meals
  餐食
  Meals
     are at the present day "eaten from a round table little higher
     than a stool, guests sitting cross-legged on mats or small
     carpets in a circle, and dipping their fingers into one large
     dish heaped with a mixture of boiled rice and other grain and
     meat. But in the time of our Lord, and perhaps even from the
     days of Amos (6:4, 7), the foreign custom had been largely
     introduced of having broad couches, forming three sides of a
     small square, the guests reclining at ease on their elbows
     during meals, with their faces to the space within, up and down
     which servants passed offering various dishes, or in the absence
     of servants, helping themselves from dishes laid on a table set
     between the couches." Geikie's Life of Christ. (Comp. Luke
     7:36-50.) (See ABRAHAM'S BOSOM; BANQUET; FEAST.)