Hebrew Life and Times | Page 5

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CLOTHING
Another occupation at which the women worked all day long was the
making of clothing for their families. Most of their garments were
made of the wool from their own flocks. First the wool had to be spun
into yarn. They did not even have spinning wheels in those days, so a
spinner took a handful of wool on the end of a stick called a distaff,
which she held in her left hand. With her right hand she hooked into the
wool a spindle. 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