The Syrian Christ

by Abraham Mitrie Rihbany

I often wonder whether it is because the memories of youth grow more romantic with the passing of the years, that the agricultural life of the Orient seems to me more poetical than that of the Occident, or whether it really is more enchanting. It seems to me that tools possess more charms than machinery does, and handwork of the more instinctive type is much more interesting than the carefully studied and designed task. The life of the American farmer is too intelligent to be romantic. There is so much in him of the agricultural college and the farm journal. No awful mysteries haunt his scientifically treated fields. Insect powders and the daily weather report and the market "quotations" arm him with forethought, and make of him a speculating merchant. The constant improvements of agricultural implements place a wide and ever-widening gulf between the American farmer and his forefathers.

Not so with the Syrian farmer. To this man life is not an evolution, but an inheritance. If the men who tilled Abraham's fields in Hebron should rise from the dead to-day, they would find that the four thousand years of their absence from the earth had effected no essential changes in the methods and means of farming in the "land of promise." They would lay their hand to the plough and proceed to perform their daily tasks, as though nothing had happened. A very few European ploughs are being tried in certain sections of Syria, but that is all.

The Syrian sower goes forth to sow with his long, primitive plough on his right shoulder, the yoke hanging from the left shoulder and the leather bag of seed strapped to his back. In his left hand he carries his long, hard, strong goad—the same as the one with which "Shamgar, son of Anath, slew of the Philistines six hundred men." Through this simple instrument he keeps in touch with his pair of oxen, or cows, which pace leisurely before him. The plough, which consists of two wooden beams joined together, measures about twelve feet in length. The quantity of wood in the Syrian plough makes plain the meaning of the passage in the story of the prophet Elisha, son of Shaphat. In the nineteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings, the nineteenth verse, we have the account of Elijah's first meeting with his successor Elisha, when he was ploughing in the field, "with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he with the twelfth." So, when Elijah cast his mantle upon him, the son of Shaphat "took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him."

At the forward end the long plough is hooked to the yoke, and at the rear end joined to a cross-piece, whose upper extremity forms the cabousa (handle); and the lower holds the iron ploughshare. When he puts "his hand to the plough," he simply grasps the cabousa with his right hand while he wields the goad with his left. The uneven, stony ground and the lightness of the plough compel him to maintain a firm hold on it, and to look ever forward. In the ninth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, the sixty-second verse, Jesus makes excellent use of this point when he says, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

The parable of the sower, in the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, is a faithful picture of the environment of the farmer in the region of Galilee and Mount Lebanon. That primitive farmer does not sow his seed by means of "drills" in symmetrical rows. Out of his leathern seed bag he takes generous handfuls of grain and, "in the name of the bounteous God," he casts the blessed seed into the soil, and then "covers it" by ploughing. The bridle paths which wind through the fields, and the still narrower footpaths which the wayfarers make through those fields every season in taking "short cuts" on their weary journeys, provide ample chance for "some seeds" to fall "by the wayside," and be devoured by the fowls of the air. In certain sections of the country where I was brought up the "stony places" are the rule and the "good ground" the exception. So the seeds which "fell upon stony places" came up quickly "because they had no deepness of earth; and when the sun was up, they were scorched." There is another reason for this than the shallowness of the soil. The almost utter lack of rain in that country from April to October leaves no chance for seed cast into shallow soil to live long.

"And some fell among the thorns; and the thorns sprang up, and choked them." For this the Syrian farmer himself is largely to blame. He preserves the thorns for cattle feed and for fuel. Certain kinds of thorns, especially bellan, are used as fuel for summer cooking, which is done out of doors, and for baking at the tennûr.[[4]] Other thorns are harvested, after the barley and wheat harvests, threshed, and stored for winter feed. In the sixth verse of the seventh chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes the writer says, "For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool." The threshing of thorns is referred to in the Book of Judges,[[5]] where it says, "When the Lord hath delivered Zabah and Zalmunna into mine hand, then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers." But here again the English translation fails to give an exact rendering of the text, although the marginal note replaces the word "tears" by the word "thresh." The Arabic version says, "I will thresh your flesh with the thorns and briers of the wilderness with the threshing boards," which is an exact picture of the treading of the oxen as they drag the threshing board over the thorns upon the threshing floor.

When a boy it was a great delight to me to wander in the wheatfields when the grain had just passed the "milk stage" and had begun to mature and harden. It is then called fereek, and is delicious to eat, either raw or roasted. I could subsist a whole day by plucking the heads of wheat, rubbing them in my hand and eating the fat, soft, fragrant grain. From time immemorial wayfarers in the East have been allowed to trespass in this manner, provided they carried no more grain away than that which they ate. In the twenty-fifth verse of the twenty-third chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy the reading of the Revised Version is, "When thou comest into thy neighbor's standing corn, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor's standing corn." It was the indulgence in this practice by the disciples, on the Sabbath, which formed the basis of the Pharisees' protest to Jesus to the effect that his followers dishonored the sacred day. In the sixth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, the first verse, the Revised Version rendering of the text is, "Now it came to pass on a sabbath, that he was going through the grainfields and his disciples plucked the ears, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands." The protest of the guardians of Israel's law, and Jesus' answer in the verses which follow, give us another revelation of the Master's central thought and motive as a religious teacher; namely, that man's legitimate needs take precedence of all ecclesiastical formalities.

I do not believe any account of agricultural life in Syria should omit mentioning the plague which above all others strikes terror into the heart of the Eastern tiller of the soil. In his prayer at the dedication of the temple, Solomon mentions "blasting, mildew, locust, and caterpillar."[[6]] Of all those unwelcome visitors, the locusts are the most abhorred. I will give my impression of this pest in a quotation from my autobiography:[[7]]

One of the never-to-be-forgotten phenomena of my early years, a spectacle which the most extravagantly imaginative American mind cannot picture, was the coming of the locusts into our part of the country. If my memory serves me well, I was about twelve years old when my father and all his men, together with all the male population over fifteen, were impressed by the governor of our district to fight the devastating hosts of Oriental locusts. No one who has not seen such a spectacle and the desolation those winged creatures leave behind them can appreciate in the least degree the force of the saying of "The Lord God of the Hebrews" to Pharaoh, "If thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to-morrow I will bring the locusts into thy coasts."[[8]] For a few weeks before they deluged our district the news came with the caravans that the locusts were sweeping toward our region from the "land of the south." We youngsters did not know why our elders were so terror-stricken when they heard of it, until the scourge had come and gone.

It was a few weeks before the time of the harvest when the clouds of locusts enveloped our community. They hid the sun with their greenish-yellow wings, covered the trees and the ground, the walls and roofs of the houses, and dashed in our faces like flakes of snow driven by the wind. The utter hopelessness of the task which confronted our people and seemed to unite all classes in despair, assumed in my sight a very comic aspect, and converted the calamity into a holiday. It was so amusing to me to see our sedate aristocrats and old men and women join the youth and the common laborers in shouting, beating on tin cans, firing muskets, setting brush on fire, striking at the cursed insects with their hands, stamping them with their feet, and praying God to send "a strong wind" to drive the enemy of man away. Every mutekellif (payer of the toll-tax) had to fight the locusts for so many days or hire a substitute,