you're going to use what types of food are going to be a staple in the land of israel are there going to be staple crops that need a lot of water like rice is rice going to be grown in ancient egypt ancient israel

no thank you very much yeah rice is not going to be grown but are there other kind of cereal crops that are going to be grown that don't need as much water don't need kind of the aggressive kind of cultivation

well yeah we're going to find out that there's going to be particular types of crops they're going to do great in the land of israel because they don't need a whole lot of water and they're resistant to heat

and resistant to drought as well those are the crops that are going to provide

uh the ancient israelites with food in order for them to survive okay and so obviously the bible is a you know it's a it's a book number one about our salvation the gospel message of hope is found in scripture but throughout scripture as well we kind of get little tidbits of what was going on in the land at that time like culturally right and so this is kind of this time i know i said this before this kind of stuff i'm very interested in it's like the culture of of ancient israel how did it affect you know how did it affect them right what was the land like so anyways food scarcity was a real issue we know that the children of israel dealt with famine a few times right abraham dealt with a famine where did he go abraham

egypt right jacob is going to deal with the famine where did he go he while he sent his sons right down to egypt again so egypt is going to be one of these places where they're going to have a surplus of food for the most part right doesn't mean that egypt isn't going to deal with famine they are but they had kind of a regular flow

no pun intended because they were on the nile right every year the nile would flood its banks like clockwork boom boom the rain comes down the mountains here comes the flood leaving it silt beautiful right israel wasn't like that they don't have a main river like the nile yes they do have the jordan river the jordan river is not a big river okay you're not going to be able to build canals and stuff like that and dam up the jordan river to get water it's not how it works the nile is completely different and um i actually like this picture right here this is kind of an artist rendition of ancient

ancient egyptians kind of building canals right there to bring the water into their fields and they would control these with sluices right you could block off the water you could dam up the water you can bring water into this certain field block it so they had an intricate canal system in egypt they also had this in mesopotamia but anyways i like this picture because it's kind of like this guy in the this guy in the on the uh the younger guy on the left-hand side he's looking at it and he's like yeah dad looks like you're right about this and dad's like oh i'm right yeah i know i'm right i've been doing this for 50 years

you know this guy just probably got out of college you know pharaoh's college got it all figured out right and here's the old egyptians like oh you got it all figured out okay um so i thought that was pretty i had a good laugh last night putting this together um so subsistence farming throughout the fertile crusher crescent when we're talking about subsistence farming what is that underground farming

no way

subsistence farming yell it out

anybody day-to-day eating thank you brother steve yes um you're you're really just kind of eking out a um you know a living right you you might you know the stuff that you grow you're gonna eat maybe you can put away a little extra but the fact of the matter it's hand to mouth right whatever you grow whatever is around you're going to use is food okay and so when you are at a subsistence farming level uh you know you are um you know if that like i said if the locusts come or something like that forget about it there's going to be a family there's going to be starvation people are going to go without food it's going to be a tough time excuse me one natural disaster away from starvation as we talked about extra food then was seen as a blessing if you had extra food this is why harvest time right the majority of the feasts that take place in ancient israel as well was certainly right around harvest time but also throughout the ancient world they would have these massive feasts at harvest we know that we have a feast at harvest time in this country as well called thanksgiving well what what did it what is it commemorating thanksgiving oh big giant feast that the uh the pilgrims had right along with some of the uh native americans they all kind of got got together uh they had deer there uh you know they had a great feast right and this was something that human beings have been doing for thousands and thousands of years having these feasts these get-togethers right and so feasts were away in the ancient world it's the way we do today right uh sharing extra food while thanking uh their gods for the bounty right thank you

um and this is what the ancients did as well we we do the same thing right we have different types of uh you know feasts that we have we just had uh thanksgiving we've had christmas maybe we've got together for new year's we all had food we had an abundance of food

all right and so oftentimes it can be difficult for us in this society where we have in fact we have the opposite problem in this country don't we we have too much food leading towards an obesity problem and this it's an epidemic right along with coven and actually the data that's coming out shows us that um

that's that's like a number one thing is uh obesity and the covenants right that's one of the things the um

uh co-morbidity more brittle

yeah that's what yes exactly what i said um okay so nearly all of the ancient law codes have to do with land water canals animals feared beer wine olive oil etc right so if you look at like the code of hammurabi right or the code uh from the uh the city of ur these ancient codes

all really were written down to kind of control who had land who didn't when you could plan when you couldn't plant certain types of crops that type of thing what do we do with the wine what's the tax on beer that was like a big thing it's kind of just going down a rabbit hole a little bit but that was a big thing in mesopotamia was beer was the number one drink beer wasn't the number one drink in uh like egypt in the land of canaan that is going to be wine but the mesopotamians made beer out of their barley fields in their um in their wheat fields as well so that needed to be taxed how much could each citizen have that type of thing so

we'll get into that a little bit later all right questions comments so far yes brother steve

yes

rivers correct so egypt has got the nile mesopotamia has what the euphrates yeah euphrates and the tigris yes and the tigris and then you've got the jordan river in canaan and that's really what makes it the fertile crescent yes yeah so you have um

you know a lot of this is flatland and you have uh the rivers coming through and so it's going to fert you know it's going to make the land fertile because it has enough water correct steve and so that that area on the left uh above where it says the fertile crescent that's really just the arabian desert that's right and and there's just nobody living there nobody doing anything there yeah correct got it yeah this is i think this is like down here is called the empty quarter like down in this area right here yeah just desert nothing really going on and so these laws that you talk about a lot of them had to do with the canals and the rivers yes who could who could plant where like the elites would get the best the best crops where the canals went you know the best land sure and you can't dam up the river and cause my farm to go dry absolutely when can you know how much water do i get on my land you know when can the you know the water come come into my land how much do i get yes thanks yeah absolutely good question steve thank you

okay

all right let's talk a little bit about trade routes okay this obviously is the uh the middle east we have the red sea right here where that uh line the yellow line is right here you have the empty quarter this is actually just what brother steve was talking about here these yellow areas right the syrian desert the food desert and then the empty quarter do you see a lot of trade routes going through these areas

for the most part no i mean you have you did have some trade routes here going this that and the other way but these are just empty right so you would follow these trade routes that really followed a lot of the rivers that type of thing so the the reason i'm bringing this out is that these traders people traded with each other all the time okay and i think we talked about this when we talked about the bronze age collapse and the judges and stuff like that

you know this was a very active time

human beings have always traded with each other and we're going to find out that food sources are going to be a major thing that is going to be traded so here are the trade routes in the middle east you can see that they're both by land and by sea

um you know the nile river is going to be a trade route the euphrates river will be

okay

all right

um

jerusalem is right up here

okay here is the red sea here is egypt right here and so this is go this right here this trade route is by sea obviously by sailing ships that says a sea route to india and china and so people that you know they're you're trading with uh people from india and china they're getting spices they're going back up to the mediterranean sea this purple one here brother steve is the silk road and so that one is going to go from babylon we're talking about the middle east here uh all the way to damascus

and then there's other going to be other trips are going to go up to nineveh so all of the major cities are going to be part of these trade routes right here this is uh you know you have some of the arabian trade routes as well where i think um like the midianites were involved in so yeah

yep

now this one may be a little bit easier to look at these are all the trade routes during roman times okay so we're kind of kicking this out a little bit around like uh well this one is uh at its height at 200

a.d and you can see all the different trade routes and so i just want to impress upon you that a lot of the food stuffs that are going to be grown in israel aren't just going to stay in israel they're going to be they're going to be sent all over the world okay and israeli wine and olive oil is going to have a good reputation in fact when we start when we look at kind of wine production and grapes and stuff like that they're going to have

massive wineries that can produce thousands and thousands of gallons of wine that is going to be sent all over the roman world in the greek world okay so israeli wine was known for um its quality it's high quality uh the same with olive oil as well okay and so that really hasn't changed and so as brother jason pointed out the ancient israelites put a lot of time and effort into building up the infrastructure in order for them to produce both wines

and olive oil at a high level these were premium these were premium products okay people wanted wine they loved wine throughout the mediterranean world okay olive oil was used in almost everything okay uh brother steve you had another question

landlord that says we want you to grow all of you know gardens so that we can ship it elsewhere yeah i can't imagine that one over very well yeah so that's that's a great point uh steve there is going to be tension between the rich landowners

and the tenant farmers absolutely because

right they couldn't grow what they wanted to grow the landowner would tell them what they needed to grow and so they're going to pay you know the tenant farmer peanuts right just barely to make enough for life and they're going to take all the excess and they're going to ship it to other places it's it's a lot like i'll get to your brother jason in a second it's a lot like what happened um with the irish famine

okay with the potato famine uh in ireland they uh you know potatoes was kind of the staple crop that the irish would eat

but did that mean that all of the other crops in ireland failed they didn't they had plenty of wheat they had plenty of barley they had all of these things but the irish couldn't eat it all of this other staple crops they were sent over to england for the workers to feed the workers and so once the blight hit the potatoes in ireland the the tenant workers in ireland had nothing to eat even though the things that they were growing they were growing things they could eat they couldn't eat them though because the tenants were shipping them over to other places to make money million and a half irish are going to die did those things happen in the ancient world of course they did yeah you had people barely making enough as brother steve said to make a living to even stay alive and then you had the rich land owners who own these vineyards who own these olive trees acres and acres of these massive land you know these massive plantations

and there was really a big discrepancy right or a big gap between the highest and the lowest yes absolutely brother jason i get in the parmesan cheese dog house as well okay yeah so i don't know what i don't know what the story is um just in looking at this what was the setup like today we have the trucking industry we have a system that brings all these goods to you know the grocery store or bj's or

uh lumber all this stuff is that how it was back then or did you grow your own crops and then come up with a system to you know you had your kids bring them to the local market or what was the kind of so so brother jason there was definitely some of that where you kind of have a little farm or something like that and you maybe have a little extra and you go and you sell it yourself but for these kind of the big productions they had a whole system that they would bring their stuff to market um merchants were kind of the middleman so they would get the stuff from the big agricultural farms

and then they would deal with kind of shipping it to different places and they would get a cut of of of everything as they did they would own their own ships like if you were a merchant we're in the deneen shipping company we would have our own ships we would also have our own donkeys to carry the things uh you know to market so there'd be a whole setup like you said the trucking were the were the roads up kept you know there were taxes to keep the roads up in order for trade to happen so there was a tremendous amount of an intricate and complicated network of trade routes but with both within israel and outside of israel as well and uh the ships a lot of this stuff is going to be transported by ship

yes brother mark

me too me too

brought to mind solomon when we read that he had hiram build them a fleet of ships yes and if you remember in those stories with solomon it would say they would send the ships to india and china and collect baboons and spices and then some research i did it said they could be gone three to five years yes so that's another major thing this is an overnight express right right so i just wanted to mention that yes and they would make multiple stops along the way yeah that that's got to be a tough life yeah one of those merchant ships that is gone for a long time yeah that's a great point mark yeah so the issue uh as you pointed out is a time issue we do everything very quickly you know you go on amazon you're like oh you know can i get this cat food tomorrow yes i can boom button right and you got a poor guy coming up and he's you know he's running out of his uh amazon van you know he's throwing packages taking pictures these poor guys work like dogs but um yeah now like you said it was a longer period of time and so you know no refrigeration stuff like that okay but yes time was a major issue you had sailors that would just kind of sail around in these circuits for three to five years and then and then would come home probably be home for what uh you know six months to a year or something like that then they'd be back out again so yeah great point mark thank you

that's right yes it's not perishable particularly with the wine they would put pitch on the top of it on the jar the big jars that they had they would put a little level of olive oil to prevent that bacteria and then they would put like pitch on top of the uh to keep it almost sealed steve so yes it would keep for a long period of time absolutely yep

let's see and we'll get into some of the other stuff that israel produced in the ancient world as well this idea of the land of milk and honey well what was honey well we know what honey is right we know that you know the bees make honey the honeycomb that type of thing but there was another type of honey that was even more common

than

bee honey and it was date honey they would make a honey out of the dates they would cook it down and almost get a syrup and they would put put that on things to kind of sweeten it so if we if we had more time and a little more resource and i had a little more gumption

