by Darla Turlington

Bible Quotes on Feast

Hospitality and Celebrations

But he [Lot] urged them [strangers/angels] strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

Genesis 19:3

The child grew and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.

Genesis 21:8

So he [Isaac] made them [Abimelech and advisors] a feast, and they ate and drank. In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths; and Isaac set them on their way, and they departed from him in peace.

Genesis 26:30-31

Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife that I may go in to her, for my time is completed.” So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast. 

Genesis 29:21-22

On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast for all his servants, and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants.

Genesis 40:20

Abigail came to Nabal; he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. 

I Samuel 25:36

When Abner came with twenty men to David at Hebron, David made a feast for Abner and the men who were with him. Abner said to David, “Let me go and rally all Israel to my lord the king, in order that they may make a covenant with you, and that you may reign over all that your heart desires.” So David dismissed Abner, and he went away in peace.

II Samuel 3:20-21

But Absalom pressed him until he let Amnon and all the king’s sons go with him. Absalom made a feast like a king’s feast.

II Samuel 13:27

Then Solomon awoke; it had been a dream. He came to Jerusalem where he stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. He offered up burnt offerings and offerings of well-being and provided a feast for all his servants.

I Kings 3:15

So he [King of Israel] prepared for them [Aramean soldiers] a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel.

II Kings 6:23

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his intention toward me was love.

Song of Solomon 2:4

So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther.

Esther 7:1

Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the open towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, a holiday [Purim] on which they send gifts of food to one another.

Esther 9:19

And they praised the God of their ancestors, because he had given them release and permission to go up and build Jerusalem and the temple that is called by his name; and they feasted, with music and rejoicing, for seven days.

I Esdras 4:62-63

For three months the people continued feasting in Jerusalem before the sanctuary, and Judith remained with them.

Judith 16:20

Maxims

All the days of the poor are hard, but a cheerful heart has a continual feast….

Better is a dinner of vegetables where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it.

Proverbs 15:15,17

Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.

Proverbs 17:1

It is better to go to the house of mourning
    than to go to the house of feasting;
for this is the end of everyone,
    and the living will lay it to heart.

Ecclesiastes 7:2

Alas for you, O land, when your king is a servant,^[a]
    and your princes feast in the morning!
Happy are you, O land, when your king is a nobleman,
    and your princes feast at the proper time—
    for strength, and not for drunkenness!

Ecclesiastes 10:16-17

Feasts are made for laughter; wine gladdens life, and money meets every need.

Ecclesiastes 10:19

Do not become a beggar by feasting with borrowed money, when you have nothing in your purse.

Sirach 18:33

It [wine] turns every thought to feasting and mirth and forgets all sorrow and debt. 

I Esdras 3:20

If they make you master of the feast, do not exalt yourself; be among them as one of their number. Take care of them first and then sit down;

Sirach 32:1

When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host;

Luke 14:8

But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Luke 14:13

Feasts under judgement

Ah, you who rise early in the morning
    in pursuit of strong drink,
who linger in the evening
    to be inflamed by wine,
whose feasts consist of lyre and harp,
    tambourine and flute and wine,
but who do not regard the deeds of the Lord,
    or see the work of his hands!

Isaiah 5:11-12

You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink. ⁹ For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am going to banish from this place, in your days and before your eyes, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

Jeremiah 16:8-9

Those who feasted on delicacies perish in the streets; those who were brought up in purple cling to ash heaps.

Lamentations 4:5

As for you, mortal, thus says the Lord God: Speak to the birds of every kind and to all the wild animals: Assemble and come, gather from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great sacrificial feast on the mountains of Israel, and you shall eat flesh and drink blood. ¹⁸ You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth—of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bulls, all of them fatlings of Bashan. ¹⁹ You shall eat fat until you are filled, and drink blood until you are drunk, at the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you. ²⁰ And you shall be filled at my table with horses and charioteers,^[g]with warriors and all kinds of soldiers, says the Lord God.

Ezekiel 39:17-20

I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.

Amos 8:10

Those who lived long ago in your holy land
⁴ you hated for their detestable practices,
their works of sorcery and unholy rites,
⁵ their merciless slaughter^[a] of children,
and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood.

Wisdom 12:3b-5a

when he says, “I have found rest,
    and now I shall feast on my goods!”
he does not know how long it will be
    until he leaves them to others and dies.

Sirach 11:19

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

Luke 16:19

They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues,

Matthew 23:6

Her [Jerusalem’s] sanctuary became desolate like a desert;
    her feasts were turned into mourning,
her sabbaths into a reproach,
    her honor into contempt.

I Maccabees 1:39

 These [slanderers] are blemishes^[k] on your love-feasts, while they feast with you without fear, feeding themselves.^[l]

Jude 1:12; compare II Peter 2:12-13

The Lord’s feast

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
    All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They feast on the abundance of your house,
    and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light we see light.

Psalm 36:7-9

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips

Psalm 63:5

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

Isaiah 25:6

Receive what the Lord has entrusted to you and be joyful, giving thanks to him who has called you to the celestial kingdoms. Rise, stand erect and see the number of those who have been sealed at the feast of the Lord. Those who have departed from the shadow of this age have received glorious garments from the Lord.

