THE word "bread" had an extensive meaning among the Hebrews, for the reason that bread not only had an economic value as food and a social usage expressed in hospitality, but was symbolical, also, of many sacred offices and prophetic utterances. Early Biblical records show that before the patriarchal age bread, because of the labor involved in producing it, was fraught with the impressions of toil, fear, and misunderstanding. As these false beliefs were gradually overcome through a clearer knowledge of God and His divine purposes, bread became the emblem of grace, fellowship, and spiritual substance. The unfolding in human consciousness of the significance of bread, from its material uses to its spiritual import, may well typify the pilgrimage of mortals from a hypothetical Eden to the entrance into the holy city, where "to him that overcometh" is given to eat of the "hidden manna" of Truth and Love.
The mandate, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," has had the effect of forcing mankind into blind submission to what has been deemed an inexorable decree. Indeed, the entire human race seems to have been depressed in spirit and retarded in progress because of the generally accepted belief in the necessity for a retributive demand of this nature, and only through some marvelous revelation of God's lovingkindness and faithfulness, disclosed from age to age, has the burden and sorrow of it in part been lifted.
During the long centuries known in history as the antediluvian period, in which mankind was learning to till the soil, produce grain and grind it into meal, which could be mixed with water and baked in rudely constructed ovens, much resentment was felt because of the apparent injustice of entailing so much hard work and sorrow upon endless generations for one person's disobedience! This general bitterness of spirit was indicated by Lamech when, upon giving the name "Noah" to his son, he is said to have remarked, "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." The comfort came about six hundred years later when Noah, having lived above the flood of evil which resulted from this false belief about God and man, learned from the wonderful rainbow rising above the receding waters that "while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest . . . shall not cease." Noah also saw that man had only to lift his eyes above the soil of material beliefs to be assured, by every rainbow arching its beautiful colors against the storm cloud, that seedtime and harvest, as well as the ever recurring rainbow, come through the operation of law, which men also must observe if they would be prosperous and happy.