we might have like some ancient israeli uh food to try right and lee's like no you're not going to the store and getting all kinds of stuff it's not happening

so i didn't even ask guys i'm sorry dig it up with sisters [Laughter]

okay all right

yeah i'm judy i'm the same way i love volleyball i love walls i'm going to tell you a little fun fact about olives too before they would just make the oil out of they wouldn't eat them right they would just make the oil out of but

i believe uh somebody anyway i don't know the actual person but it is attributed to the romans that the romans figured out how to eat them they would put them in the brine to make it more palatable and so when we get olives in the brine and stuff like that then you eat them like oh this tastes good you can thank the romans for that they figured out to kind of draw out that bitterness that's oftentimes in uh in olives okay olive oil was a big money maker it's kind of like uh oil today right pumping out of the ground oil was used with it was a food source it was also a source of energy right people they would they would like kind of um not their candles but uh yeah thank you lamps yes they would light their lamps with oil right there's is there a parable about that i think yes there is a parable about that okay all right one last slide before we end for today

um just to kind of go along with what brother stephen brother jason were talking about as far as um you know food and what what was brought and what was sold that type of thing this is um this was a shipwreck from from this time period from the bronze age um and it's found off the coast of turkey and these are some of the things that were found in it okay some of the food stuffs that were in it almonds pine nuts figs olives grapes

uh

what's that flower don't know black cumin uh so on and so forth whole pomegranates right and a few grains of charred wheat and barley okay so this stuff is going to be used and transported all over the world um

the majority of the stuff that was on this ship though was uh was 10 10 in copper right because obviously they were going to make what with tin and copper

weapons yes what is the material tin and copper together

bronze very good

all right so that's an example all right actually that's not the last slide maybe this is the last slide i don't know

um i'm glad i have enough slides though that's good all right uh let's take a look in deuteronomy the eighth chapter okay this is traditionally called the seven species the seven bible species of food of staple foods so deuteronomy chapter eight

um

let's see yeah so this is uh kind of god reiterating obviously to the children of israel that they were to follow the commandments that type now let's look at verse seven okay for the lord thy god bringeth thee into a good land of land of brooks of water of fountains and depths springs out of valleys and hills okay so the kind of other valleys and hills in the land of israel yes there are right are there uh land of brooks of water fountain shore yes some of them can be hard to find but yes they have those things now verse eight a land of wheat

bali vines fig trees pomegranates a land of oil olive and honey a land we're in now shall eat bread without scarceness

all right well that's that's a good thing to know okay he also talks about the other things too stones are iron and out of whose hills helmets dig brass

all right so you have enough food you also have some things too that you can make uh make money off make weapons make tools out of as well but let's just focus on eight now so these are the seven the seven species number one wheat did the children of israel grow wheat absolutely is it mentioned in scripture yes it is to bali bali is also going to be grown as well bali is going to be very important remember we talked about uh different species that could survive in some of the harsh climates in israel bali is one of them and next week uh lord one will take a look at that in a little more detail okay so bali is a very hardy uh cereal uh crop not saying that wheat isn't but bali is a little more hardy uh number three grapes right the vine grapes grow very well in israel okay you can do a lot of things with grapes as well number one wine number four figs figs are a big thing okay the fig trees

uh i think there's gonna be uh jesus is going to use a fig tree right as a metaphor as a parable right uh five pomegranates pomegranates are going uh children of israel are gonna eat pomegranate sure six olives we talked about in the number seven dates

dates were a big thing i love a good date right what are what are the ones the good ones called mana medjool mejool dates very good and morocco i think they grow them there

okay okay and also in california that's right yes absolutely uh and cap the napa valley in the whole area of california are known for a lot of this stuff

very good

Class 2

Original URL   Sunday, January 9, 2022

Transcript

let's just do a quick lee uh a recap

she's dying for that um we had begun our discussion looking at uh the role that food played in the ancient world particularly in ancient israel obviously it played a very important role just like food plays a very important role now um but we kind of looked at uh you know some of the staples the staple crops that were found uh in israel um and so we're gonna we're gonna continue on with that kind of you know just looking at the staples things um

you know things that the israelites needed on a daily basis what they ate on a daily basis and then we're gonna look at some texts in scripture that uh kind of give us some insight into what um the ancient jews ate on a on a daily basis a regular basis when they ate certain things when they didn't eat certain things we know obviously from scripture that uh they had dietary laws and dietary codes that they had or they should have followed we're going to look at a couple things uh this morning uh that that will kind of indicate that maybe they didn't follow that all all too closely just like they really didn't follow the um you know the precepts about not worshiping other gods you know there's plenty of archaeological uh evidence that you know in scriptural evidence really that they uh they were worshiping all kinds of other guns anyways um

so i think this was the last slide that we looked at but um this is a recreation and it's actually some of the real stuff that they found there but in one of the shipwrecks off of the coast of turkey uh from the bronze age which is you know i think i think around uh they found this one and they dated this to like 1200 bc uh you know so we're talking what 3 200

years ago and i just listed some of the things that they found among other things the most the most important things that they found were uh you know tons and tons of uh tin and copper and stuff like that obviously to make uh to make bronze that's what they that was the number one metal there they made all their stuff out of metal both of both uh their tools and most importantly their weapons as well but anyways um

among those important items were also food items as well and i kind of listed them some there but um almonds

pine nuts figs uh olives grapes so on and so forth and so um you know we're not gonna we're gonna list them all but yeah i mean these are some of the things that we should be familiar with we you know in our readings in scripture we may have uh come across these i'm sure i'm sure we have you know figs olives grapes those are the kind of uh the big three so uh these things were being traded all over the uh all over the world

and uh you know different types of regions and different types of countries were known for their certain types of food stuffs just like they are today you know italy france they're known for the different types of foods uh delicious foods delicious cheeses meats wines that type of thing and uh it was no different in in the ancient world as well so uh if anyone there has any questions phil just jump in and um or anyone online to just kind of jump in uh put something in the chat that's fine you don't understand something you want to jump in please just just interrupt and uh we'll go from there okay

questions comments before we go on to our next slide

okay

going once twice three times

all right now i i just mentioned that um

you know the children of israel had dietary laws or codes that they had to follow uh did they always follow those dietary laws well the answer seems to be no um you know like i just mentioned we know from scripture that they struggled uh with their interaction with the other peoples uh in the land people that they they were supposed to drive out but they never did and so they became a thorn in the side of uh the ancient jews and they were constantly you know fighting with them uh constantly being influenced as well by to you know their culture number one but more importantly in the eyes of god their religious beliefs you know worshiping other gods of the of the nations around them that was something that god was very clear about um and so there was to be a separation between the ancient jews and the other people uh and that that really that didn't happen on a on a large scale you know they struggled quite a bit with that and we know that but here's something interesting that i thought we know that um

under the law they were they were uh prohibited from eating you know uh shellfish or fish that didn't have any scales and one of those fish is the catfish but as i put up here and this is a this is from a um a recent uh article in harats

uh they did actually pretty good article on this um but anyways some archaeologists wanted to know what people were eating during this time uh that's pretty interesting so they did this exhaustive um you know kind of uh you know dig and um you know they found out that as i put up here you know during the first temple period which is during the time of um david and solomon in the early kings that 13 of the fish bones unearthed in jerusalem and other sites came from non-kosher species particularly catfish but um they also ate shark they also ate stingray as well um and so that's you know that's pretty interesting so they you they're they're uh eating you know a lot of fish as we know but they're also eating fish that was prohibited not a lot of it you know 13

but uh they were getting you know all kinds of different fish uh from all kinds of different places and as it's mentioned you know the sea of galilee the jordan river uh the coastline of the mediterranean right um and the big thing was uh down in the nile and so they they figured out they did the dna you know uh

investigation they found out that this particular uh species of catfish um was grown uh down in in farm down in the nile they actually would have catfish farms down in the nile and what they would do was you know they would you know bring up these catfish obviously and then smoke them and then you know distribute them throughout the world obviously making money off them but i think that's actually what happened with um with israel they you know they got got this fish and they're like hey you know looks like a fish and you know people some some people to varying degrees were following the law at that time um

and i think this was really a struggle with uh particularly in in jerusalem kind of keeping that cultural distinction uh with with the ancient jews and just one more thing on this that i found interesting archaeologists kind of looking at you know different bones and stuff like that different types of animals and one of the things that they found or didn't find was

anyone anyone guess anyone guess what they didn't find in this area

if someone said pig bones that would be correct

and so it seems that that was that was one prohibition food prohibition that they actually did follow um but you know pigs in this area uh were were not really kept uh you know it was a it was a desert it's a desert climate obviously very hot dry uh and that's not good for for pigs right they get they get sunburned they can't really uh they don't travel very well uh particularly in the sun so it's not a great environment for them and so that makes sense on why you wouldn't see widespread pig farming now when the romans came they actually brought their pigs with them they love they love pork um and that also caused some friction didn't it with uh with the jews during jesus's time and in fact uh you know jesus uh is going to take uh you know the evil spirits that were in legion and put them into this herd of swine we all know the story they go you know crazy and they run down into the water and drown themselves um so that's that's pretty interesting the only area during this time like you know during the bronze age and time of david and before the judges and samuel and stuff like that the only place that they found pig bones does anyone know where they found pig bows i found this pretty interesting

if you what's that

the land of the philistines that's correct

yes yes so the one area that they found pig bones and a lot of them were uh the areas of the philistines like gaza uh

you know what's what's the name ashdod

um gaff right all of these uh uh ancient philistine towns and cities they found tons of pig bones there um so you know that's pretty interesting remember they were on the coastline right

so uh just again a little a little background info uh you know as far as food and stuff like that questions comments before we go on

okay

all right let's um let's open up our bibles if if you want um

to deuteronomy the eighth chapter

and

i think this was the last slide that we looked at i maybe got to it it didn't talk about it but anyways uh so these are the seven species

of different food uh types uh that are mentioned in scripture uh and so let's take a look at deuteronomy eighth chapter

um

and let's see here

[Music]

yeah so when the um

you know so this is this is moses is kind of telling the people giving them instruction guidance direction uh to be obedient to god right verse one all the commandments which i command thee this day shall ye observe to do that ye may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the lord swear unto your fathers uh and he he's reminding them right of their wanderings in the wilderness verse three he humbled you suffered you to be hungry uh and he he was they fed uh god fed them with manna right um now let's uh let's go down to

uh verse six therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the lord thy god to walk in his ways and to fear him for the lord thy god bringeth thee into a good land a land of brooks of water of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills now verse 8

a land of wheat

barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates a land of oil olive and honey a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness

thou shall not lack anything in it a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills i may dig brass so there's a couple things here number one and we've listed them here is here are the seven kind of species like uh the foundational food uh foodstuffs

in the holy land right in ancient israel number one wheat right that's a staple bread as we're going to see uh you know in the ancient world even today really you know that that cheap carbohydrate um that's gonna give you uh you know that energy um very important in the ancient world very important today right so wheat was number one to barley barley was a um

you know it was it wasn't as uh

i guess tasty maybe i don't know but uh but wheat wheat is going to be primarily you know the number one thing that they're gonna make uh meat gonna make bread out of but they are gonna make bread out of barley as well but not as much and as time goes on um you know they used more barley during the bronze age but as they got as israel and judah got wealthier

you're going to see more and more wheat

and less and less bali until like the time of jesus

barley is uh you know it's actually was just grown to uh to feed animals right and wheat was the primary source of bread making um so i found that interesting uh three grapes obviously uh grapes to eat grapes to make wine from again you know kind of wine is mentioned throughout scripture

um figs figs uh you know very important pomegranates olives and dates and they would do all kinds of different things with these things as we're going with these uh different types of uh of food stuff so keep that in mind now let's go to the 32nd chapter of deuteronomy

now this is the song of um

of moses and he is in in this song he's kind of again uh talking about the goodness of god exhorting the children of israel to follow after him reminding them of the love and the goodness of god um

