Hebrew Life and Times Part 5

2. In earlier chapters we have seen how the Hebrew leaders drew lessons about G.o.d from shepherd life (Psalm 23), and from farm life (Isaiah 5. 1-7). What lesson did a great prophet learn in regard to G.o.d from the experiences of an artisan? (Jeremiah 18. 1-6.)

3. Why was it necessary to build a tower in a Canaanite vineyard, as suggested in Isaiah 5. 2 and Mark 12. 1?

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Amos 5. 19.

CHAPTER IX

KEEPING HOUSE INSTEAD OF CAMPING OUT

Let us suppose that we have been invited to spend a day or two as guests in the home of one of these Hebrew families who have just settled in Canaan and begun to learn the new arts and customs of the land. It is one of the poorer homes. We have slept through the night on our mat spread on the dirt floor of the house, with our cloak over us to keep us warm. Before daylight we are awakened by the older people moving about in the dim light of the burning wick in the saucer of oil. Soon everyone is awake. The mats are rolled up and piled in a corner. In the early dawn one of the older girls takes a jar on her shoulder and goes for water to the spring, which is outside the village half way up the hill.

If we are expecting to be called to breakfast, we shall be disappointed. There is no regular morning meal, although everyone helps himself to a bite or two of bread from the bread basket in the corner of the room. By and by father and the older boys take the ox and the a.s.s from the shed just back of the one-roomed house (we are lucky if the animals were not kept all night in the house itself) and start for the field. And the women also have their day's work before them in the house. First of all, there is a bag of wheat to be ground into flour.

HOME TASKS

In the desert the wheat or barley, when they had it, was merely pounded between two rough stones such as could be picked up anywhere.

The flour, or meal, which was made in this way was not very good.

Here in Canaan, each house had a rude stone hand-mill for grinding grain. It consists of a large lower stone with a saddle-shaped hollow on the upper side. The upper stone is somewhat like a large, very heavy rolling pin. The grain is poured into the hollow and the upper stone is rolled back and forth over it while the flour gradually sifts out over the sides on to the cloth which is spread on the ground underneath the mill. It is a monotonous task, and very often two people work it together, one feeding in the grain and the other turning the millstone. This is pleasanter, as each worker is "company"

for the other. Perhaps our hostess will let us roll the millstone for her while she feeds in the grain and sweeps up the flour from the cloth on the ground.

=Baking bread.=--After the wheat is ground into flour there is bread to be baked. On the plains they do not use much yeast-bread, for this requires an oven for baking and one cannot carry heavy ovens from camp to camp. But in Canaan each family has its oven. It is made of baked clay and looks like a section of tiling standing on end, about two feet high, the clay being about an inch and a half thick. There is a cover of the same material. Sometimes the fire is made on the inside and the loaves of dough plastered on the outside. More often the loaves are placed on a baking tray, let down on the inside of the oven, and the fire built all around and over it outside.

All sorts of fuel are used. Wood is the best, of course, but in that land wood has always been scarce. In the times of the Hebrews, as to-day, dried manure, straw, and all sorts of refuse were used. Jesus speaks of the gra.s.s of the field, "which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven."

=Baking day.=--To-day, while we are visiting, our Hebrew hostess is kneading some dough. She "set it" last night, pouring in some liquid yeast. By and by it is ready for baking. A tray of small loaves about the size of biscuits is placed in the oven, and a great pile of dried gra.s.s placed around the sides and over the cover. By and by the fire is lighted from some coals on the hearth; and in a few moments the house is filled with smoke. We all go out on the street until the oven is heated and the smoke has escaped.

WEAVING WOOL AND FLAX

Another household utensil which Hebrew women learned to use in Canaan was the heavy loom. This consisted of a low horizontal frame, with a device for separating the odd and even threads of the "warp" while a shuttle was drawn through them, carrying the yarn for the "web," or the cross threads. With this kind of a loom it was possible to weave much more rapidly than when one had to insert each thread, plaiting it over and under, by hand. There is, no doubt, one of these looms in the house where we are visiting.

=Making linen out of flax.=--In the desert almost all garments were made of wool, especially in the case of the poorer tribes, who could not afford to buy linen. In those days the use of cotton was probably unknown. Now everyone knows how it feels to wear a flannel shirt on a hot summer day. And one of the things which drew the Hebrew shepherds to Canaan was the hope of raising a little flax on each farm, and spinning it into cool, soft linen garments for the hot summers. So it may be that a part of the work in the house we are visiting to-day is to soak some of the stalks of flax in water, or to beat out from them the long fibers, or to spin and weave some of these fibers into cloth.

PREPARING DINNER

Of course the main business of each day in the household then, as now, is to get dinner ready. There is a light lunch about noon for the women and children. To-day perhaps we have some bread and milk. But as the sun begins to sink in the west we know that before long the men folks will come home hungry. We must have dinner ready for them when they come. If it has been a good year, even poor families in Canaan can have a fairly good meal. There is no meat, unless perhaps a lamb or a kid has been killed, especially for us as guests. But there is the curdled milk, and bread with olive oil and other things which shepherd folk never have. Here's a steaming kettle of beans or lentils. How good they smell! And here are some bunches of raisins and figs, just as sweet and luscious as those which we buy in the fruit stores in America. The figs in our stores may have come from that very country of which we are studying.

