Chortasma denotes food or fodder, that which satisfies hunger. While it could be used for animal feed, it also applied to human food, especially basic sustenance. Luke uses it in Acts when describing the famine in Egypt and Canaan during Joseph's time: 'our fathers could find no food.' The term emphasizes the shortage of basic provisions necessary for survival, the kind of famine that forced Jacob's family to go to Egypt seeking grain. The word appears only here in the New Testament, in a context that recalls God's providential preservation of Israel through Joseph's prior enslavement and rise to power.