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Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
Was that the last significant reference to eating in the Bible? (And didn't Jesus saying something about eating Me and living?)
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And, consistent with Lee, if you find eating anywhere in the Bible, then everything must be about eating in the same way.
Yet so many of the references to eating are metaphorical or typological, not literal. And, just like we have seen about leaven, every instance of eating is not just like every other instance of eating. It makes for a great overlay that "so many others have missed."
Don't go beyond what is written. Don't presume that eating always has the same meaning. It does not necessarily imply anything about the process of spending time chewing, but possibly only about taking in whatever is in question.
And while the eating of the forbidden tree in Gen 3 surely included the chewing and swallowing, there is nothing in the account that indicates that anything more the the act of disobedience was relevant (in other words, the mere act of eating was the forbidden thing). The command did not say that "in the day you eat of it, you will be infected with a poison that will kill you," or "you will ingest Satan himself into you." It just says (in a few more words) "don't eat it or you will die." It didn't even state clearly what "death" meant. Most think that it is probably separation from God. But it could also be that the very fact of physical death is a result of it. But since we get to see it in hindsight, it didn't mean that we drop dead "in the day you eat of it." There was another meaning.
When God came to find them hiding, he didn't say "see, you now have Satan in you." He asked them a question, and they acknowledged that they had eaten. And God said "because you have" to both the serpent and to Adam. In short, because of this, things are going to be bad. If it was simply what went in with the fruit, then no declaration by God was needed.
The point is not that it could not be but that there is nothing we can see that makes it so. Therefore it is not worthy of making declarations about it. Not worthy of being taught.
And if it is not worthy of being taught, then to teach it is to invite . . . guess what . . . questions. Aud you find yourself teaching the things that Paul said to avoid. Like endless genealogies.
So a good Berean is looking for reasons to stand on it as true, not merely the lack of evidence that it is false, or a forced overlay from somewhere else to cause what it written to say something it does not otherwise say.