let's see

probably the first time but i didn't

um

yeah so in um in verse 12

uh so the lord alone did lead him and there was no strange god with him speaking of israel and he made him ride on the high places of the earth that he might eat the increase of the fields that he made him to suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock butter of kind and milk of sheep of fat

lambs and rams of the breeder basin and goats with the fat of the kidneys of wheat and now this drink the pure blood of the grape right so um

you know it's giving it's painting a picture here moses is painting a picture of the abundance of the holy land during this time as far as food stuffs um

and one thing i meant to mention with deuteronomy 8 not only is moses kind of listing uh the you know the different foods that were in the land that the children of israel were going to inherit and they were going to be successful they wouldn't have to deal with any hunger or starvation or anything like that but also there was a there was economic things too he mentions iron right it could iron could be mine to make iron weapons so this is the begin iron tools as well and so this is kind of the beginning of the iron age they've got you know human beings are going to transition from using bronze

as their main uh metal to iron and there was you know moses is telling the children of israel there's iron in the land you can use that there's bronze you can uh well you can't really dig for bronze you can dig for copper right and then you can make bronze when you combine that with uh with tin so you know this idea of uh an abundance of food but also abundance of metals and other things that they can make things from and be economically successful and what and wealthy okay and so uh in the song of moses in deuteronomy 32

again he's painting this picture of a land of abundance of the children of israel of a people that are doing very well but what is verse 15 says but yeshua and racks fat and kicked thou art waxing fat thou are grown thick that were covered with fatness then he forsook god which made him and lightly esteem the rock of his salvation they provoked him to jealousy with strange gods with abominations provoked they him to anger they sacrificed

unto devils not to god to gods whom they knew not to new gods that came newly up whom your fathers feared not and so um this is you know that this is an excitation it was an excitation obviously to the children of israel and it's an excitation to us as well we live in a time and in a land of unbelievable prosperity you know never in the history of mankind has a country like this uh had so much abundance right but in that abundance there's also uh people that are struggling that are struggling to have that so there really is this discrepancy right and this imbalance i guess you could say between you know really super rich and people that are you know just kind of living in hand to mouth and that's

you know that's that's a big problem in the world today um you know you have just nations and areas in these in these countries that you know people are living on a dollar a day or something like it's just mind-boggling right so i think we as a as a group of believers as brothers and sisters in christ we need to kind of recognize that you know the prosperity that we have here is a blessing

it's a blessing of uh of god to us but you know what are we doing with it right are we um are we forgetting about god are we wrapped up in the material things that we see around us um

you know are we like the the rich fool right that jesus talked about right i'm gonna knock down my bonds i'm gonna be build bigger look at all the stuff that i'm making right so an excitation that the children of israel should have heeded and it's an excitation that we should heed as well there's a lot of strange gods out there there's a lot of things to draw us away from god um and it's something that we should uh we should be mindful of

questions comments on that

what do we got for time

oh yeah

okay moving on

um

so what would uh is there evidence of uh wheat and barley production in the land of israel oh yes there is there's actually evidence of these uh of this um

before israel so like during excuse me during the time of the judges right before um well before joshua right before joshua and the children of israel came in and conquered the land uh there is a lot of evidence of uh this production which which coincides right goes along with what moses what god and moses was telling the children of israel this is a great place it's a land of promise a land of milk and of honey and so the archaeological record bears that out there is evidence of massive wheat and barley production particularly around jericho right um there's date production there's uh all of olive oil wine production in the hill country right figs lentils dates

this was a good area to grow certain things uh wheat was grown near the coast

and um you know things were traded with each other right people that were uh you know the vineyards they produced the wine they would trade that wine uh you know people that were growing wheat uh on the plains okay and so they've found thousands of these large store storage pots and this is uh this is where obviously they would store their excess food now remember brothers and sisters you know we think of excess food as almost enough you know we don't even really don't even think about it like yeah you know we got we got food in the refrigerator uh our pantry is overflowing you know if the supply chains ever collapse lee and i are all set we have a pantry full of soups and other dry goods we should be lasting a long time but anyways you know we don't we don't deal with food scarcity uh are there people in the united states that do absolutely are there children that deal with food scarcity yes absolutely i think those of us that are in education know that um there are kids that uh that don't get enough to eat they're always you know they're always hungry in school particularly little kids you know i remember one time you know when i was teaching sixth grade years ago uh you know there were always kids that yeah i missed the thing you got a snack

and sister lee would give me extra snacks in my lunch and uh i said i would i would save some snacks for the kids and then give them to them but anyways you know there's food pantries around too i know we have a food pantry in town in northbridge at the school where kids actively use this to go and to get uh you know food stuffs like dry goods particularly pastas you know macaroni and cheese is a big one anyways i know i'm kind of getting down a rabbit hole here but you know we don't the majority of americans don't deal with food scarcity we never have i've never dealt with food scarcity ever in my life and that is not true with in other parts of the country now and it certainly wasn't true in ancient israel during the bronze age and the iron age

famine was a big deal drought was a big deal starvation famine these are things that could all happen and we know in scripture that those they did happen it actually changed the course of human history right and what i'm thinking of is the great famine where uh israel jacob and the 70 his 70 members of his family go down into egypt right uh that was you know that the famine caused that and obviously god's hand was in it but you know think about what if what if there was no famine they didn't go down into egypt the exodus doesn't happen you know moses doesn't happen right the whole the whole jewish religion being codified

uh you know all that stuff doesn't happen without a famine so even though a famine was a bad thing was a very bad thing it was a

very bad famine during that time for seven years the outcome of that

was a good one was a glorious one something that you know god in his wisdom uh used to bring about his glory and his plan and i guess that's an excitation for us isn't it brothers and sisters sometimes um you know in our lives you know bad things difficult things are going to happen we're told that um

but you know god we have to trust in god we have to have faith in god that his plan things that we don't know things that we can't understand things that we can't see

uh god is using those things to bring about uh his purpose to glorify his name hey rich it's steve at the mating house hey steve go ahead hey you know i was thinking about um in the new testament we saw there was a famine that caused the spread of the gospel right um it was yeah talk about that yeah i mean it was during that that time when uh the gospel was spreading across the the world you know there was a famine and it caused people to leave jerusalem and they they went in search of food and in that process they were bringing the good news of jesus and the coming kingdom to different parts of the world yeah great point steve thank you yeah it it reminds me too um

to go along with that when you know when saul was commissioned to go and to get the you know the new christians and all these different places particularly up in damascus i think axe talks about that that he drove them all to different types different places and they brought the gospel with them as well so the combination i think like you said of that famine and the persecution

spread the gospel the good news of the kingdom of god uh you know to the to the ancient world that's a great point steve thank you

um and then the last thing on this slide is uh the bronze age collapse uh we talked about that in detail in our series on uh on the judges but you know bronze age collapse is going to completely kind of upend society and civilization at this time and i believe

that it's going to open up the door uh to the holy land so that the children of israel under the guidance of joshua can come up into a very weakened and disorganized and chaotic land of promise

all right this i this is pretty interesting okay they found

um

again this is kind of all the stuff that they've pulled out of the land of uh the land of israel but this is called the geezer calendar

and it's like a farmer kind of keeping track of when to do things right it's the calendar of harvest and the gathering and stuff like that and so this was um this was taken from the time of david and uh and solomon and um so think about how old that is you know again we're talking about 3000 years old and they you know they had uh they kind of have figured out exactly when the right time uh to harvest things to plant things and we're not going to go through everything but i i just found that's that's pretty interesting had all of this written down you know uh when to prune

um you know when to reap the bali measuring the grain all that kind of stuff when to sew you know it's certainly very different from you know like a new england growing season so it seems to be a little bit longer right um you know when you're planting in december in january uh that's that's very different from what we uh we are familiar with

so again this was this was found it was you know written down to kind of keep track of when the best time to uh you know the plant and the harbors and stuff like that

all right so the importance of bread

bread i ki you know bread obviously it was extremely important as we've already said it was the building block the basic building block of nutritional value in ancient israel and really the ancient world if we remember our roman history you know the romans had this whole kind of social welfare where uh the government would pay bake big baking companies right they would have um

you know these kind of almost giant factories where they would produce massive amounts of bread right

and um you know bread and circuses so they would get free bread the poor and rome would get uh free bread and they would also get like a free uh you know a free ticket to the coliseum and so this was uh this is how they kind of kept the populace um you know sedated i guess so they wouldn't wouldn't riot didn't really work there were always riots but anyways so bread very important in the ancient world hebrew um and brother brian may have uh some insight into this but he writes a dozen words for bread and it really means you know bread can mean the actual bread the unleavened bread children of israel are going to eat primarily but also it's for food right bread can be um uh you know a euphemism for uh for food or a synonym for food uh and so just couple things we're not gonna we're not gonna look them up now but proverbs 20

17 and proverbs 28 19 all use that word uh the hebrew you know one of the hebrew words for bread

made up about 70 of the calories eaten at every meal

um a lot of porridges a lot of gruel a lot of like stews and soups primarily where you could put different types of vegetables in i'm just i'm remembering uh i think it was a lot elisha

yeah i think it was uh elisha that um remember the the the sons of the prophets were getting together and they had inadvertently put something that was poisonous into the stew that they were making but elijah said hey just kind of throw in i threw in something i can't remember maybe someone could turn that up and uh remind us but uh and then the party you know the stew was all set but you know one of the great stories of scripture uh jacob and esau right had to do with food had to do with pottage esau comes back from the hunt and he empty-handed he's starving and he gives away he gives away his birthright gives it away his birthright because he was so hungry

and the writer of hebrews is gonna is gonna use esaur as an example of what not to do right uh you know he's gonna give give away his birthright for some food and he says you know

though he sought it carefully with tears in other words

in that moment he was so hungry he wasn't thinking correctly but afterward he was really upset that he kind of got tricked by jacob it wasn't really tricked but i think jacob used the fact that eso was starving and couldn't really you know control himself at that time so um yeah

um so just a quick point on barley as well barley was easier to plant uh particularly in the hill country remember from our classes on judges because the children of israel didn't drive out all the inhabitants of the land of canaan they were really hemmed in into the mountains into the judea uh the uh the the hills of judah and of israel and that's where they were it's called the hill country maybe uh brother jason can talk a little bit about that it's a it's the primary um the homeland of the jewish people and the issue is now in modern-day israel is a lot of that land

um

you know is uh is palestinian land and a lot of the a lot of the jews now are buying that land and kind of building uh towns and settlements and stuff like that and there's a there's a lot of friction and so obviously the palestinians are looking at and say hey this is our land and the jews are saying what are you talking about we've been here since uh

since the bronze age right and so you know we all know obviously that that is um that is a source of contention uh i got something in the chat hold on

oh brian yes yeah they put flour in the pot um and that may have um

i think i remember reading something on this that the the chemical makeup of the flower

um

you know counteracted whatever poison uh was it was in the um was in the stew so not really sure uh so i always found that interesting you know that the idea of barley you know barley was a hardier plant um and it could tolerate the harsh conditions that may have been in the mountains instead of the planes remember the feet the wheat fields were down in the plains

and um

that is going to become the primary cereal crop right and barley is like i already talked about you know barley during the time of jesus is just going to be food for for the animals

questions comments

before we go on to our last slide

um

last hey richard steve again hey steve go ahead i don't know if there's anything but you had mentioned the phrase bread in circus

yes what's that about i don't remember that okay yeah so br so bread and circus's steve was um during the roman um you know when the romans kind of controlled the mediterranean they had a real issue with um

you know with riots and unrest particularly in rome and so what they did was they instituted kind of this uh it's called bread and circuses where the poor

would be allowed to get uh bread you know food uh for free and also the circuses they could get into a uh you know like a the roman coliseum or a chariot race or something like that so they could get into that for free so they could be entertained for free and they could also get some food for free as well and this was kind of the romans in a cynical way i think brother steve um to kind of control the populace by giving them free food and free entertainment

and that and that's why with rome you know it was so important to control the eastern part of the mediterranean because egypt uh at that time and even today egypt was the bread basket of the ancient world particularly with wheat you know because of um you know the constant growing season uh in in the nile river they could produce incredible amounts of wheat uh that in northern africa at this

