Hebrew Life and Times | Page 7

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.
A SHEPHERD WITH IDEALS
About the time of Hammurabi's reign, if we follow the account related in the book of Genesis, there lived among the nomads on the plains west of the city of Ur a man named Abraham. If Hammurabi ever heard of him, which is improbable, he looked down upon him as of no account. Yet Abraham wielded a greater influence for the future welfare of humanity than all the princes of Babylon. For, discontented with Babylonian life, he was the earliest pioneer in a movement toward a civilization of a different and better type. And the sons of Hammurabi have yet to reckon with Abraham and his ambitions.
=Discontent among the shepherds.=--Many of Abraham's people, no doubt, were discontented in Babylonia. A shepherd's life is monotonous and hard. When they went to market they saw comforts and luxuries on every hand. Yet the money they received from the wool merchants of Ur gave no promise of larger opportunities in life for any shepherd boy. So, at length when Abraham said to them, "Come, let us leave this country," they were ready to answer, "Lead on, and we will follow!" So it came to pass that Abraham's clan set out northwest, toward Haran, in what is now called Mesopotamia, and finally after some years of migration found themselves camping on the hillsides of Canaan, southeast of the Mediterranean Sea.
=Ideals represented in Abraham.=--But it is not as a leader of fortune hunters that Abraham is pictured in the Bible. No doubt he and his clansmen hoped to better their condition. But Abraham was a dreamer and a man of deep religious faith. He believed that he was being guided by his God. And he believed that in accordance with God's plan his descendants in the land to which they had come would become a great nation. Best of all, it seems probable that he dreamed of a nation different from Babylonia. Certainly he is described as a different kind of a man from the typical Babylonian. In some respects, to be sure, judging by our Christian standards, he had serious shortcomings. He did not scruple to deceive a foreigner, nor to treat harshly a slave. His ideas as to the character of God were far below those revealed by Christ. Yet he had the Hebrew gift for home and family life. He was