Proverbs 15:17 – Feasting and Love

BIBLE TEXT

Proverbs 15:17

SUMMARY

Love is more important than a feast.

ANALYSIS

Proverbs 15:17, like so many proverbs, is concerned with food and eating, as well as wealth and poverty (see, for example 17:1). Proverbs 15:17 is a memorable proverb:

Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is
than a fatted ox and hatred with it.

The assumption of the proverb is that anyone would consider a meal of a fatted calf as a feast. However, reading this proverb in a time when eating meat is often called into question and when there are many vegetarians with political, ecological and/or health concerns adds an entirely new dimension. We read the proverbs with a whole new set of eyeglasses, and the meaning becomes muddled.