that's what said that bali was uh i did say that yes uh

hell yeah last week you said that bali was uh was made for beer yeah in uh mesopotamia that's right um it was made for beer and that was really the number one reason why they grew so much bali and wheat particularly in mesopotamia they were big beer drinkers for sure um

and so that you know we we know that wine played a big part in um

an ancient israel society uh we're not really i think like strong drink when it mentions strong drink in scripture i think it's referring to beer and some other alcoholic beverages media which is made from honey so um

yeah but wine definitely plays a more important role and is mentioned in scripture certainly more more than beer um

all right i think i hold on yeah slideshow

go down here

[Music]

all right uh so

we did that all right let's look i'm just gonna i'll just talk about this slide and we can get into this next week but um i i wanna look at different texts and scripture that kind of mention food food stuffs

and uh you know what were some of the kind of the staples in in ancient israel this this slide right here we actually have abigail uh coming to david with all kinds of different food stuffs you know to kind of placate him because he was going to go and he's going to kill nabith and you know all the men and everything he wasn't too happy about being slighted by uh

by nabel

uh and so next week lord we'll take a look at what abigail brought to david what um basilii brought to david when he was in the wilderness solomon's provisions um

jonathan and saul this is an interesting little exchange having to do with honey and uh jeroboam and his wife as well again a kind of an obscure uh story but an important one when we're looking at uh you know food and the importance of it

all right so let's uh let's stop there uh any questions or comments from me

Class 3

Original URL   Sunday, January 16, 2022

Transcript

the last couple um couple weeks been looking at you know the importance of um you know basic food stuffs in ancient israel how that you know worked as far as their culture and everything else we knew uh from this slide anyways that

obviously the importance of wheat the importance of bali you know the grain crops

you know without it ancient israel wasn't going to survive the jews that were living in this area they depended upon this these staple crops and we know you know particularly uh from the old testament that

for a lot of different reasons particularly natural you know this is one of the things that were highly dependent upon the weather upon the climate and when anything would happen there you know you could lose a whole crop you could lose your your um your your wheat crop you could lose you know your your vineyards that type of thing so you know when you are eating 70

of your calories are from bread um

it doesn't make for a great you know variety of the palate right it's like these you know ancient jews were eating really the same thing over and over again um and if you had it you know an opportunity to have a meal together with a town with your town or your village or you know a celebration or feast this is these would be joyful times obviously because you would have an abundance of food a lot of people living in the in ancient israel and you know the jews food insecurity was a major thing you know it wasn't just like well uh you know i'll get to the store right um you know actually lee and i were having a conversation the other day we had to go to two different supermarkets to get the items that we needed you know because the you know shaw's didn't have the food we we wanted right didn't have the cat food actually we're all looking for cat food

megan don't laugh

[Laughter]

uh you know obviously they couldn't they couldn't do that that time uh i want to take a look at um this last judges 7

13. i found this interesting and maybe you will maybe you won't so judges 7

so this is the story of midian

uh and gideon right gideon against them uh the midianites um now we'll let's see

yes it's so judges 7

and

uh yeah verse 13.

well let's take a look at verse 12

actually um in the midianites and the amalekites and all the children of the east lay along in the valley

like grasshoppers from multitude and their camels were without number as the sand of the seaside for multitude so just as some background here remember gideon is kind of struggling with hey you know can i do this job right he wanted assurances from god you know he needed his faith to be uh you know strengthened and god did a few things to kind of reinforce in gideon's mind that yes i'm going to be with you but you know here you have the midianites in the valley just kind of spread out you know thousands and thousands of people this was a very intimidating sight of course and so um

verse 13. you know this was another thing that god provided to gideon to reassure him that success was in the cards like things are going to happen um and you know i'm with you so verse 13

and when gideon was come behold there was a man that told the dream unto his fellow and said behold i dreamed a dream and lo a cake of bali bread tumbled into the host of midian and came into a tent and smote it that it fell and overturned it that the tent lay along and his fellow accident said this is nothing else save the sword of gideon the son of joash a man of israel for into the his hand hath god delivered midian in all the hosts

it's pretty pretty explicit right gideon overhears this he goes down into the kind of spying see we're gonna and he overhears this dream now take a look at those verses if you if you've got them uh open what are what are some things that stick out to anybody or nothing

nothing sticks out

say again

the barley bread okay the loaf of barley bread comes tumbling down into the camp of the midianites um

so there's a couple things thank you sister brenda so there's a couple things um

with this number one the barley

is going to come tumbling down all right i thought i thought about this

where was the majority of the people of the ancient jews living during the time of the judges were they kind of on the on the coastline in the valleys were they up in the hill country

excellent yes so they were up in the hill country so that makes sense doesn't it that a loaf of barley would come what tumbles down into the valley right interesting

number two

what was the loaf made of well we just talked about it was made of barley where did barley traditionally grow

in the valleys or up in the hill country

ah yes so

very good the the the barley was able to grow in let's say rougher and more extreme conditions than wheat would wheat sister sandy as you said would grow fantastic on the flat areas right it needed to be cultivated a little bit more is a little more finicky but it would you know it would um yield incredible yields if it was done correctly barley wouldn't yield as much and wouldn't have the nutritionist as flour or wheat but could grow anywhere and so i just thought that that was interesting that that this background information can help us to understand kind of what was going on during this thing how many times have we read this you know the bali comes rolling down and we're like no okay well that makes sense we can read into that this verse actually is telling us uh the relationship with the children of israel and midian midian was down in the valley they were coming up right and the barley which grew only up in the hill country came tumbling down into the medianite's camp and hit a tent and there was all kinds of chaos right and so that's really exactly what happened the seed was already planted into the mines of the midianites and they're going to end up fighting each other and stuff like that so just you know i thought i thought that that was interesting you know the bali loaf comes rolling down comes up from the hill country which bali grew there and went down and um and destroyed the midianites okay we talked about the porridge and gruel right that was kind of basic meals there's a couple things you know we know east jacob and esau that was a whole thing about the pottage right

um so anyways questions comments on this before we go on

people people all right uh just and again this kind of just reinforces this map right here kind of reinforces what we're talking about up in um you know the hill country up there i should have brought my laser pointer just like that

up in the hill country on the left hand side that's a hilly mountainous area what did what did gideon and ephraim do they went right down into the valley the jordan valley and so that kind of goes goes along with what that dream uh entailed okay

all right what i want to do now is uh let's take a look at certain texts in scripture that talk about maybe some of the basics the basic food items that were being used during this time to give us a little insight first one that comes to mind is in genesis the 18th chapter and there's a lot going on in this chapter we'll take a look at it

in the 18th chapter of genesis we have abraham

being hospitable

to the angels god had sent the angels right with the task of number one telling abraham and um sarah they were going to have a child in their old age number one and then number two also to tell abraham about what was going to happen to sodom and gomorrah right and then we have this wonderful interaction with god and abraham with abraham kind of you know gets god down to ten you know the wickedness you know sodom and gomorrah he gets listen per adventure there's ten surely there's ten righteous in sodom and gomorrah right anyways um

so uh verse seven verse six right he sees the men come right and he says um and abraham hastened to the tent unto sarah and said make ready quickly three measures of fine meal needed and make cakes upon the hearth so this was um this was very common obviously a couple things number one the husk the hospitality that abraham shows to these travelers very common in the middle east right that was like a it's a foundational cultural thing if you have uh you know people coming to your home a traveler you ought to treat them with kindness and give them food and stuff like that it's exactly what abraham and sarah are going to do um and you know in the bedouin communities even today you know two three thousand years later that is a very traditional thing uh to show uh kindness and hospitality to any stranger and this is what abraham's going to do i think abraham probably knew as well that he was dealing with you know angels right anyways um so find flower and eat it make cakes the quick little kind of pita breads right very good bread delicious bread right a fresh pita come on come on

uh let's see

oh you know who has fresh pita is really good in in boston if you ever do falafel king

falafel king

yeah yeah very good very good all right yeah when i used to go in once a year we used to take the kids into uh government day you know and to um go up to beacon hill and you know all the car you know they're all there and everything they get to sit inside the kind of the uh the state house the representatives and stuff it's a really good time governor speaks anyways that's what i tell the kids i go look before we get on the train

we're going to be doing a field trip to uh falafel king okay just letting everyone know

you're like sure yeah can we go to wendy's mr denin wendy's is right there no problem we'll meet right here go get your food so then you know you stink up the whole carriage and you know in the train with this falafel nonsense going on anyways all right um

so and abraham ran and uh unto the herd and fetched a calf tender and good and gave it unto the young man and took butter and milk in the calf which he had dressed and set up before him and he stood by them under the tree and they did eat so

butter was available right oh interesting okay so these are i think these were kind of high-end luxury items right that abraham is giving uh to these men to these angels of god right uh and sarah is involved in cooking so we have we have the bread we have uh veal right the baby calf as we call it veal um and then the butter and the uh the milk so high-end items right abraham was wealthy butter was something was you know was a delicacy right so he's taking really his best and giving it to uh to the people okay

david in the wilderness this was this is an interesting one

uh in 2nd samuel

the 17th chapter

um

yeah and verse uh well in the first verse right and when david was a little past the top of the hill behold ziba the servant of meshebacheth met him with a couple of asses saddled and upon them 200 loaves of bread and 100 bunches of raisins and hundreds of summer fruits and a bottle of wine so these are some of the things that zeiber is sending to david remember dave you know we know the story right absalom kind of takes over and david is on the run so david's supporters are going to support him with a lot of different uh a lot of different items right which is uh again kind of the bread and butter of of ancient israel cuisine right summer fruits i'm not sure what the summer fruits were um someone has uh some insight into that could be dates maybe right uh figs that type of thing um you know obviously fruit that came came about in the summer all right um

abigail and david we're in we're in samuel here so first samuel 25.

um

yeah she is going to take

verse 18 that is absolutely correct thank you chris um then abigail made haste and took 200

loaves

and two bottles of wine and five sheep ready dressed and five measures of parched corn and 100 clusters of raisins and 200 cakes of figs and she was going to bring them uh to david kind of like a peace offering right remember david was kind of protecting naval sheep and all of his stuff and then when it was came time you know for the harvest time what did nabal say to say to david's servants

anyone remember classic

so david's protecting all his sheep to all it really is uh his provisions really for free right imagine having you know just one of the best warriors in the land protecting your stuff and then this guy says hey you know can we have a little bit of uh you know your harvest can we enjoy some of the fruits of our labor protecting everything and nabel's like david

never heard of him was this guy right so david pretty much hiro gets pretty upset about that it's gonna go wipe out everything and then abigail comes with this peace offering right and again gives us some insight into what they were eating right uh the wine was certainly there the bread the raisin cakes too was that what that was one of the things right um

yeah 100 clusters of raisins and 200

cakes of figs fig cakes pretty tasty

uh so yes

um now that's kind of david you know kind of living in the wilderness before he became king just kind of keep that in mind let's take a look of uh where solomon's provisions were and what we can kind of gain from this so i think it's really interesting to see the transition from david as kind of a war chieftain kind of moving around he's got you know david's got a lot of you know food that can kind of be eaten very quickly right doesn't he right things that can be eaten very quickly it's not a big sit-down meal for david and his uh his men they have to be ready to go at all times let's take a look at what his son is eating on the right regular basis um first kings 4.

um so in verse 25

and judah and israel dwelt safely every man under his vine and other his fig tree from dan even to beersheba all the days of solomon right under his vine and under his fig tree do we we hear that a lot in scripture right that's kind of euphemism that is used particularly in the old testament and what does it imply

under his vine under his fig tree what does that imply

a chicken in every pro pot brother brother steve yes very good yes anyone know from what presidency that was from

truman close little late

herbert hoover yes

very good yeah herbert hoover [Laughter]

which is ironic because he's saying every chick a chicken in every pot right and then the uh during his administration you know great depression comes along and not not so great hoover

hoover kind of gets a bad rap

he did try to do some things was just beyond his control all right anyways um so uh in verse 22

in solomon's provisions for one day so just remember his father right now granted

david is going to establish himself as king as well and he's going to have as many provisions i just found it interesting at the beginning of david's uh you know reign or he's trying you know he's going to become king you know he's just kind of struggling on gifts of food from people right

so solomon's provision for one day was 30 measures of fine flour and three score measures of meal

