Bread and Battle

Now, I came across a rather unusual verse in Ecclesiastes 9, verse 11, where King Solomon says, I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill, but time and chance happen to them all." So Solomon makes an interesting observation about life, that the fastest runner doesn't always win the race, the strongest army doesn't always win the battle, and the wisest person doesn't necessarily have bread on the table.

In other words, life doesn't always turn out the way we expect.

So you can be strong and still lose a battle.

You can be wise and still face hardship.

You can make all the right preparations and still encounter circumstances beyond your control because life is not always as predictable as we think.

But as I was reading this passage, what caught my attention were these two words, bread and battle.

Now, we're all familiar with bread and butter.

Think of kaya butter toast.

That's a word of knowledge for some of you, what to eat later.

But bread and battle, what does bread have to do with battle? Because one belongs on the table, the other belongs to the battlefield.

One speaks of nourishment, the other speaks of conflict.

One strengthens you, the other stretches you.

One is something you receive, the other is something you must face.

They seem like two completely different things.

And then I found out something interesting, because in Hebrew, the word for bread, which is , that's where you get the name of the town where Jesus was born, Bethlehem, which means the house of bread.

And the Hebrew verb meaning to fight, to wage war, and to battle is .

Both words share the same three Hebrew consonants.

Interesting.

And as we read through the scripture, we discover that bread and battle appear together in some rather interesting circumstances.

For example, in Exodus chapter 16, God provided bread from heaven.

And then in Exodus chapter 17, Israel fought the Amalekites.

In Joshua chapters 5 and 6, Israel ate the produce of the promised land before they faced the battle of Jericho.

What about Judges chapter 7? Before Gideon defeated the Midianite army, an enemy soldier had an interesting dream, a strange dream about a loaf of barley tumbling down from the top and crashing into the camp.

What about 1 Samuel 17, where David went to the battlefield carrying bread for his brothers, and he ended up defeating Goliath.

I like to put it this way, David went to deliver bread, but he came back with Goliath's head.