At least once each year, for many years, I carried the korban (the bread offering) to the mizbeh (altar of sacrifice) in our village church, as an offering for the repose of the souls of our dead as well as for our own spiritual security. Bread was one of the elements of the holy Eucharist. The mass always closed with the handing by the priest to the members of the congregation of small pieces of consecrated bread. The Gospel taught us also that Christ was the "bread of life."
The 'aish was something more than mere matter. Inasmuch as it sustained life, it was God's own life made tangible for his child, man, to feed upon. The Most High himself fed our hunger. Does not the Psalmist say, "Thou openest thine hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living thing"? Where else could our daily bread come from?
[[1]] Verses 30-33.
[[2]] Verses 53-54. The word "drink," which is frequently used in the Bible in connection with the word "eat," does not necessarily refer to wine drinking. The expression "food and drink" is current in Syria, and means simply "board." An employer says to an employee, "I will pay you so much wages, and your food and drink" (aklek washirbek). The drink may be nothing but water.
CHAPTER II
"OUR DAILY BREAD"
I have often heard it said by "up-to-date" religionists in this country that the saying in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," was at best a beggar's lazy petition. It has been suggested that those words should be omitted from the prayer, because they pertain to "material things." And at any rate we can get our daily bread only by working for it.
Yes; and the Oriental understands all that. But he perceives also that by working for his daily bread he does not create it, but simply finds it. The prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread" is a note of pure gratitude to the "Giver of all good and perfect gifts." The Oriental does not know "material things" as the Occidental knows them. To him organic chemistry does not take the place of God. He is, in his totality, God-centered. His center of gravity is the altar and not the factory, and back of his prayer for daily bread is the momentum of ages of mystic contemplation. The Oriental finds kinship, not with those who go for their daily bread no farther than the bakery, but with the writer of this modern psalm:—
"Back of the loaf is the snowy flour,
Back of the flour the mill;
Back of the mill is the wheat and the shower
And the sun and the Father's will."