10 fat oxen

and 20 oxen out of the pastures

and 100 sheep besides hearts and robux fallow and fatted

deer right fatted foul sorry

so a little bit different now right we have a lot of meat on the table okay meat was a luxury but we get some insight into the success of solomon's reign number one but also its wealth and i think brother mark had talked about this um in his class as well and i think he's going to continue on with this um but just you know solomon solomon's reign really kind of changed

the psyche of ancient israel right they they were all they were a proper nation now right from dan down to beersheba they had they had strength they nominated plenty of food coming in right and it wasn't just solomon because scripture says that everybody it was a time of peace it was a time of prosperity um and and it shows you know what what uh solomon was eating now was solomon eating 10 oxen a day

obviously not when we're talking about solomon we're talking about his whole household really this this was the government this is what was uh given to the government to keep itself going right ten oxen a day for all for solomon and his house and the whole all the governments right uh the government entities along with the temple the temple actually had its own his own set of things so just some interesting stuff um

let's see

oh

yes sister lee hold on get the microphone please

yeah for the 30

cores of the flower is five tons

and then the meal was ten tons okay that's a lot so five tons and ten tons of flour a day

i think that shows that that's great thank you lee uh again that shows um you know they had to have some type of mechanism we're just we're just talking about the king now king solomon there had to be some type of production for all of this for these tons and tons of flour to be made into bread for everybody and that's interesting too because you know was there some was there bread

made to help the poor in other words uh you know was there extra bread from the government or from the king's house that was given to the poor i think there was um but i would love to see the production areas of this you know during the time of solomon you know what did it look like you know we just kind of read these things and like wow look at all the things that he ate well how did they you know they have to transport all this stuff it has to get to the kitchens the kitchen have to prepare all the all of this stuff right uh so that's pretty amazing yeah we're talking about tons and tons of food so it shows uh you know the wealth

of solomon but it also i think gives us insight that

once the nation kind of coalesced over one single entity that being the monarchy and the temple

israel really became quite wealthy based upon agricultural stuff

and very little of that has changed even today either next week or the week after i'm going to we're going to take a look at what modern israel looks like as far as our agricultural looks like today and

certainly be picking our resident scholar brother jason on israel all things israel um so looking forward to that um one more thing and then we'll go on here um

jonathan and saul we're in first samuel uh 14. i think you might remember this one's a pretty good story

uh 14

first samuel 14 25.

um

remember saul makes this rash oath like if anybody eats anything you know uh

no one's gonna eat anything no one's gonna stop until saul is avenged of his enemies right again a classic saul kind of uh impulsive statement right really not taking into account the whole the strategy right hey guys you know you should feed feed yourself anyways um

in all they of the land verse 25 came to a wood and there was honey upon the ground and when the people were coming to the wood behold the honey dropped but no man put his hand to his mouth for the people feared the oath and verse 27 tells us that jonathan hadn't heard about this crazy oath that his father had taken and he just takes some honeycomb and he eats it and immediately all of this natural sugar gets into his body and he's feeling great what does it say here he says uh um and his eyes were enlightened right he gets that kind of immediate uh you know sugar high he gets this energy uh from the honey and it's this honey everywhere it's kind of dropping down and no one else wants to take it so honey is used in scripture uh as uh something that's sweet to the taste that can provide energy very quickly but if you scripture also takes uh talks about i think in proverbs where if you eat too much honey right you get sick too much of it right

all right

questions comments before we go on on this yes brother jason

i mean you brought it up

and i did get sick you did get sick i remember that you were squeezing it i believe like this into your mouth normal stuff guys yeah almost um

you know just so the the food is so interesting and it when you walk around israel you see lemon trees and you see banana trees and you see you know olive trees and it kind of brings these stories that christ would talk to his disciples about these parables and it it christ takes the aspect of food and in the everyday israelis life and he brings it into the gospel message and we can you know think about um

you know the the parable of the soils

and you can go to the spot where they believe jesus was raised and it's farmland and you walk on a path and you can just imagine jesus saying a farmer went out to sow seed as he was scattering the seed some fell along the path the birds came and ate it up this was normal stuff that the jews would have dealt with while they were planting their vineyards some fell on rocky places so he would have used this aspect of food to make an impression upon them their kind of daily um

you know routine would have involved planting and then we can think about the parable of um

of the vineyard you know they would have known how hard it would have been to work in a vineyard from morning till night and you know saying hey why am i only getting the same reward as this guy i work the heat of the day and all of this stuff about how all this food was

manufactured would have been front and center on their minds because it was such an important part of how they lived each day absolutely and you can also go to a restaurant in jerusalem called eucalyptus which has a queen of sheba

uh ten course tasting and it has lamb and has all this stuff that you're talking about is that the restaurant that you were in contact for like a year getting your meal set up different one different

wow

uh sister sandy

even memoria at the memorial table is you know a simple task of eating and it's bread you know we don't know hunger right you know and i think if we had experienced hunger you know we would experience a spiritual hunger as well i think sometimes we're fed

all the time so it's not as bad yes no cindy that's that's a great point you know we don't

you know i've never i've been hungry but certainly never dealt with famine or starvation or anything like that you know food insecurity we always had food we used to fight over food but you know that was that was normal

um so yes that's a great point and and i think um you know when we partake of the bread and wine that that should be it's very simple isn't it but it was part of a feast that involved food that involved closest sharing a meal together right i think that's one of the things too that is kind of brought out in scripture the importance of sitting down and enjoying a meal with one another right it's a it can be you know you you're talking you're eating that type of thing it's like it's like a basic human um desire to sit down and to share food with each other yeah i think when we when we share food there's always an abundance yes and i think for people to share food back then there was you needed to eat maybe it was your third meal of the week or whatever it was you know and it was more important and it was really sharing yes it would have been a joyful thing if there was extra food right sandy like hey we got some extra food everyone come it actually reminds me when i was looking at this was um you know elijah went to one of the widows and you know hey can you give me a p some water and a piece of bread and the widow's like look it was during the big families like i don't have any bread for you you know i'm gonna make a couple cakes and we're gonna die we're gonna die of starvation so yes um

you know famine was always you know it was one bad harvest away and now what are you gonna do you know you got four or five kids

you know you have nothing you know you can't store it anywhere you know there's no storage involved it can be tough for sure all right um

excellent segway jason with uh the vineyard right uh the song of the vineyard jesus is going to use this idea of the vineyard as well and how much work went into it so and i believe he's you he's he took this from isaiah the fifth chapter let's take a look at it

and this is a song that i did that isaiah is sharing with us right

in verse 1

now will i sing to my well beloved the song of my well beloved touching his vineyard my well be loved hath a vineyard and a very fruitful hill okay so there's that idea of the hill again a lot of times vineyards uh not just in israel but in other parts of the mediterranean are kind of on a cliff's not a cliff side but kind of a hillside and they figure out exactly where the most sun is coming in to get all of that sun for the longest part of the day and there's a concern about the soil as well and i believe with vineyards you don't want great soil you want kind of tough soil so those uh the roots of those vines get all the way down right and that produces kind of very hardy uh vines and produces a lot of a lot of grapes as well so anyways

let's go kind of go through what it took to put a vineyard together

and he fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof and planted it in with the choicest vine and built a tower in the midst of it and also made a wine press therein and he looked that it should bring forth grapes and it brought forth wild grapes so you know he's going through all of the all of this difficulty of kind of creating a vignette hedging it in building a watchtower right building a wine press that you know we just kind of read that oh yeah i built a wine press that's a pretty big undertaking to build a wine press the whole car you know uh the whole production he had a he had to build a whole production from growing all the way to you know making the wine and he puts in all of this effort and he's got bad grapes bad grapes and so that parable obviously was about the children of israel you know god had given them all of this love and this attention and wanted them to succeed

and bring forth any fruit and that's something in scripture as brother jason pointed out you know um

jesus is going to use this right about us bearing fruit that we are you know we we're a vineyard are we bearing fruit to god what type of fruit are we bearing are we bearing any fruit at all right and that's a constant thing

that jesus is talking about but also paul kind of picks up on it as well

i'm going to hold off on this now uh wine wasn't just used as a beverage it was used as a beverage of course people drank it daily now remember a lot of this wine is going to be cut wine

when i say cut wine just chop it up what we're talking about yeah watered down thank you yeah they watered it down right so it wasn't um you know wasn't as powerful did did they drink uncut wine sure they did right one of the things is kind of a side but the romans when they first came in contact with uh what's modern day france right the gauls

they couldn't believe that the the gauls loved the wine but they never cut it they were just drinking it regularly and the romans like these people are crazy you can't even do business with them right

so cut wine was a lot more popular than regular regular wine anyways it was also used as medicine as well you know granted the alcohol you know if you have pain or something like that on a limited basis

you know it may dull some of the pain

but it also has an antiseptic quality to it not just the alcohol in it but there are other

there's other anti-bacterial things going on inside wine that actually helps to keep uh keep germs away and so they would they would dip like um

like linen into wine and then wrap it around a wound or something like that and uh you know it kept it sterile i guess you know the alcohol but also there were other properties in one that helped with the healing process i found that interesting wine was was relatively expensive the good stuff anyways right just like it is today right um

but for those of the pool of the poor

wine was expensive so they they had something called raisin wine

raisin wine was like the lowest of the low wine all right and they remember that ancient uh you know jews they needed wine for the sabbath right they needed to got to go through that whole process the whole uh the ritual of the sabbath day involved wine that meal before the sabbath so um you know those all different kinds of you know levels of wine just like there are today right um

let's just talk briefly we'll we'll end it here i want to i want to save this last thing the largest wine factory in the world from the byzantine uh period it was unearthed in uh israel and it's about 13 minutes so what i'm going to do is we'll take a look at um you know jeremiah is that spelled correctly jeremiah

it is not lee huh i thought i told you to go through this

[Laughter] [Music]

we'll save that for next week lord willing but let's take a look at um proverbs 3.

proverbs got some insight obviously into uh into wine

it's good in bad prof properties right um

words when

um

oh yeah sorry sorry about that i should probably put this down like the the actual verse

um verse nine of ver of uh chapter three honor the lord with thy substance

and with the first fruits of all thine increase all right so he's talking you know solomon's talking about the tithe right take ten percent of everything that you give you give it to god you give it to the the support of the levites right

this is an excitation there for us as well you know we have been increased with a lot of things in this country wealthiest nation ever in the history of mankind what are we doing with all the things that god has given us our blessings that's something solomon was concerned about something we should be concerned about as well um so shall thy barns be filled with plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine right and so here's solomon kind of using as you know brother jason pointed out everyday things

to get a message across right

god needs to be first in our lives we need to recognize that the things that we have in our lives are given to us uh by god and one of those things is you know we should uh we should enjoy the increase that god has given us right not forgetting about god like the rich fool right he was so busy about increasing and increasing forgot about god he gave himself all the credit right should never be in that uh in that situation all right proverbs 23.

uh and we'll we'll end with this one right and so there's there's a happiness associated with wine there's happiness associated with harvest um but there's also another side too and solomon brings this out he says verse 29

who hath woe

who hath sorrow

who have contentions

who hath babbling who hath wounds without cause

who hath redness of eyes

they that tarry long at the wine they that go to seek mixed wine look not thou upon the wine when it is red when it giveth his color in the cup when it moveth itself a right at the last it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder so um

you know here's solomon kind of giving a warning as well on excitation excess of wine you know who has all of these troubles well someone that's you know drinking wine excessively really what solomon is talking about here is alcoholism um but uh you know he's it's not it's not brought out like that it's about excess it's excess of wine um so

the ancients recognized

that yes wine is great it's got a lot of great characteristics it kind of makes life nice you know that type of thing but solomon and other ancient writers point out that um you know excess of wine can cause a lot of problems it's true back then it's true today as well

