_one dish_--not many and elaborate preparations, but a single dish.
A sound judgment rejects at once this interpretation as below the
dignity of the occasion, and not in agreement with what immediately
follows: "Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away
from her." The one thing needful is such a devotion of the soul to
Christ as Mary manifested. So the words: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest
thou me more than these?" (John 21:15), have been explained to mean:
more than these _fish_, or the employment and furniture of a
fisherman--an ingenious substitution, one must say, of a low and trivial
meaning for the common interpretation: more than these thy
fellow-disciples love me, which accords so perfectly with Peter's former
profession: "Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will
I never be offended." Matt. 26:33; Mark 14:29.

Interpreters who ordinarily manifest sound judgment and skill are
sometimes betrayed into inept expositions through the influence of some
preconceived opinion. The psalmist says, for example (Psa. 17:15): "As
for me, in righteousness shall I behold thy face: I shall be satisfied
upon awaking with thy likeness;" that is, with the contemplation of thy
likeness, with apparent reference to Numb. 12:8: "The likeness of the
Lord shall he behold." This passage is ordinarily interpreted correctly
of the vision of God upon awaking in the world to come. And this view is
sustained by other like passages: "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at
thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Psa. 16:11); "Truly
God shall redeem my soul from the power of Sheol; for he shall take me,"
(Psa. 49:15), where Tholuck well says: "He who took an Enoch and a Moses
to himself, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will also take me to
himself;" "Thou shalt guide me by thy counsel, and afterwards take me to
glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that
I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: God is the
strength of my heart, and my portion for ever" (Psa. 73:24-26)--words
that are inexplicable except as containing the anticipation of a blessed
immortality with God in heaven; "The wicked is driven away in his
wickedness; but the righteous hath hope in his death" (Prov. 14:32);
etc. But there is a class of interpreters who, having adopted the maxim
that the Old Testament, at least in its earlier writings, contains no
anticipations of a blessed life with G