Hebrew Life and Times | Page 5

This was a round, pointed piece of wood about ten inches long with a hook at the pointed end, and with a small piece of stone fastened to the other to give momentum in the spinning. With deft fingers the spinner kept this spindle whirling and at the same time kept working the wool down into the thread of yarn which she was making. As the thread lengthened she wound it around the spindle, until the wool on the distaff was all gone and she had a great ball of yarn.
=Weaving=.--The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians were experts in the art of weaving. They had large looms similar to ours, and wove on them beautiful fabrics of linen and wool. The shepherds on the plains no doubt bought these fabrics when they could afford them. But they could not carry these heavy looms around with them from one camp to another, and much of the time their own women had to weave whatever cloth they had. The primitive loom they used was made by driving two sticks into the ground, and stretching a row of threads between them, and then tediously weaving the cross threads in and out, a thread at a time, until a yard or so of cloth was finished. Slow work this was, and many a long day passed before enough cloth could be woven to make a coat for a man or even a boy.
They managed, however, to get along without nearly so much clothing as we think necessary. The little children, through warm days of summer, played around the tents almost naked. And the grown people dressed very simply. There were only two garments for either men or women. They wore a long shirt reaching to the knees. This was made by doubling over a strip of cloth, sewing the sides, and cutting out holes for arms and neck. The outer garment was a sort of coat, open in front, and gathered about the waist with leather belt. This outer garment was often thrown aside when the wearer was working. It was worn in cold weather, however, and was often the poor man's only blanket at night. Women's garments were probably a little longer than those of men, but in other respects the same. As for the feet, they mostly went barefoot. But on long journeys over rough ground they wore sandals of wood or roughly shaped shoes of sheepskin. On the head for a protection against sun and wind they, like the modern Arab, probably wore a sort of large scarf gathered around the neck.
=Making the garments.=--All these garments were cut and sewed by the women. They had no sewing machines to work with, not even fine steel needles like ours. They used large, coarse needles made of bronze or, very often, of splinters of bone sharpened at one end, with a hole drilled through the other. With such rough tools, and all this work to be done, we can be sure that the wives and daughters of Hebrew shepherds did not lack for something to do.
FAMILY LIFE
Among ancient Hebrews family life, from the very beginning, was often sweet, kindly, and beautiful. This is shown by the many stories in the early books of the Old Testament which reflect disapproval of unbrotherly conduct, or, which hold up kindness and loyalty in family life as a beautiful and praiseworthy 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