Class 4

Original URL   Sunday, January 23, 2022

Transcript

we are going to um take a look at a couple things uh today um today will be our last class as far as delving into um

uh you know food and how it was used in ancient israel uh today we're gonna look at maybe some of the parables that jesus uh told the people and tells us using food in different situations using farming that type of thing and it gives us a little insight into um you know how how israel dealt with agricultural things during this time but before we get into it up on uh up on the screen i had neglected to look at this and i was actually talking to uh brother mark about this last sunday and um let's take a look at second samuel

the 17th chapter

and in verse 20

eight so second samuel 17

uh beginning in

uh verse 28. now a little background on these two verses david is running for his life he's in the wilderness absalom has taken over the kingdom by craft david and his followers have no choice but to flee they flee into the wilderness his allies are going to help him out both you know militarily uh with intelligence right that he sent out spots kind of follow absolutely what was going on and then basilia who was an a an older man is going to use his research resources to send food stuffs to david i think the the stuff that is mentioned here is very interesting right and it kind of goes hand in hand to what we were talking about our last couple classes like you know what did they eat on a regular basis what were some of the food stuffs that they had access to well let's take a look at these two verses this is the time during david right king david we're talking about

900 bc okay so 900 years before the birth of christ this is some of the stuff that they were eating in israel

verse 28 brought beds and basins and earthen vessels in wheat and barley and flour and parched corn and beef beans and lentils in parched pulse and honey and butter and sheep and cheese of kind for david and for the people that were with him to eat for they said the people is hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness so that's you know that's quite a list of food um

you know did did just kind of like the the rich the nobility have access to some of this food yeah maybe you know like um

you know i don't know was was cheese kind of a delicacy we don't have a lot of cheese mentioned in the uh in the old testament do we but it is mentioned here you know butter cheese those are all i think delicacies during this time um so uh yeah just just to kind of you know give us again a kind of insight into what uh the ancient israelites were eating at this time um you know not bad right now this obviously was kind of food that could be carried around very quickly and easily right you're talking about beans and you know dried goods and flour and stuff like that if we compare that to what solomon was eating i think we we looked at that last week just the immensity and sister lee brought out you know we're talking about tons and tons of flour right was that what it was honey tons and tons of flour you know and solomon obviously wasn't just eating this by himself he had thousands of people within his household and in the in the government that he had to uh he had to feed so anyways the last thing on this slide i want to take a look at is jeroboam and his wife um and this is a little known like story in scripture you know we read about it every year um you know when we do our readings but um we sometimes you know it's just an interesting story so in 1st kings 14

um verse 1 verse 1 at that time abijah the son of jeroboam fell sick

uh and so he tells jeroboam tells his wife to go to disguise herself and to go uh to um to the prophet uh i hide you the prophet right and so i just i i found this interesting and take with thee verse three and take with the ten loaves and crack nulls now i'm looking at my uh

margin here what's that cakes

what do people have in their margin for crackles

yeah i got cakes here as well okay so yeah so take the ten loaves and crackles and a cruise of honey and go to him and he shall tell thee what shall become of the child so we have and i think this happened a lot brothers and sisters that if you wanted access to a prophet right during this time um you know in the same setup as the children of israel were with the levites remember the levites they weren't to have jobs outside of

the tabernacle and temple that was their job the service of god and the rest of the tribes were supposed to support them

by giving them a certain amount of food

you know so they could uh focus their attention on the service of god uh and so i think this was very c a very common practice that you if you were going to a man of god to some type of uh you know a spiritual advisor or something like that you want to find out what god wants you would bring to the prophet you know something some type of gift and in this case it was a gift of food and i think abide you this is a this is kind of how they supported themselves in a lot of different ways not that they would get kind of you know like they were a psychic or something like that um but it was very typical and it was customary that if you were going to see a prophet to kind of get information you were to bring a gift a gift of food in this case like a cruise of honey that's a i think that's a pretty good amount of honey you know this was this was a pretty good uh you know 10 loaves of bread you know some sweet cakes i think it cruiser honey that type of thing so again giving us insight into what the children of israel were eating at that time and that food was uh could be used as a gift particularly during this time when when they were so dependent upon nature

you know our agriculture uh in this day and age in the modern age you know 2022

and in a lot of different ways because of our technology we're not really dependent upon uh nature and i and the reason i say that is in this country you know we have genetically modified you know a lot of our wheat and other uh and other plants to withstand a lot of drought to withstand some of the pest you know the pests and stuff like that so it is interesting how that we really are far removed from living on the edge of food insecurity are there people in this country that live with in food insecurity absolutely i think in every single school district that i have been in and i know you know and certainly in massachusetts but we have always there's always been a program that we've had uh for for kids that deal with food insecurity that don't know you know if they're going to have lunch they're going to have dinner a lot of times

in certain school districts the only time that they know that they're going to get food uh is you know in the morning for breakfast and at lunch so the school is actually providing two two meals a day and we also you know we have a uh you know like a food bank as well where they can go and get food i know in northbridge high school they've had it for for a while so all right

questions comments before we go to the next slide

all right i think we talked about this now there's one um

there's one proverb that i want to take a look at on this slide before we take a look at um

the largest wine factory in the world from the byzantine period i'm pretty excited about it i'm seeing some excitements through the mass right now okay

well thank you i appreciate that we're just doing a little recap here we're trying we're getting ourselves into the mood and then boom i'm going to hit you with the mind so all right proverbs 23.

it's also it also jason gives me a chance to tell the story that i'm gonna tell which i think is pretty funny

um yeah so proverbs 23 verse 1

solomon has some good advice for us all right and this is going to be the foundation for the story i'm going to tell you verse 23 when you sit to eat with a ruler consider diligently what is before thee

and put a knife to thy throat if you be a man given to appetite

be not desirous of his dainties for they are deceitful meat huh all right so that's there's a lot going on let's say again

uh

for for they yeah be not desirous of his dainties brother steve

yeah like the really the the nice spread of food you know that took time to prepare you know sure cucumber sandwiches that's right i love it um

you know for they are deceitful meat so the thing that stood out to me anyways in this chapter is you know if you're giving a man you know if you have an appetite right oh i i'll raise my hand on that i have pretty good appetite uh but it says you know don't don't eat so much when you're out in like a public setting particularly you know if you have a king or a noble or something like this is what solomon is saying so the story is this years and years ago um i was working at bridgewater state as a grad assistant uh you know taking course i i was teaching and teaching a class or two anyways um

all like the history department all went out to eat at the 99

all right and they're all there's like eight or ten of us and they're all doing the small talk and whatnot and i'm stop i'm starving right and so i get i get my meal everyone gets their meal and then you know they're cutting their meat and they're they're talking normally not me

i just really just dug in and ate my meal with gusto

and so come come to find out everybody else has like three quarters of their plate left and they're talking in a very normal civilized fashion and i'm sitting there with an empty plate like this after you know two or three minutes very awkward very awkward but uh i i remember that story every time i read farmers 23 you know well hey slow down buddy there's plenty of food around here but you know it's interesting psychologically um you know you live in a big house there is competition for resources

for other people you know with particularly with food so um it's not my fault i take no responsibility what's what

all right anyways um

yeah so just and just to talk about this you know vineyards obviously were very important in ancient israel wine was very important too it was used in a lot of their uh religious rituals as we know um you know the ritual that that we uh that we perform every sunday right the bread and the wine it's a it was used throughout society um in in the mediterranean world still used today right wine is a very big part of uh of of our society even more so in mediterranean cultures

so wine was used as a beverage but also as a medicine and then raisin wine i think we talked about this very briefly raisin wine was something that the poor would use to make wine um out of uh out of raisins you know the dried up um the dried up uh grapes so um you know a lot of a lot of different avenues as far as that is concerned

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[Music]

laughs

that's right i thought she was very close empty

all right um so i i found that pretty interesting i thought her uh i really liked her excitement right she really she was she's really into her job obviously but this was a massive complex um you know making gallons hundred thousands of gallons of wine you know the different pits they had a whole organization there and so this is you know 1500 years ago that this that this site was um was created during the byzantine times you know and so this had been going on this type of system you know can be found a lot of these can be found throughout israel but this is the most intact the one that we just saw uh questions comments on that brother jason

be fooled that they were not that sophisticated jen and i were out in napa valley i don't know probably 20 years ago now and you we went to the robert mondavi you know winery and it although the technology is different the whole process is the same it's just they have different mechanisms to do it but it's a big layout and you have the same sort of systems and all this kind of stuff and the grapes and so even though the warehouse to the warehouse right the road to bring everything you know and there's a place to eat and all this same sort of stuff is just more modernized i think we should keep in mind that

the uh intellect was there it was just this the technology has changed over time and uh they certainly were able to put together the infrastructure yeah without question i think that you know that's key jason is you know what you said the infrastructure i think we got a little taste of it there where like you said the roads he had you know water on each side and food for the uh for the for the donkeys and stuff in the mules so they had to think all of this through and then okay oh how do we get it to the port city that's on the mediterranean so we can you know make a great profit selling it in europe so like you said you know and i've said this before you know at one point ancient man was modern man and we have the same intellect we've just kind of built it up with our technology and stuff like that but yeah great point for sure anything else before we go on

all right thank you so let's um we're going to take a look uh next 10 minutes or so

parables of christ using food okay so we're gonna take a look at matthew the 13th chapter which has not one not two not three but four

different parables having to do with food right the first one so let's take a look at matthew 13. we're not going to get super in depth in these because um you know obviously we should know these

so in matthew 13.

so the first one is the sower right and we all know the story a soul went out to sow and he sowed in different types of ground um

saying behold the sower verse three went forth to so we sold some by the wayside

so by stormy place uh stony places uh

felt some fell among thorns and then others are on good ground so we all know you know jesus is going to explain to that explain to his disciples what this meant and and the lesson is what type of soil are we are we letting the gospel of christ enter into our hearts enter into our soil into our minds so that we can bring forth fruit and the children of israel you know israelites during this time during this time of christ would know exactly what jesus was talking about although it's interesting the disciples they knew they knew of the structure right hey i know what a sower is yeah we see the sowers all the time they're throwing seeds in there and everywhere but they still needed to kind of get well what is what did the what did the parable mean jesus uh we know it but they struggled to kind of figure out what what uh what that was all right the weed and the tears um

verse 24

another parable put he forth unto them saying the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field but while men slept his enemy came and sowed tears among the wheat and went his way so this is an interesting story where you know while he was sleeping he had gone out and he had sowed his field with some really good wheat uh but this other guy who may be in competition i don't know if this happened a lot in the ancient world i don't know you know did was there like right you know if you had a you had a rival on the other side of one of your fields and you wanted to uh you know kind of stick it to him a little bit um did this happen a lot you know people go in and mess with other people's fields i guess so i mean jesus is using it as an example right of this say again sandy

no yeah sister sandy said it's a lot of effort to do this but you know it's a it's it's amazing too what people do when they're consumed with you know hatred and anger it reminds me of what um absalom did to joab's field remember he burned his field because he wouldn't let him go see david or he was kind of dragging his feet with the whole thing so yeah i get you know it's uh they it sounds like in certain situations they would try to damage other people's fields that type of thing right samson too samson yes very good yeah um and so you're really affecting people's livelihoods with this right you know sowing sowing another another crop that doesn't have any nutritional value really in with your flower and they look with your uh with your wheat and they look the same they look very very similar

all right also the leaven he uses this an example of the kingdom of heaven we won't you know look at it but you know

with 11 you know a little leaven is going to leaven a lot of dough and that was the example of the leaven the kingdom of heaven is like leaven it starts off very small kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed right it grows same with our faith

and then lastly the net of fish when fishermen would go out they would gather in their nets all types of different species of fish some you could keep some were good eating others were not and so you would gather all this fish the stuff you wanted you kept stuff you didn't want you would throw it back and he's using that as the kingdom of heaven and judgment as well

so these are four examples in matthew 13

where christ is using food or something to do with the production of food uh to bring a message to the people uh particularly around the kingdom of heaven and what it what it meant

all right matthew 20

we have uh working in the vineyard

in uh in matthew 20 again

verse 1 for the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is in householder which went out early in the morning to hire laborers in his vineyard huh that's interesting um so does this happen does this happen today this actually does happen today brothers and sisters on a bigger scale right uh you know for day laborers i know like if you go to home depot or years and years ago i'm sure this happens too you know there's people that just day laborers and you know contractors come by and hey you're looking for a day's work yeah i am sure i can bang a hammer no problem

probably not true but anyways you know you get them and you have to pay this guy the same was true in the ancient world you would hire people for a day you know you wouldn't hire them if you didn't need them

right that makes business sense business 101.

