John the Baptist, Mark tells us, ‘… ate locusts and
wild honey…’ (Mark 1:6).
Wild honey requires little
explanation since wild honey bees still exist in various parts of the world,
although loss of habitat and environmental change threaten their existence. The
medicinal properties of some wild honey products are well known to Japanese and
Chinese traditional medicines. For the people of Israel, the promised land was ‘the
land flowing with milk and honey’ (Exodus 3:8). Together with curds, honey was also
the food prescribed by the Prophet Isaiah for those who remain in Israel after
the devastation of the exile (cf. Isaiah 7:22). Either way, honey is intimately
connected with the promise of God.
There are two conventional
explanations for John the Baptist’s diet of locusts. The first, the less
literal explanation, is that he was not eating locusts at all but the fruit of
the locust tree, known variously as the Carob tree
and St John’s-bread. In Luke 15:16,
when the Prodigal Son is in the depth of his spiritual and social poverty and
alienation, he wants to eat the pods that he is feeding to the swine because he
himself is starving. The use of the carob during a famine is likely to be a
result of the carob tree’s resilience to the harsh climate and drought. During World War II,
it was common for the people of Malta to eat dried carob pods as a supplement for
rationed food.
The second, more literal, interpretation is attuned to
contemporary non-western societies, where people in many countries collect
locusts using large nets and by other means. Locusts are usually stir-fried,
roasted or boiled and eaten immediately or dried and eaten later. Locusts are
rich in protein. During periods of increased locust activity, piles of dead
locusts can be found in the market places of many locust-affected countries. Under the Old Covenant, locusts were among the insects that could be
eaten by the people of Israel (cf. Leviticus 11:22: ‘you may eat any kind
of locust, katydid [bush cricket or bald locust], cricket or grasshopper.’) By eating locusts, John remained faithful to the Law. Locusts, one of the
early Church fathers tells us, ‘are rightly
considered to be food for repentance’
(Peter Chrysologus). The reason that John ate locusts, then, is threefold: to
remain faithful to the Law, to call the people of Israel to repentance, and to
point out the coming of Christ, the ‘living bread that came down from heaven’
(John 6:51).