=Serving the meal.=--Soon the father and the boys come home. The ox and the a.s.s are fed in the stall behind the house. The mother spreads a cloth on the ground and on it places a small stand about eight inches high, which is their only dining-room table. The pot of beans is placed on this stand, and the bread and other good things on the cloth around it. We all sit down on the ground and begin to eat.

Fingers were made before forks. For the beans, however, we need a spoon, and here are some sh.e.l.ls from the beach that serve admirably for that purpose; and we all dip into the same dish on the little stand. By and by, when all is gone but the liquid, we sop that up with pieces of bread. When every crumb is picked up and eaten, we all lift our eyes to heaven, and the father repeats a prayer of thanksgiving to G.o.d. Dinner is over. The sun has set. It is growing dark, and soon it will be time to go to bed.

STUDY TOPICS

1. Explain the following Scripture pa.s.sages in the light of this chapter:

Judges 16. 13; Deuteronomy 24. 6; Matthew 24. 41.

2. Read Proverbs 31. 10-31 for another picture of daily life in an ancient Hebrew home. What is said in this chapter about the making of beautiful as well as necessary things, and about the doing of kindly deeds?

CHAPTER X

MORAL VICTORIES IN CANAAN

On the whole, Canaan was a good school for the Hebrew shepherds. New arts to learn, new crops to raise, new kinds of cloth to spin and weave, new kinds of food to cook--all this helped to make life more interesting and worth while. But there were other lessons which newcomers might learn which were not so wholesome.

Wine drinking, for example, was a habit which the wisest of the Hebrews always feared. The wine which they made in those foaming wine-presses was, of course, mild and harmless as compared with the distilled liquors of modern times. But even Canaanitish wine could deaden men's consciences and make them more like beasts than men.

"Wine is a mocker," said one of the sages who wrote the book of Proverbs, "strong drink is raging, and he that is deceived thereby is not wise."

IDOLATRY IN CANAAN

Canaanite religion was to a large extent an unwholesome influence. The Canaanites worshiped many G.o.ds. Each village had its Baal, or lord, who had to be bribed with burnt offerings of fat beasts, or (as they thought) the soil would lose its fertility and the crops would fail.

=Dangerous examples.=--These sacrificial rites were carried on in the shrines or "high places," one of which stood outside almost every village and town. They often were accompanied by dances and other performances which were licentious and degrading. The Hebrews, of course, were pledged to worship only Jehovah. Moreover, during these first centuries in Canaan they were very poor, and had little time for the carousals which went on at the "high places" in the name of religion. Corruption usually comes with wealth and luxury. Poverty and hardship are often useful safeguards. But from the beginning these heathen rites were a temptation and a snare in the lives of the Hebrews.

CANAANITE BELIEFS ABOUT THE WORLD

There are certain questions which awaken the curiosity of everyone.

How did this wonderful world come into existence? How is it that you and I happen to be here? How did things in general come to be as they are? Some of these difficult questions are to-day being partly answered by careful students of science. In ancient times there was little or no science, yet in every country there were certain answers to these questions handed down from generation to generation and generally accepted as true.

=Idolatrous stories of creation.=--When the Hebrews entered Canaan they naturally were inclined to accept the ideas of the earlier inhabitants of that country, whose knowledge in regard to many matters was far beyond theirs. The Canaanites in turn had got most of their ideas from the leading civilized nations of that day, the Egyptians, and especially the Babylonians. From these sources had come certain stories about the beginning of things.

Babylonian traders in the inns of Canaan used to tell a story of the creation of the world, and also about a great flood which the G.o.ds once sent upon the earth.

=How the Hebrews retold these stories.=--The best men among the Hebrews knew that these stories were imperfect. Their forty years training in the wilderness had made them wise in the ways of G.o.d. This wisdom enabled them to sift the wheat from the chaff. They retold these stories, omitting the error, and retaining the truth. Thus we come to have the wonderful stories of the creation and the flood as we find them in the Bible.

=How these stories were handed down.=--In the earliest days of the settlement in Canaan very few Hebrews, if any, could read or write.

Possibly Moses understood the Egyptian picture-writing, or the wedge-shaped letters of the Babylonian clay tablets. The Hebrew letters, however, in which the books of the Old Testament afterward were written, were invented by the Phoenicians, and the Phoenicians pa.s.sed on their invention to the old Canaanites.

After the Hebrews came it was not long before ambitious Hebrew boys and girls were staring at the queer marks in the inscriptions which they found here and there, over the gates of Canaanite cities or on the tombs of Canaanite kings. Gradually they learned to spell out syllables, words, and sentences, and then they learned to copy these same letters, so that in time the Hebrews were making inscriptions and books of their own. Among the earliest of these books was one containing the stories of the creation and the flood. They had been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another, until finally they were gathered into a book. This became a part of the book of Genesis in our Bible.

NEW TENDENCIES TO SELFISHNESS IN CANAAN