Matthew 7:9. What man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
See also Luke 11: 11.
The point of this question will be more apparent when it is remembered that the loaves of bread bore some resemblance in general appearance to round, flat atones. A similar allusion may be noticed in the narrative of our Lord’s temptation, where the devil suggests that Jesus change the stones into bread. See Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4.
Some of the bread used in the East at the present time resembles stones in other respects than in mere appearance. Palmer represents the bread, which is daily doled out to the Arabs by the monks of St. Catharine’s on Mount Sinai, as of decidedly stony character. He playfully says: One of these loaves I brought back with me; an eminent geologist, to whom I submitted it, pronounced it ‘a piece of metamorphic rock, containing fragments of quartz embedded in an amorphous paste.’ No decently brought-up ostrich could swallow one without endangering his digestion for the term of his natural life” (The Desert of the Exodus, p. 61).