so because the the harvest was it was time for harvest you needed more people in the field so a rich landowner would hire people uh to get to get his crop in and so that was another example so when economic and agricultural and economic situation jesus is using again things that people would understand oh yeah laborers in the in in the field it's harvest time for the vineyard people are complaining about their wages oh well did that happen in the ancient world yeah sure it did does it happen now yeah goes to brother jason's point you know things are the same we're still dealing with a lot of this stuff uh

let's look at one more we'll uh we'll stop here for uh for this morning in matthew 21 the tenant farmers

this one's a little more aggressive

uh in matthew 21 jen's had enough she's out of here

all right the tenant farmers uh matthew 21 verse 33

here another parable jesus tells us listen up he says there was a certain householder which planted a vineyard and hedged it round about and dig the wine press in and built a tower and left it out to husband men and went into a far country this is actually a take on isaiah the fifth chapter where uh god compares the vineyard to israel and he's using that as well to bring out another parable as well he goes out to a far country the husbandman he's like guys take care of my vineyard

and when the time of the fruit drew near he sent his servants to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits guys you have my harvest i'm gonna make this into good wine i gotta sell it over in europe big money

um and the husband men took his servants and beat one and killed another and stoned another again he sent other servants more than the first and they did unto them likewise

but last of all they sent to them his son saying they will reverence my son but when the husbandmen saw the son they said amongst himself this is the air come let us kill him and let us seize on the inheritance and so jesus asks a question when the lord thereof of the vineyard comes what will he do unto those husband men

that's a little uh you know there's a lot of food for thought in there isn't it brothers and sisters about you know what what are we doing we have we have been um tasked with with by christ to do certain things to be in husband men to our athleisures to our families to make sure people are growing in the truth to be spiritually growing are we helping each other in that regard uh you know here this husband i think wanted to take over the vineyard right um

and you know he keeps on sending servants and servants like hey where's where's the harvest he's like you know he's killing everybody who wants to keep this vineyard it's really producing a lot of stuff

and that kind of brings to mind too with ahab and jezebel and uh naaman remember he would he wouldn't give up his vineyard he said it's been in my family for for hundreds of years i wouldn't i can't give up my inheritance and jezebel's like hey don't worry about you know ahab got all sad and jezebel's like don't worry i'll take care of it ends up killing neyman on trumped up charges right so

questions comments on this

all right so uh next week we're going to do two things to end actually three things number one we'll look very quickly at the rest of these jesus uh christ using food and his parables number one number two we're going to look at modern day israel and some of the echo the agricultural advancements that israel has been working on particularly in the areas of water conservation growing crops with limited amounts of water growing crops in different areas really fascinating stuff and then number three and this is from our sister lee i think we're going to have some food for sunday

we're going to have a little food action for everybody okay in this age of cover if you don't want to partake i completely understand sister lee is doing it all so it's going to be good i'm not i'm not involved

so it will be tasty

Class 5

Original URL   Sunday, January 30, 2022

Transcript

so let's just uh talk about this very quickly uh i need to go back here we go uh i need to go back

all right we just a very quick recap here um even though you don't see lee she is desperate for a recap as usual um

we had gone over uh kind of uh how large uh this the wine factory in ancient israel was during the byzantine empire uh pretty comprehensive we kind of talked about wine and its importance as a you know a beverage but also for other things as well

so yeah without kind of spending too much time on this i think it just goes to show as we've talked about uh the complexity of um

of trade during this time particularly around food uh you know trade was happening all over the world and it was um you know you could make a lot of money if you had a good product to sell just like today so um

all right we had got i think halfway through this list and this certainly is not a comprehensive list of parables of christ where he used food to get a message a spiritual message to cross matthew 13 i think has

quite a few of them in there i think we went over a few of these the sower the wheat and the tears the leaven and uh the net of fish as well and i think we had talked it about matthew 20

about working in the vineyard um

and uh the tenant farmers as well how that um you know that relationship between an owner of land and the tenant farmers and uh in jesus's parable in the 21st chapter of matthew um you know there's a tremendous amount of lack of respect of the owner of the land right he went into a far country and uh you know and christ was using this obviously to talk about the adversary relationship that the scribes of pharisees had with himself

um in in god's perspective on that as well so

so this is what we'll do for this morning lord willing um

we'll take a look at uh the last few of these about parables of christ using food uh i want to talk briefly about modern-day israel and some of the agricultural advancements that they are using uh and a little bit of the history around that so that's i i have two kind of short video clips from youtube that i want to show they're both i don't know one i think one's ten minutes the other one's nine minutes or something like that so you know like the last 20

minutes of um of class we'll uh we'll go through it i find it pretty interesting to kind of make that connection between the ancient world in the modern world and some of the things that they've been they were dealing with in the ancient world well guess what they're still dealing with those things as well but there's obviously a lot of technology uh that that they can use to kind of mitigate some of the issues that are happening uh in some of these arid uh arid places in israel which is really you know the modern the major the majority of of the land there so anyways let's uh

if you want uh let's take a look at matthew 24

uh in the fig tree

the fig tree uh traditionally has been used to refer to uh israel as a whole their spiritual condition

and you know we can we we've been uh you know christ uses uh you know trees and you know uh you know fruit trees that type of thing uh in relationship to us as well are we bringing fruit are we bearing fruit to god he used that with uh with the sower uh and he's going to use it again with the fig tree so matthew 24

um

actually we can take a look at um

you know matthew 24 the fig tree is found in verse 32 we'll look at look at a couple things here

verse 32 of matthew 24. now learn a parable of the fig tree when his branch is yet tender and put us forth leaves you know that summer is nigh

so likewise when you shall see all all these things know that it is very near even at the door verily i say unto you this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled and if we look back in this chapter in verse 29 we're really talking about you know you know tribulation that was going to fall

to the jews in jerusalem

with the roman invasion of israel and the subsequent fall of jerusalem in a.d 70

and so christ was telling his followers to be on god to see the signs to watch the signs that there's certainly things that are happening that should tell you that something cataclysmic is going to befall the jewish commonwealth and that's exactly what happened and so that was a lesson

and an admonition to jesus's followers during that time but it's an admonition to us as well um to be aware to be aware of the things that are happening around us uh to see the confusion in the world the upheaval um men's hearts feeling them for fear uh you know all the kind of political things that are happening the geopolitical things that are happening um

are we aware of these things are they making an impact on us are we um

you know are we walking in the light and so there are a lot of lessons uh that we can gain from um from these things

so saying in matthew 24

uh in verse um

in verse 45 this is a pretty good uh um parable for all of us right the richest of the righteous and the wicked servants

and so in verse 40 45 who then is a faithful and wise servant whom his lord hath made ruler over his household to give them meat and due season so we we we look at this first and there is responsibilities for a wise servant

um

god gave uh this individual responsibilities and you know the question that i think jesus is putting forth is obviously what type of people are we what type of servants are we number one to god to our father but also to each other and that's really the purpose of this parable um

verse 47 verily i say unto you that he shall make him ruler over all his goods but and if that evil servant shall say in his heart my lord delayeth his coming and shall begin to smite his fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunken the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him it is in our that he is not aware and shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth and so there's a couple things i think that we should uh be aware of here you know this idea of the evil servant saying in his heart you know the lord delays is coming he's not coming you know and because he's not coming back well guess what i'm in charge i can do what i want and he begins to mistreat his fellow servants

i think it reminds us goes back to matthew 18 right with the um

the unforgiving servant he he his fellow servant owes him pennies

and he grabs him by the throat and throws him in jail meanwhile he has an astronomical sum of money that he owes the king that the king just you know in his uh mercy forgives that debt uh and then the eating and the drinking with the drunken

i think there's a lesson there too you know there's a lot of lessons but there's a lesson there as well there's almost like a hoarding supplies of food right you have a small group of people uh this um

this evil servant is mistreating his fellow servants but is also

not sharing the wealth of the house he's eating and he's drinking uh with the drunken

so he has a surplus of food and of drink

but he's not helping his fellow servant he's not passing on those resources uh to others and so um

you know in today's day and age you know there's a lesson there as well you know what are we doing with our resources not just monetarily but uh you know resources that we have and perhaps talents things that could benefit the ecclesia things that could benefit the body are we using these things that god in his love

has given us you know are we burying him in the sand

or are we using them for the betterment of our brothers and sisters are we a faithful servant to god or are we an evil servant who was smiting

his or her fellow servants

all right uh

in luke the 11th chapter

now this is a this is can be an obscure little passage that christ is going to use but i think it's interesting um you know because i it gives us a little insight i think into the culture of ancient israel you know but and also kind of the food situation so um verse five

and he said unto them which of you shall have a friend and shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him friend lend me three loaves

for a friend of mine in his journey has come to me and i have nothing to set before him

and he shall within shall answer and say trouble me not the door is now shut and my children are with me in bed i cannot rise and give thee i say unto you though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend yet because of his importunity he will rise

and give him as many as he needs

and i say unto you ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you

it goes on in verse 11 if a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father

will he give him a stone or if he asks a fish will he give him for a fish give him a serpent or if he shall ask an egg will he offer him a scorpion

if ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children how much more shall your heavenly father give the holy spirit to them that ask him so there's uh there's a lot of lessons here in this uh in this parable

you know there was um a responsibility and it's this is still true in the middle east today of being hospitable you know you had someone in this parable coming to an individual at midnight you know out of the blue

and there was an obligation obviously not only to provide housing for this individual but also to provide food and so he goes to his neighbor you know at midnight looking for probably the you know like the most inconvenient time um but he end up getting the loaves anyways just because you know the the neighbor doesn't want this guy banging on his door all night so i just find it pretty interesting you know about um there was an obligation even at midnight uh for this uh individual to feed uh this traveler this friend that had come to him at um

at midnight and then there's a comparison obviously to a natural father giving giving things to his children that they need um you know bare minimum is food and so if a child comes and say hey you know dad i want a piece of bread you're like oh uh [Music]

oh you wanna you want a piece of bread and you give them a stone

well

that wouldn't be great for the kid yeah you know like uh i'm gonna gave him the stone dad

and christ is using that as an example of our relationship with god that god knows what we need he knows what we need before we even ask him

and he's going to give us what we need

and the fact of the matter is brothers and sisters sometimes the things that we think we need are not the things that god knows we need and so you know there can be some frustration i think sometimes in our lives about um

thinking we need certain things thinking certain things in our lives need to happen in a certain way but god has other plans you know we we could be asking god for a stone

to eat and we may not know it and god gives us bread um because he knows we need that right but we you know our minds for whatever reason can't see really the plan of god until it's done and oftentimes what that happens in our lives doesn't it we look back on events in our lives and because of those events we couldn't really see god's hand working in us working in our lives but afterward you sit back you're like oh wow you know when you're you when you have a different mindset it may be the stress of the situation or the events of the situation sometimes cloud our minds to really think rationally about things and then when we look back when we're clear of mind we can see god's hand in our lives

we've got the time here okay okay uh the rich fool i think we know this we won't turn to this one um but uh you know we should all know this story about the rich fool he is consumed with building better more and more and more in this life

right and he was looking at himself as the beginning and end of all his his wealth he's going to tear down the old bonds he's going to build up new and so

he was very wealthy and this was a perfect example brothers and sisters of excuse me a rich landowner

having all of this land and then having you know tenant farmers or servants slaves working that land and so he had all of these big plans to expand to expand to expand and the one thing that was lacking unfortunately in all of these plans

was god

and god had other plans for this rich fool at the end of the day he was a fool because he didn't put his priorities in the right place he was so concerned about gaining monetary wealth in this life

he forgot about that treasure in heaven that cannot be corrupted so again another lesson uh another um parable of christ where he's using everyday things particularly food and farming and that type of thing to bring a lesson to the people and to bring a lesson to us as well and then lastly let's take a look at this in john uh 21. it's really uh

