HEBREW WORD STUDY – WHEN THOU HAS EATEN – ‘AKALETA  אכלת 

Matthew 26:26: “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed [it], and brake [it], and gave [it] to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.”

Deuteronomy  8:10: “When thou hast eaten and art satisfied, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.”

Recently I shared a meal with a family and before we ate the host offered a “blessing.”  It went something like this: “Lord bless this food so it might be nourishment to our bodies.”  The wife, who went to the grocery store and purchased the food items and prepared these items for this meal, just sat back smiling.  If I were her I would be insulted.  I mean did she not examine each item to make sure it was nutritious?  Did she not prepare a nutritious meal?  Why ask God to bless it.  I mean He already did all the blessings by providing it? 

Why do we even have to pray before we eat the meal?  To be honest whenever all that food is placed before me and I am hungry and someone asks to give the blessing my only thought is: “Do we really have to, can’t we wait until we are satisfied?  Just where in the Bible does all this food blessing come from anyways.” 

Well, before feeding the 5,000 and the last supper Jesus blessed the food.  But is that what He really blessed? All records in the New Testament of Jesus blessing says: “He took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it.   The only thing is that in the Aramaic as well as the Greek the pronoun “it” is not there.  The passage simply says Jesus “Blessed, broke and gave.”  Well, it is pretty obvious that He was blessing the bread as he just took the bread.  What else would He be blessing? 

I see the logic to this but the only problem I have is that the Jews today as they have done throughout their history bless God, not the food. This is in accordance with Deuteronomy 8:10 “When thou hast eaten and art satisfied, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.”  Note carefully the words “when thou hast eaten.”  That is one word in Hebrew ‘akaleta which is in a Qal perfect form.  The perfect form is a completed action.  In other words, this blessing is said after you have eaten and been satisfied. But in the New Testament, the blessing is said before they ate.  In Acts 27:35 we do see the practice of blessing God before eating.   Obviously, the timing of the blessing is not that important.  There are people who eat and run and would disappear before you had the chance to say a blessing, so it would seem appropriate to say the blessing at the beginning.

But note it does say when you are satisfied.  That word satisfied in Hebrew is saba’ which means to be satisfied, to have in excess.  Since this is in a simple Qal form you would most likely stay with the idea of being satisfied.  Not everyone in those days and even today was fully satisfied after eating. Perhaps the blessing before the meal was an act of faith that everyone would be satisfied.  In this country, we are used to eating until we are satisfied.  But for many people in the world, they barely have enough to be filled but they still can be satisfied or saba’.  I remember the story of a missionary during World War II who was captured by the Japanize and sent to a prison camp.  She saw someone slip a banana to a prisoner by the fence.  This missionary was sitting down with her little ball of rice filled with cockroaches and told God how she would love to have a banana.  Then she said; “But don’t get me wrong, God, I am truly grateful for this little bit of food that I have.  That is saba’ 

In Matthew 26:26 Jesus blessed, there is no direct object which is not needed in the Aramaic, yet we do need one in English so we add the pronoun “it” assuming that the blessing is for the food. Yet, Jesus was a Jew and a rabbi and the custom was to bless God, not the food. To thank God for providing the ground that brings the bread from the earth.  The word bless in Aramaic is berek which means to bow, to acknowledge, to show respect and to thank.  

I believe the Bible says that somewhere during a meal we should express our thanks to God. It does not even mean to speak the thanksgiving out loud.  Our lives should be a prayer and one of always being in a Thanksgiving mood.