Herzog

Herzog believes that one of the reasons the family wasn't fed by the neighbor in the parable A knock at Midnight is because of a few reasons:
1. It is considered not right for someone to give a guest rotten food, maybe the bread was old and could not be eaten.
2. There was nothing to eat it with, without anything to eat the bread with, its not worth it.
However, he believes that back then, if it wasn't the family's responsibility's to feed the traveler, it was the villages. The village was supposed to care for them as one family might, which did not happen.
3. Furthermore, in a small village, one of these midnight greetings was not a very private matter, as it was obvious visitors had come.
4. At this time, the visitor was was expected to eat a meal as the host was to serve one, there it was required by both parties that they eat and serve.
5. The host did not do any of these, therefore reflecting badly on his village as a whole. This was not good, as it risked many things happening.
It is not the particular villagers fault that he did not feed them, because technically the whole village should have risen to the occasion, but they did not. So, it is actually the villages fault for not rising to the occasion of feeding these unlucky travelers.
Another reason they didn't feed them is that in the parable, it is not really described what kind of village this is. It could have been a extremely poor village, not a huge city, therefore maybe the peasants living in the village were not able to feed them due to lack of funds! Due to the fact that there was a trial king, there were many of these poor villages around. However, this could not have been the case, and simply that the villagers were greedy. Herzog says that most, if not, all peasants were aware of "all desired things in life" Examples of these are land, wealth, health, love, or influence. Even though the peasants know what they are supposed to do and live by those values, they were in such short supply back then that they were almost completely gone.The peasants knew that their lives were horrible, and they had to deal with it their own way. Perhaps the fact that peasants could even go lower if they did not make enough money was the motivation to not feed the random strangers that showed up.
All these could be reasons why they didn't feed the stranger, and the parable doesn't go into any of them.