“And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that country, and he began to be in want, and he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine, and he would willingly have filled his belly with the husks (carob pods) that the swine did eat, and no man gave to him.”
Like many a foolish person who receives a fortune he felt that he could ‘spend, spend, spend'. And that was fine until the money ran out. But unless the fortune is huge the money does eventually run out. And the problem in this case was that it happened at a time of famine. Thus he found himself in great need. The result was that he had to hire himself out to a foreigner to look after his pigs. To a Jew nothing could have been more degrading. Pigs were ritually ‘unclean', and to associate with them was heavily frowned on and despised by all Jews (Leviticus 11:7; Deuteronomy 14:8; Isaiah 65:4; Isaiah 66:17; 1Ma 1:47; 2 Peter 2:22). And yet this young Jew not only had to live among the pigs, he had to eat the food that they ate. It was the opposite of all that he had ever known. He was homeless and friendless and lacking in even the basic amenities. He had reached rock bottom. We do not have to assume dishonesty. Eating the pig food may well, in a time of famine, have been part of the agreement. And he may well also have received a small wage. But there was no charity for him. He was an outcast. His ‘good time' friends had forgotten him. No one wanted to know him. The pig food was probably carob pods, of which the Rabbis would say, ‘when the Israelites are reduced to carob pods, then they repent'. For carob pods were the worst possible type of food.
We must remember that Jesus is here describing the ‘public servants and sinners', people who had wandered away from God and had lived for themselves. They had lived their lives as though God did not exist and by it they had lost everything that was truly worthwhile. Even the wealthy ones were spiritually ‘living among the pigs'.