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Read Ebook: Hebrew Life and Times by Hunting Harold B Harold Bruce
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Ebook has 2153 lines and 160188 words, and 44 pages
FOREWORD 7
REVIEW AND TEST QUESTIONS 185
FACING PAGE
A DARIC, OR PIECE OF MONEY COINED BY DARIUS, One of the Earliest Specimens of Coined Money 10
ANCIENT HEBREW WEIGHTS FOR BALANCES 10
HEBREW DRY AND LIQUID MEASURES 10
BRONZE NEEDLES AND PINS FROM RUINS OF ANCIENT CANAANITE CITY 16
CANAANITE NURSERY BOTTLES 16
CANAANITE SILVER LADLE 16
CANAANITE FORKS 16
EGYPTIAN PLOWING 44
EGYPTIANS THRESHING AND WINNOWING 44
EGYPTIAN OR HEBREW THRESHING FLOOR 44
AN EGYPTIAN REAPING 48
CANAANITE HOES 48
CANAANITE SICKLE 48
CANAANITE OR HEBREW PLOWSHARES 48
MODERN ARAB WOMAN SPINNING 52
ANCIENT HEBREW DOOR KEY 52
HEBREW NEEDLES OF BONE 52
SMALLER KEY 52
CANAANITE CHISEL 76
CANAANITE FILE 76
VERY ANCIENT CANAANITE FLINT, FOR MAKING STONE KNIVES 76
BRONZE HAMMERHEAD 76
BONE AWL HANDLE 76
A FISH-HOOK 76
CANAANITE WHETSTONES 76
CANAANITE OR HEBREW NAILS 76
REMAINS OF WALLS OF THE CANAANITE CITY, MEGIDDO 134
PART OF CITY WALL AND GATE, SAMARIA 134
CANAANITE PIPE OR FIFE 144
AN EGYPTIAN HARP 144
AN ASSYRIAN UPRIGHT HARP 144
AN ASSYRIAN HORIZONTAL HARP 144
A BABYLONIAN HARP 144
JEWISH HARPS ON COINS OF BAR COCHBA, 132-135 A.D. 144
ASSYRIAN DULCIMER 144
FOREWORD
Most histories have been histories of kings and emperors. The daily life of the common people--their joys and sorrows, their hopes, achievements, and ideals--has been buried in oblivion. The historical narratives of the Bible are, indeed, to a great extent an exception to this rule. They tell us much about the everyday life of peasants and slaves. The Bible's chief heroes were not kings nor nobles. Its supreme Hero was a peasant workingman. But we have not always studied the Bible from this point of view. In this course we shall try to reconstruct for ourselves the story of the Hebrew people as an account of Hebrew shepherds, farmers, and such like: what oppressions they endured; how they were delivered; and above all what ideals of righteousness and truth and mercy they cherished, and how they came to think and feel about God. It makes little difference to us what particular idler at any particular time sat in the palace at Jerusalem sending forth tax-collectors to raise funds for his luxuries. It is of very great interest and concern to us if there were daughters like Ruth in the barley fields of Bethlehem, if shepherds tended their flocks in that same country who were so fine in heart and simple in faith that to them or their children visions of angels might appear telling of a Saviour of the world. On such as these, in this study, let us as far as possible fix our attention.
SHEPHERDS ON THE BORDER OF THE DESERT
Ancient Arabia is the home of that branch of the white race known as the Semitic. Here on the fertile fringes of well-watered land surrounding the great central desert lived the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Canaanites who, before the Hebrews, inhabited Palestine. So little intermixing of races has there been that the Arabs of to-day, like those of the time of Abraham, are Semites.
The Hebrew people are an offshoot of this same Semitic group. They began their career as a tribe of shepherds on the border of the north Arabian desert. The Arab shepherds of to-day, still living in tents and wandering to and fro on the fringes of the settled territory of Palestine, or to the south and west of Bagdad, represent almost perfectly what the wandering Hebrew shepherds used to be.
The Arabs of to-day are armed with rifles, whereas Abraham's warriors cut down their enemies with bronze swords. Otherwise, in customs, superstitions, and even to some extent in language, the modern desert Arabs may stand for the ancient Hebrews in their earliest period. They were nomads with no settled homes. Every rainy season they led out their flocks into the valleys where the fresh green of the new grass was crowding back the desert brown. All through the spring and early summer they went from spring to spring, and from pasture to pasture seeking the greenest and tenderest grass. Then as the dry season came on and the barren waste came creeping back they also worked their way back toward the more settled farm lands, until autumn found them selling their wool to the nearby farmers and townspeople in exchange for wheat and barley and some of the other necessaries of life.
THE SHEPHERD'S DAILY LIFE
Sheep-raising might seem at times a peaceful and even a somewhat monotonous business. The flocks found their own food, grazing in the pastures. Morning and night they had to be watered, the water being drawn from the well and poured into watering troughs. Once or twice a day also the ewes and shegoats had to be milked. When these chores were done it was only necessary to stand guard over the flock and protect them from robbers or wild animals. This, however, had to be done by night as well as by day. On these wide pastures there were no sheepfolds into which the animals could be securely herded as on the settled farms. They slept on the ground, under the open sky, and the shepherds, like those in Bethlehem, in the story of Jesus' birth, had to keep "watch over their flocks by night." So long as no enemies appeared there was in such an occupation plenty of time in which to think and dream of God and man and love and duty. Very often, however, the dreamer's reveries were interrupted, and at such times there was no lack of excitement.
TRIPS TO TOWN
Among the most interesting events in the lives of the shepherds were their trips to town, when they sold some of their wool and bought grain, and linen cloth, and trinkets for the babies, and the things they could not find nor make on the grassy plains. The raw wool was packed in bags and slung over the backs of donkeys. On other donkeys rode two or more of the men of the tribe. Sometimes, perhaps, a small boy was taken along on the donkey's back behind his father to see the sights. And for him the sights must have been rather wonderful--the great thick walls of the town, the massive gates, the houses, row on row, and the people, more of them in one street than in the whole tribe to which he belonged!
The shekel was equal to about an ounce, in our modern avoirdupois system. There was no accurate standard weight anywhere. Honest dealers tried to have weights which corresponded to custom. But it was easy to cheat by having two sets of weights, one for buying and one for selling. So when our shepherds came to town, they had to watch the merchant who bought from them lest he put too heavy a talent weight in the balance with their wool, and too light a shekel-weight in the smaller balance with the silver.
THE HARD SIDE OF SHEPHERD LIFE
The most precious and uncertain thing in the shepherd's life was water. If in the rainy season the rains were heavy, and the wells and brooks did not dry up too soon in the summer, they had plenty of goat's milk for food, and could bring plenty of wool to market in the fall. But if the rains were scant their flocks perished, and actual famine and death stared them in the face. In the dry years many were the tribes that were almost totally wiped out by famine and the diseases that sweep away hungry men. The next year, on the site of their last camp, strangers would find the bones of men and women and little children, whitening by the side of the trail. No wonder they looked upon wells and springs as sacred. Surely, they thought, a god must be the giver of those life-giving waters that bubble up so mysteriously from the crevices in the rock.
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