Who drink wine in bowls, And anoint themselves with the best oils; But they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.
When a “fatted calf” was killed for a feast, it was thought the best cheer, as when Abraham entertained Angels, or in that feast of the Father who, when He had received back His son, said, “bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry: for this My son was dead and is alive again” Luke 15:23-24. So then the prophet accuses the nobles of luxury, because they ate fat oxen and lambs. For the table of Solomon, the wealthiest of monarchs, there were brought “fat oxen, and oxen, out of the pastures, sheep, besides hart and roebuck and fallow deer and fatted fowls” 1 Kings 4:23. “Now” whatever is produced in sea or earth or sky, people think to be born to satisfy their appetites. Who could recount the manifold forms of food and condiments, which all-inventing gluttony has devised? Books had to be written; no memory sufficed. In this ocean, wealthiest patrimonies have discharged themselves and disappeared.