This must have been especially humiliating since Jews considered pigs to be unclean animals. No Hebrew would ordinarily touch any swine. But his situation had become so desperate that he had abandoned any pretense of religion. Each of us has spent time in the pigpen. We may not have thought it was that, but we allowed sin to reign in our lives until we felt humiliated in our spirit.
Many people never get out of the mud of a misspent life.
It is a bondage which is only too common although sometimes its chains are unseen. Being apart from God is like trying to survive in the mud pit on husks. We cannot be in the world without finding ourselves hungry and dirty and feeling hopeless. The young son s thoughts return to his father. He realizes that even the poorest person in his father s realm was happier and better off than he was in his current situation.