you know it's a very intimate setting now isn't it in the 21st chapter of john uh where jesus uh

has been raised by his father

and uh he's up at this uh up at the sea of galilee and um

let's see in verse four and when the morning was come jesus stood on the shore and the disciples knew not that it was jesus um

and

they have he makes in verse nine and as soon as they as they were come to land they saw a fire of coals there and fish laid there on and bread

and jesus said unto them bring of the fish which ye have now caught and so um and then verse 12 come come and dine jesus says

and so um he gives thanks for the fish and for the bread and so you know these are staples they were staples during this time in the ancient world are they still staples today yeah fish and bread are kind of you know staples not only in israel but also in uh you know the world um and so i just find that interesting that here is a you know like uh an ancient israeli breakfast of fish and bread they're by the sea you know by the the um the sea of galilee and they they see that it's jesus and they have this kind of wonderful um interaction with each other where jesus particularly around peter right is this forgiving process this process of redemption of redeeming yourself you know what peter had denied jesus three times and you know he asked this very poignant very emotional very cutting question simon peter

do you love me he says um

and it really cuts to cuts to peter's heart doesn't it you know during that time so that's really the scene of this breakfast by the shore right um

and this is kind of when jesus is kind of passing the baton so to speak of of preaching the gospel you know he is going up to heaven and now it's the turn of the apostles to go out into the world

and to preach that gospel message

all right uh so before we get to the to modern day israel uh are there any questions

hold on any questions this okay questions comments from anybody

all right great um

let's move on then we're gonna switch gears

uh and we're gonna fast forward into the future

and uh it's the turn of the 19th century

we have a movement happening

uh in the late 1800s called zionism and very simply zionism is a move by uh

by jews throughout the world that felt that uh israel or the jewish people needed a homeland

uh that they couldn't just kind of live in other nations uh i mean i guess they could but they would have been subject for thousands of years to persecution particularly in europe and so they look they said look we

you know too much too much bad stuff has happened uh to us we need our own homeland we need to kind of control uh you know a piece of land and have our people come here and they need to live in safety we can't rely on other people for our protection and this brothers and sisters was um

was before the holocaust and so after the holocaust things really you know started ramping up and so uh

you know there was immigration to israel before world war ii but after world war ii and after the holocaust you know it really you know jewish immigration to the land of israel began to um really increase the problem of course is and that modernism are just like in ancient israel it's very tough to kind of farm the land of israel the majority of it i think there's only like five or six percent that is of the land that is good for growing crops so think about that most of it is arid land it's not suitable for agriculture and uh because uh a lot of the jews that were coming into the land at this time were not particularly wealthy you know they could they only could buy this kind of garbage land that was very difficult to farm on and just another little thing too is

in a lot of these countries that the jews were coming from into into modern israel or what is going to become modern israel they had never farmed before a lot a lot of these jews and the fact of the matter is a lot of these jews in european countries couldn't own land

it couldn't only because they were jewish and so they didn't have that experience of farming it doesn't mean they're not going to learn because they are going to learn and there's there are going to be you know jews that are going to come over that that do have a background in agriculture but anyways you know we've heard about the kibbutz's where uh groups of jewish people would come together and it was like a commune right they shared everything they worked together as uh as one group they uh pooled their resources together uh and so this is really going to be the center of um this

revitalization of israel you know beginning at the kibbutz's where they're going to take a small piece of land they're going to remove the rots they're going to drain you know swamps they're going to plant trees they're going to use different techniques to stop soil erosion and so all of these techniques are going to be used to expand

uh the land to farm

so that's one issue you know arid land well what is what makes arid land oh well there's not a lot of water is there a lot of water in israel no there's not and it's becoming more and more of an issue uh but as we're going to see

excuse me israel is going to use um

technological advances which they are going to promote uh to use water as effectively as possible to desalinate water i know that there's a plan as well um you know to bring water from the mediterranean uh to desalinate it and then use that salinated water you know the super salty water to put back into the dead sea

to expand or to refill the dead sea again because right now uh the dead sea is uh is growing smaller and smaller just because of you know there's less water uh from the north flowing into from the jordan river into the dead sea it's an issue um so anyways i i think one of the clips talks about that

so um so here's here's a little fact for you that i think puts things in perspective since 1948 israel's agricultural output

uh increased from 400 000 acres so there were 400 000 acres of farmable land

uh in 1948 when israel first became a nation um

you know up until i think like 10 years later they had upped that with to a million acres so they've over doubled the agricultural output of this very small country this very small arid country and they are a leader in agricultural technology particularly around uh

water efficiency but they have the ability now to grow all kinds of different crops you know not just crops that are indigenous to the middle east they grow everything and uh we'll we'll take a look at some of that in in some of these clips

all right questions comments from me what do we got for time

we might be able to just see one of these but that's okay

in 1867 mark twain toured the land of israel known back then as palestine

here's how he described it a desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds a silent mournful expanse

there was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes desolate and unlovely

today mark twain wouldn't even recognize this land out of rocky soil out of swamps and even out of deserts israelis have created gardens vineyards and farms with some of the most innovative techniques in the world

it was just this country with incredible dynamism and energy and excitement and food and people and a sense of family and ultimately a sense of belonging

it's been said that the modern state of israel was born on the kibbutz

so it's only natural that much of israel's innovation was born there as well the kibbutz is the cornerstone in a lot of ways of a lot of things in israeli society people came back wanting to create a collective and an equal society and these kibbutzim became a very very effective way to defend the land to start getting young people engaged in agriculture remember jews were forbidden in most countries of the world to actually own land or to work the land jews couldn't be farmers to all of a sudden see a generation of jews farming the land in the collective environment it was it was incredible before israel even became a state jews by the thousands came to live there on communal farms but when they arrived in the promised land it wasn't exactly flowing with milk and honey the coastal plains were swampy the galilee and the judean hills were rocky and the southern half of the country was mostly desert since the people of israel left our homeland 2000 years ago the area was mismanaged so we want to preserve and rehabilitate this holy land

the early jewish settlers faced a number of obstacles from bad soil to bedouin raiders but they faced an even bigger enemy that threatened to destroy the jewish state before it began

[Music]

in the early decades of the 20th century israel was a breeding ground for mosquitoes carrying malaria they overtook the coastal plains and the jordan valley the only land available for jews to buy since the local arabs had decided it was

uninhabitable in 1920 more than a third of all jewish residents of palestine had malaria

so with no other choice they went to work they drained the swamps and sprayed the land and changed the flow of water in irrigation canals to interrupt the mosquitoes breeding they were so successful that a commission from the league of nations visited palestine to learn what they did

less than 20 years after israel's statehood the country was officially malaria free

once the threat of malaria was gone jewish settlers were free to focus on making the desert bloom

in the coastal plains citrus groves replaced the swamps

and the jordan valley once the center of the malaria epidemic now became the country's bread basket

the negev desert blossomed with newly planted forests and vineyards

and the arava once the most arid part of israel became the site of a flourishing vegetable industry

all of this was accomplished in the first 20 years of israel's statehood in that time they more than doubled their standard of living and now they're using their experience to help other countries

in the 1970s they created a new breed of cherry tomato that's disease resistant and has a longer shelf life

they also bred a new kind of potato that can be grown in hot dry climates and irrigated by salt water these vegetables are now being grown in dry countries like jordan egypt and morocco

israeli scientists not only found ways to grow more crops they also found new ways to preserve them grain pro cocoons provide an inexpensive way for farmers to keep their grain market fresh by keeping out water air and insects the israeli cocoons are being used in africa the far east and even pakistan a nation with no diplomatic ties to israel the kibbutz over time began to change israeli society began to change became more capitalistic became more focused on free enterprise and entrepreneurship and the individual taking responsibility for himself and therefore benefiting the overall society there have been many very exciting companies that have been built in kibbutzim one of those companies is now doing business around the world

he went to the average israeli 10 12

years ago and said to them organic they wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about here we've been doing organic farming for over 40 years

was founded by german refugees in 1934

and many of their early members were survivors of the holocaust the biggest problem that we had when we started the organic was what do you do if you're not using chemicals how do you get rid of the pests

their answer was to fight bugs with more bugs

every single thing in nature has a natural enemy what eats or what attacks these pests that are attacking our crops

they started breeding different insects in the bomb shelter of the kibbutz

the idea was to breed predators to destroy the pests that ate their crops

the result was a new company called biobee we went to the israeli farmers we said you want to buy some bugs i said what are you crazy we don't have enough bugs in the field you want us to buy bugs

eventually they won over farmers in israel and in 32 other countries as well

in california 60 percent of the strawberry fields are treated with products from biobee the company also found a way to deal with one of the region's most devastating insects the mediterranean fruit fly we take the males of the species and we sterilize them and then we release the sterile males into the environment there's no future generation and slowly slowly we lower the population without using harmful chemicals they also solved another agricultural problem how to pollinate greenhouse plants the classic example we like to give is tomato plants tomato plants in the in nature in the fields are pollinated by the wind in israel the majority of our tomatoes are not grown in the fields they're grown in greenhouses and in greenhouse in the climate-controlled environment you don't have that wind you don't have the natural pollination we have to find other methods of pollination

their solution was to breed bumble bees they collect pollen for food they have to go and work even in cold weather conditions they don't have stores of honey in the hive they have to go and work we're saving the farmer money because instead of paying people the bees are doing the work and the bees unlike people they don't miss a single flower so once the farmers started using the bees for pollination the yield of the tomato crops increased by 25 percent in hebrew we say mara buma you know how great and wonderful our creations got and this really shows that every single thing has a reason there's a purpose for everything these tiny little things and look how much good they do for us for the world for the farmers for the environment it's really really amazing

farmers at stay eliahu not only targeted insects they also found a creative way to get rid of rodents as well what we used to do is basically used to take poison in a bottle and a teaspoon and somebody's job was to walk up and down the rows and every time they saw a mouse hole to take a teaspoon of poison and throw it down the hull now obviously that's not ecologically friendly on top of that if it rains or if we irrigate our fields all that poison is going in the ground so we said what is a natural solution to rodents and the natural solution that we found is the barn owl barn owl is an amazing raptor two owls can capture an average of two to five thousand mice a year okay that's a lot of rodents there was just one problem with the owls they fly away and one of the places they would fly to is jordan which is very close by in jordan they were shooting them in arab folklore the barn owl is a herbinger of death and they're very superstitious about barn owls so they see in a barn owl they shoot it so very simply we went to jordan and we invited the jordanian farmers to come to staley out to see what we were doing here this was over 20

years ago and today we have over 2 600

nesting boxes across the country numbers keep growing but also it's become a wonderful program of regional cooperation also with jordan also with the palestinian authority this has been amazing amazing success story we tell the people it's not the dove bringing peace anymore to the middle east it's the barn owl we're a light unto the nations we're supposed to be anyway if we want to really save the environment if we really want to help the world then we can't keep these things to ourselves we have to share these things we have to share this knowledge and i think by helping others we're helping ourselves as well

that was really interesting rich what they do with the insects and you know just let uh creation take its course right and get rid of the poisons and whatnot that's uh that's pretty interesting yeah i i thought it was uh pretty interesting with some of the things that they're using now um you know natural techniques uh instead of the pesticides and stuff like that i thought the barn owl thing was you know

you know instead of the dove bringing pieces and the van overs and you know kind of working with some of um israel's traditional enemies right on a on an agricultural level to um you know not only bring you know water but to you know bring the flower the desert really with all of these different things i just found it really you know ingenious like who would have thought about the bono but i guess this is the guys you know that's their jobs they had they had they had to get creative from the time they got in the land right i mean who would think to sterilize insects yeah yeah

right they know like this is going to be a process but right yeah interesting is very good you know like you said butchie you know it has been a slow process with them very slowly but surely they've reclaimed a lot of the desert you know they've built greenhouses um we don't have time for it but uh in another um in another little clip it talks about all the water that they've used and how um you know

they're able to give water to these massive fields very you know with this drip technology so they're using like a third of the water but increasing the yield of their farms as well so yeah good stuff