HAVE YOU ANY FISH? II 



and longing and looking up the hill-side on the Jerusa- 

 lem road for his appearance ; and I have no doubt that, 

 when this weariness became exhausting, Peter sought on 

 the water something of the old excitement that he had 

 known from boyhood, and that to all the group it seemed 

 a fitting way in which to pass the long night before them, 

 otherwise to be weary as well as sleepless. 



If one could have the story of that night of fishing, of 

 the surrounding scenes, the conversation in the boat, the 

 unspoken thoughts of the fishermen, it would make the 

 grandest story of fishing that the world has ever known. 

 Its end was grand when in the morning the voice of the 

 Master came over the sea, asking them the familiar ques- 

 tion, in substance the same which they, like all fishermen, 

 had heard a thousand times, " Have you any fish ?"* 



* John xxi., 5 : " Children, have ye any meat ?" This translation, 

 though literal, does not convey the idea of the original. The Greek 

 is Uaicia, fir) -i Trpoafdyiov t'x £r£ > an d the word irpootyayiov is used 

 here, as in the best of the later Greek authors, to signify the kind of 

 eatable article which the persons addressed were then seeking. Un- 

 willing, in a matter of such importance (for every word of the Lord 

 is of the highest importance) to trust my own limited knowledge of 

 Greek, I read this page to one of the most trustworthy and eminent 

 American scholars and divines one evening in my library, and the 

 next morning received from him this note, which I take the liberty 

 of appending : 



" October 21st, 1872. 



" My dear Sir, — You are quite right in your interpretation of 

 John xxi., 5. ' Meat,' in Luke xxi v., 41, is simply food, ftpwaijxoc, any 

 thing to eat. But, in John xxi., 5, the word is npofffpayiov, something 

 eatable (but especially flesh or fish) in addition to (7rpoc) bread, which 

 in Palestine was then, as now, the chief diet of the people. Had the 

 disciples been out hunting, the meaning would have been ' Have you 

 any game ?' As they had been all night fishing, the meaning was, 

 and they so understood it, ' Have you any fish ?' 



" Yours very truly, ." 



