To be a swineherd, or a "swine-shepherd," is the most contemptible occupation an Oriental can think of. It is no wonder at all to me that the Gospel writers make the destination of the "legion" of devils which Jesus cast out of the {158} man "in the country of the Gadarenes," a herd of swine.[9] You cannot hire a Syrian to make a pet of a "little piggie." If he did, he would be called "_Abu khenzier_" (pig man) for the rest of his life, and transmit the unenviable title to his posterity, "even unto the third and fourth generation." The word "husks" in the English version is not a correct rendering of the original term. The marginal note in the Revised Version reads, "the pods of the carob tree." The Arabic version says simply _kherrûb_ (carob). The carob tree is very common in the lowlands of Syria. It is a large tree of dense foliage, and round, glossy, dark-green leaves. The pods it bears measure from five to ten inches in length, are flat, and largely horn-shaped. I do not know why the English translators of the Bible called those pods "husks." They are sold in almost every town in western Syria for food. Children are very fond of _kherrûb_. Some of the pods contain no small amount of sugar. In my boyhood {159} days, a pocketful of _kherrûb_, which I procured for a penny, was to me rather a treat. The older people, however, do not esteem _kherrûb_ so highly as do the children. The bulk of it is so out of proportion to the sugar it contains that its poverty is proverbial in the land. Of one whose conversation is luxuriant in words and barren of ideas it is said, "It is like eating _kherrûb_; you have to consume a cord of wood in order to get an ounce of sweet." By eating these pods, the poor people seem to themselves "to have been filled" while in reality they have received but little nutrition. Therefore _kherrûb_ is generally eaten by animals. It may be observed that the saying in the parable, "and he would fain have been filled with _kherrûb_ that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him," simply describes the prodigal's poverty. For as a "swine-shepherd" the "_kherrûb_ that the swine did eat" was certainly very accessible to him. The purpose of the passage is to draw the contrast between the rich parental home which the prodigal had willingly {160} left and the extremely humble fare on which in his wretched state he was compelled to subsist. The return of the prodigal son to his father's house, impoverished but penitent, the affectionate magnanimity of the father toward his son, and the spreading of the feast in honor of the occasion, are acts of humility and generosity which cannot be said to be exclusively Oriental. But the command of the father to his servants, "Bring hither the fatted calf and kill it; and let us eat and be merry," brings out the idea of the _zebihat_ (animal sacrifice) with which the West is not familiar.