II Esdras 2:37-39

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.

Matthew 22:2 

And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut.

Matthew 25:10 

be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.

Luke 12:36

General Quotes on Feast

The true essentials of a feast are only fun and feed.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, American jurist

Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts. 

—Aldous Huxley, English novelist

In anything, there has to be that moment of fasting, really, in order to enjoy the feast. 

—Stephen Hough, British composer

Faith is the ticket to the feast, not the feast. 

—Edwin Louis Cole, American author

Every sacramental meeting ought to be a spiritual feast.

—Gordon B. Hinckley, American clergyman

For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of ‘passive action,’ the action that functions simply by the transmission through us of divine energy. Purity, in spite of outward appearances, is essentially an active virtue, because it concentrates God in us and on those who are subject to our influence. 

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher

Too many sit at the banquet table of the gospel of Jesus Christ and merely nibble at the feast placed before them. They go through the motions – attending their meetings perhaps, glancing at scriptures, repeating familiar prayers – but their hearts are far away. 

—Joseph B. Wirthlin, American businessman 

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity… But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me. 

—Meister Eckhart, German philosopher 

The liturgy, like the feast, exists not to educate but to seduce people into participating in common activity of the highest order, where one is freed to learn things which cannot be taught.

—Aidan Kavanagh, American theologian

All the dancing and feasting and processing and singing and building and sculpting and baking and merrymaking that belong to us, and that were stolen away into the service of false gods, are returned to us in the gospel.
― Thomas Howard, American author

[The] dinner party is a true proclamation of the abundance of being — a rebuke to the thrifty little idolatries by which we lose sight of the lavish hand that made us.

― Robert Farrar Capon, American author and priest 

The wine of Love is music, And the feast of Love is song: And when Love sits down to the banquet, Love sits long: Sits long and rises drunken, But not with the feast and the wine; He reeleth with his own heart, That great, rich Vine. 

—James Thomson, Scottish poet

Calmly he looked on either Life, and here Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear: From Nature’s temp’rate feast rose satisfy’d, Thank’d Heaven that he had lived, and that he died.

—Alexander Pope, English poet

I don’t need a holiday or a feast to feel grateful for my children, the sun, the moon, the roof over my head, music, and laughter, but I like to take this time to take the path of thanks less traveled. 

—Paula Poundstone, American comedian

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. 

—Melody Beattie, American writer

The key to life is imagination.  If you don’t have that, no matter what you have, it’s meaningless.  If you do have imagination…you can make feast of straw.

—Jane Stanton Hitchcock, American author

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences. 

—Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. 

—Khalil Gibran, Lebanese poet 

A cheerful look makes a dish a feast.

—George Herbert, English poet and priest

Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them.

—Benjamin Franklin, American author

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.

—Samuel Pepys, English diarist

Enough is as good as a feast. 

—Joshua Sylvester, English poet

A gloomy guest fits not a wedding feast. 

—Friedrich Schiller, German dramatist

A good conscience is a continual feast. 

—Robert Burton, English writer.

Don’t get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it. 

—William Inge, English clergyman

I feast on wine and bread and feasts they are.

—Michelangelo, Italian artist

Just being out in the world, you see so many things, and every day, you experience so many concepts and different people and their coolness and weirdness. It’s a feast of ideas. 

—Ann Wilson, American musician

A concert is always like a feast day to me. 

—James Taylor, American musician

Everyone loves to feast their eyes on Times Square on New Year’s Eve. 

—Kimberly Guilfoyle, American critic

My books are a word feast. 
― Lori R. Lopez, American author

I know the world of opera so intimately: historical sweep, sharply defined characters, not too rational an explanation of what’s going on. It’s a feast. 

—James A. Michener, American novelist

The fiesta of soccer, a feast for the legs that play and the eyes that watch, is much more than a big business…. The most popular sport in the world wants to serve the people who embrace it. 

—Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist

The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorization. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. 

—Christopher Meloni, American actor

I consider my job as a screenwriter to pack a script with possibilities and ideas – to create a feast for the filmmaker to pick from. 

—Jonathan Nolan, British writer

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner. 

—Charles Caleb Colton, English writer

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. 

—Ernest Hemingway, American novelist

I love ‘Babette’s Feast’ because of the message in it – an artist will never be poor, and you can melt the coldest heart with love and passion. 

—Colin Salmon, British actor

Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of the trees; not merely a dance of fun and beauty (though it was that too) but a magic dance of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came into existence- 

—C.S. Lewis, British author

This is a day of celebration!
Today, we are divorcing the past
and marrying the present.
Dance,
and you will find God
in every room.
Today, we are divorcing resentment
and marrying forgiveness.
Sing,
and God will find you 
in every tune.
Today, we are divorcing indifference
and marrying love.
Drink, and play that tambourine 
against your thighs.
We have so much celebrating to do!
― Kamand Kojouri, Iranian author

Quotes from  websites: brainy quote, good reads, your dictionary, the fresh quotes, think exist.