Hebrew Life and Times - Harold B. Hunting

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thing. Take the story of Joseph. It begins indeed with an unpleasant picture of an unhappy and unloving family of shepherd brothers. We read of a father's partiality toward the petted favorite, of a spoiled and conceited boy, of the bitter jealousy of the other brothers, and finally of a crime in which they showed no mercy when they sold their hated rival to a caravan of traders to be taken away, it might be, forever. But the story goes on to tell how that same lad, years later, grown to manhood and risen to a position of extraordinary power and influence in the great kingdom of Egypt, not only saved from death by starvation his family, including those same brothers who had wronged him, but even effected a complete reconciliation with them and nobly forgave them.

      Now, the most notable facts in connection with this story are those "between the lines." It is not merely that such and such events are said to have happened, but that for generations, perhaps centuries, Hebrew fathers and mothers kept the story of these events alive, telling it over and over again to their children. On numberless days, no doubt, in this shepherd life there were bickering and angry words among the children by the spring or at meal time, or in their games. The older brothers were tyrannical toward the younger, or one or another cherished black and unforgiving looks toward a brother or sister who he thought had done him a wrong. And many a time after such a day the old father would gather all the family together in the evening around the camp fire in front of the tent and would begin to tell the story of Joseph. And as the tale went on, with its thrilling episodes, and its touches of pathos leading up at last to the whole-souled generosity and the sweet human tenderness of Joseph, many a little heart softened, and in the darkness many a little brown hand sought a brother's hand in loving reconciliation.

      The tribe as a larger family.—To some extent the desert shepherds of all ages have carried this family spirit into the relations between members of the tribe as a whole. Since they had to stand together for protection, quarrels between tribesmen were discouraged. Moreover, they were not separated into classes by difference of wealth. There were some who had larger flocks than others, but for the most part all members of the tribe were equal. Even from among the slaves who were captured now and then in war there were some who rose to positions of honor. There were no kings nor princes; the chief of the tribe held his position by virtue of his long experience and practical wisdom. The distinction between close blood relationship and the brotherhood of membership in the same tribe was not sharply drawn; all were brothers. This is true to-day of all these desert tribes.

      Only a tribe, however, with an unusual capacity for brotherly affection and for making social life sweet and harmonious could have produced a Joseph or the story of Joseph, or would have preserved that story in oral form through the centuries until it could be written down. It is worth while looking into the later history of such a tribe, and seeing what happened to them and how they thought and acted, and what they contributed to the life of the world.

      Study Topics

      1. Get some cotton at a drug store, and see if you can spin some cotton thread, with a homemade spindle, such as is described in this chapter.

      2. Who had the harder work among the Hebrew shepherds, the women or the men?

      3. Find other stories in Genesis besides the story of Joseph which show how the Hebrews felt in regard to the relations between brothers.

      4. Compare the home life in America with the home life of the Hebrews. Are American brothers and sisters growing more quarrelsome or more kindly and loving toward one another?

      5. In what way do the oral traditions of a people throw light on the ideals and relationships they most valued?

      6. Compare the dietary available to Americans with that of the ancient Hebrews.

       Table of Contents

      DESERT PILGRIMS

      According to one of the Hebrew traditions recorded in the book of Genesis, the earliest home of their ancestors was Ur of the Chaldees. This was one of the leading cities of ancient Babylonia. It was situated southwest of the Euphrates River, near the plains which were the nation's chief grazing grounds. And it is possible that of the shepherds who brought their sheep to market in Ur some were, indeed, among the ancestors of the Hebrews.

      Babylonian Civilization

      Babylonia is one of the two lands (Egypt being the other) where human civilization began. This rich alluvial plain, lying between the lower Tigris and the lower Euphrates Rivers, became the home of a gifted race which at least in its later history through intermarriage was in part Semitic and thus related to the Hebrews. Several thousand years before Christ the people of this land began to till the soil, to control the floods in the rivers by means of irrigating canals, to make bricks out of the abundant clay and with them to build houses and cities. They also invented a system of writing upon clay tablets. These were baked in the sun after the letters were inscribed. Commercial records and written laws and histories were thus made possible and in time a varied literature was created. Whole libraries of these baked clay tablets have been unearthed and deciphered by modern investigators.

      Evidences of ancient culture.—By B.C. 4000 there flourished on the plains of Babylonia a splendid civilization in many ways similar to ours to-day. The people raised enormous crops of grain and exported it by ship and caravan to distant lands. They had developed to a high point the arts of the weaver, the dyer, the potter, the metal worker, and the carpenter. They had devised a system of geometry for the measuring of their wheat fields and city streets. Through astronomy they had worked out the calendar of days, weeks, months, and years which with modifications we still use. They had erected magnificent temples to their gods. From translations of the inscriptions on their clay tablets we can gain a clear knowledge of their life and customs. Here, for example, is a translation of part of a letter from a son to a father asking for more money: "My father, you said, 'When I shall go to Dur-Ammi-Zaduga, I will send you a sheep and five minas of silver.' But you have not sent. Let my father send and let not my heart be vexed. … To the gods Shamash and Marduk I pray for my father." If we forget the outlandish-sounding names, how natural this seems! How like our boys was this boy who wrote the queer-looking characters on this bit of clay which we may hold in our hand!

      The Faults of the Babylonian Civilization

      With all their gifts and achievements there were certain great evils in Babylonian life. For one thing they were inclined to be greedy and covetous. They lived on a soil almost incredibly rich, and they were constantly increasing their wealth by trade. Babylonian merchants or their agents were to be found in almost every city and town of western Asia and perhaps even as far east as China. Of the vast mass of their written records which have been collected in our museums, the majority are business documents and records of contracts. Many of them tell the story of hard bargains. Professor Maspero declares that these records "reveal to us a people greedy of gain, exacting, and almost exclusively absorbed by material concerns."

      Slavery.—Moreover, the wealth of the nation was not fairly distributed but was more and more in the hands of the favored few, the great nobles, and their friends. The fields were not tilled by independent farmers. There were, instead, a few great estates which were rented out to tenants. The actual work, both on the fields and in the towns, was more and more performed by slaves. Some of these were captives who had been taken in war. Others were native Babylonians who had been sold into slavery for debt. So it had come about that Babylonian society had set like plaster into a hard mold with the king and the wealthy nobles on top and the poor peasants and slaves below. This state of things was fastened all the more firmly on the people by strong kings such as Hammurabi, who lived about B.C. 2000 and who unified the country under a powerful central government with his own city, Babylon, as the capital.

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