Luke 15:14-17

Contemporary English Version

¹⁴He had spent everything, when a bad famine spread through that whole land. Soon he had nothing to eat.

¹⁵He went to work for a man in that country, and the man sent him out to take care of his pigs.^[a] ¹⁶He would have been glad to eat what the pigs were eating,^[b] but no one gave him a thing.

¹⁷Finally, he came to his senses and said, “My father's workers have plenty to eat, and here I am, starving to death!

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Footnotes

15.15 pigs: The Jewish religion taught that pigs were not fit to eat or even to touch. A Jewish man would have felt terribly insulted if he had to feed pigs, much less eat with them.
15.16 what the pigs were eating: The Greek text has “(bean) pods,” which came from a tree in Palestine. These were used to feed animals. Poor people sometimes ate them too.