Psalm 14: 1, 4  “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’  They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, …  Have they no knowledge, all the evil doers who eat up my  people like bread and do not call on the name of the LORD?”

I love bread rather passionately.  Crusty honey-whole wheat from my bread machine.  Tomato basil from Panera.  Artisanal from Safeway.  I’ve met very few breads I didn’t like.  I could just about LIVE on bread.  (As long as I also had chocolate!)  Bread is sooooo easy to eat.  Pull that loaf out of the bread machine, let it cool just enough to be cut without mooshing down, and I could eat the whole loaf, slice by slice, some with butter melting in, some with honey, some with apple mint jelly.  Generally, though, bread isn’t “special”; it’s not the main dish, just something to fill out the plate.  Most of us eat bread in some form at least once a day, if not for every meal.

Bread was a staple of Biblical times, too, from Genesis through the Lord’s Supper.  Any Jew would certainly have been able to relate to the imagery, because Israel had no shortage of experience with bad guys who “ate them up like bread.”  By the time the Psalm was written, they’d already enjoyed the hospitality of the Egyptians in Egypt, and after winning their homeland, were beset by Midianites, Philistines, and others from the region.  Within a few generations of David, there came the Persians and Babylonians, followed by Alexander the Great and his Macedonians, then the Seleucids.  Of that latter group, the most horrendous was Antiochus Epiphanes, who performed such abominations that it led to the Maccabean Revolution.  But Israel didn’t stay free, and by the time of Christ’s arrival, they were under Herod’s thumb as part of the Roman Empire.  The names changed, but it was always pretty much the same story.  Throughout their history, the Jews were on the bread plate for every would-be world conqueror.

Herod certainly fit the profile for this Psalm – a fool (in the Biblical sense of the word), corrupt, doing abominable deeds.  Instead of joining Magi in worshiping the Child they spoke of, he set out to slaughter Him.  He never knew (in this life) that his slaughter didn’t achieve its purpose.  He made the mistake of thinking there was no God to notice or to care.  

How ironic is it that in EATING God’s people like bread, he actually missed MEETING the Living Bread?  Herod may have eaten up God’s people like bread, but he himself was toast!