If a son shall ask bread of any of you Further to assist your faith on these occasions, reflect upon the workings of your own hearts toward your offspring. Let any of you, that is a father, and knows the heart of a father, a father's affection to, and care for, a child, say, if his son ask bread to satisfy his hunger, will he give him a stone In the shape of a loaf? or, If he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent Which has some resemblance of a fish; or if he ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion Which, instead of nourishing him, might sting him to death?
Naturalists tell us, that the body of a scorpion is very like an egg, especially if the scorpion be of the white kind, which is the first species mentioned by Ælian, Avicenna, and others. Bochart has produced testimonies to prove that the scorpions in Judea were about the bigness of an egg; and therefore there, a white scorpion being very like an egg, might to children, who were not capable of distinguishing the one from the other, be offered in place thereof, if the person so doing meant that it should sting and destroy them. These different instances are mentioned by Jesus, in order that the doctrine which he is here inculcating might make the stronger impression upon his hearers. See on Matthew 7:9-11.