Prodigal Son Word Search

This Prodigal Son word search follows the parable in Luke 15: the younger son's inheritance, the far country, the famine, the pigs and their pods, the walk home, the father running, the robe, the ring and the sandals, the fatted calf and the older brother in the field.

Prodigal means wasteful, not lost; the word comes from the Latin prodigere, to squander. Under the law of the time the younger of two sons could expect a third of the estate and the older a double share, and asking for it while the father lived was like wishing him dead. The son spent it all, a famine came, and the only work he could find was feeding pigs, an unclean animal to a Jewish listener; he was hungry enough to want their pods, the carob husks that were pig food.

Luke sets the story beside two others on the same theme, the lost sheep and the lost coin, all told because the Pharisees complained that Jesus ate with sinners. The father sees the son while he is still a long way off and runs, which no dignified man of the day did, then calls for the best robe, a ring for his hand, sandals for his feet and the calf that had been fattened for a feast. The older brother, coming in from the field to music and dancing, refuses to go in, and the story ends with the father's answer: this brother of yours was dead and is alive, was lost and is found.