At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith” (Proverbs 15:17).
With this proverb, I would like to do two things with it. One is to touch on the point that the proverb is intending to make, and then the other thing is to develop a point on the basis of something the proverb mentioned in passing.
The main point is one that is made repeatedly in Proverbs. It is better to sit around a table with thin commons, but with rich and thick fellowship, than to sit around an elegantly set table, with plenty of food on it, but where everybody despises everybody else. If you had to choose between meals of baby carrots, but with a wife who was both loving and lovely, on the one hand, or rich meals prepared by your personal Michelin-trained chef, serving both you and your harridan wife, then by all means go with the former.
And also remember there are two other options. Some are greatly blessed with wonderful family and great cooking. That’s one of them. But the other, increasingly common in these sad times, is a scenario when a harridan wife makes her husband eat his carrots. So that is one point. Keep your table priorities in proper order. You should care much more about how it is with those sitting around the table with you than how it is with the platters on the table.
So what about the comment in passing? This comes in the realm of application, and I need to explain something first. When Paul told Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach and frequent ailments, it was no part of his intention to help us refute tea-totalers. I am pretty confident that this thought never crossed his mind. Nevertheless it is appropriate to use the verse that way. It does help to refute tea-totalers. Not only so, but it also gives you something to try if your stomach is giving you a bit of trouble.
This proverb mentions as a delicacy the meat that came from a “stalled ox.” This is the same concept that can be seen with the “fatted calf” in the prodigal son story (Luke 15:23). Meat from a calf is veal, and it used to be the practice to keep calves in crates or stalls for their entire lives in order to keep the meat really tender. In Western countries that practice is now largely illegal, but this provides us with a good example of how not to let our modern sensibilities be the sole arbiter of what constitutes animal abuse. A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast (Prov. 12:10), but we should also remember that the father in the prodigal son parable was a righteous man.
