Lesson 5: What Shall We Eat?

 A Healthy Lifestyle for Your and Your Family

Lesson 5: What Shall We Eat?

Part 2: Food From the King’s Table

Before you begin this lesson, take a few minutes to read the first chapter of the book of Daniel.  This will familiarize you with the story from which this lesson comes.

1. Who was Daniel? Daniel 1:3

2. What outstanding qualities did Daniel possess that caused him to be chosen for special training in the schools of Babylon? Daniel 1:5

3. What kind of diet did King Nebuchadnezzar order for the students? Daniel 1:5

4. What decision did Daniel make about the diet provided by the king? Daniel 1:8

Daniel and his friends would not defile their bodies with the rich food and drink from the king’s table.  While the king believed that this was the best diet for his prize pupils, Daniel understood that such food would defile his body.  The margin reading for “king’s meat” reads “king’s delicacies.”  Nebuchadnezzar did not know the difference between the clean and unclean foods, that “wine is a mocker” (Proverbs 20:1), or that “the life is in the blood.”

5. What did Daniel ask for from the prince of eunuchs? Daniel 1:8, last part

6. How did the prince of the eunuchs answer? Daniel 1:10

7. Daniel then turned to Melzar, the eunuch placed over him and his friends and ask for what? Daniel 1:12-13

Pulse is an old word for vegetables.

8. Melzar consented and at the end of 10 days what differences could be seen between the four young men and the rest of the students? Daniel 1:15

9. At the end of the three years’ training, when the king called the students before him, what difference did the king see between Daniel and his friends and the other students? Daniel 1:19

10. How much better were they than the others? Daniel 1:20

Daniel and his friends ate a vegetarian diet, and they were ten times better than all the students who ate the king’s food by eating the food provided by God in the beginning.

11. What did Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, say about the eating habits of princes? Ecclesiastes 10:17

12. What advice did he give to those who are faced with the same choice that Daniel had to make? Proverbs 23:1-3

13. What did the Children of Israel begin complaining for? Numbers 11:4-6

14. What had they been eating? Numbers 11:7-9

15. What did the manna taste like? Exodus 16:31

16. What kind of food was the manna? Psalm 78:25

17. How badly did they want meat to eat? Psalm 78:18

“And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp”  Numbers 11:32.

It was not hunger that made the people stay up grabbing birds for 36 hours, but a craving for flesh food.  They had begun murmuring about and desiring  the food they had eaten in Egypt, but forgetting that they had been slaves to the Egyptians.

18. What did God do because of their lust and why? Psalm 78:27-31

The Children of Israel had demanded flesh food for they were tired of the manna God was providing (Numbers 11:10-35). The Lord caused a wind to blow, bringing flocks of quail flying into the camp at a low height, allowing them to be easily caught. The people were so gluttonous for the meat that they were heaping the birds up and gorging themselves. As a result a plague went through the camp killing many.

“And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” Psalm 106:15.

19. What kind of men were the sons of Eli, the high priest of Israel? 1 Samuel 2:12

Belial is another name for Satan and means worthless.

20. What were they in the habit of sending their servant to do? 1 Samuel 2:13,14

21. What else would they send their servant to get? 1 Samuel 2:15

22. What would happen if anyone objected? 2 Samuel 2:16

The priests wanted the meat before the fat had been removed and burned and the remaining blood had been seethed, or boiled, out.  They were disobedient of a direct command of God to not eat the blood or the fat.

23. What other kind of sin were Eli’s sons guilty of? 1 Samuel 2:22

24. What did God say would happen to them as a result of their disobedience? 1 Samuel 2:34, 36

It happened as God had said.  The priesthood was removed from Eli’s family and given to another.  Eli and his sons all died the same day (see 1 Samuel 4:10-18). 

25. What other bad habit is associated with gluttony and the use of flesh food? Proverbs 23:20

26. Where does the lust of the flesh come from? 1 John 2:16

Lust means to covet, crave, be greedy, or to passionately desire something.  People can lust for things that in themselves are not harmful or wrong.  It is the desire to have it to the exclusion of anything else that constitutes lust.

27. What will finally happen to lust? 1 John 2:17

Next Lesson: What Shall We Eat?

Part 3: Eat That Which Is Good