The construction of the tabernacle and its furniture called into use the skill and workmanship of the best artisans; but, aside from that, there was nothing to tax their talent. During the forty years they lost the arts they had learned in Egypt.
For many years after they entered the Holy Land their mode of living was rude and simple, depending mainly upon the produce of their flocks and herds for sustenance. We have reason to infer that they also drew upon the same source for many articles of clothing.
The forty years of pilgrimage in the wilderness swept into the grave nearly all the vast multitude that left Egypt with Moses. Those who entered the Holy Land had not witnessed the idolatry of Egypt. Moreover, their very existence had depended upon the fall of the manna. Witnessing this daily miracle, a spirit of dependence and submission must have engrafted itself upon this new generation.
The dreary chastisement of the forty years, the plagues that once and again made such havoc, the sad fact that the bones of their fathers were left to whiten in the wilderness, must have produced a terrible impression. The people who came out from Egypt were haughty, unbelieving, rebellious. Their descendants, humbled by chastisement, made dependent by their helplessness, became gentle, submissive, and obedient. We must hence infer that they remained for many years simple in habit and devotional in spirit.
For three hundred and thirty-two years after the death of Joshua, the successor of Moses, the Israelites were governed by judges. During this period the Jews were a nation of farmers, and each farmer was the proprietor of his own farm. The size of the farm allotted to each family may at first have averaged from twenty to fifty acres; and as there were very few servants or laborers, except such hewers of wood and drawers of water as the Gibeonites, each family had to cultivate its own estate. The houses were seldom built apart from each other, like the farm houses of our own country—that would have been too insecure; they were placed together in villages, towns, and cities; and when the place was very much exposed, and of great importance, it was surrounded by a wall.
The lands were adapted chiefly for three kinds of produce—grain, fruit, and pasture. Wheat, millet, barley, and beans were the principal kinds of grain; flax and cotton were also cultivated, and small garden herbs, such as anise, cummin, mint, and rue. (Mat. xxiii: 23.)
The orchards were exceedingly productive. The olive, fig, pomegranate, vine, almond, and apple were all common; and a great part of the time of the Hebrews, in days of peace, must have been spent in cultivating these fruit trees.
As beasts of burden they had the ox, the camel, and the ass; while sheep and goats constituted the staple of their flocks.
Their grain harvest began about the beginning of our April, and lasted for about two months. Summer followed, in June and July, and was the season for gathering the garden fruits. The next two months were still warmer, so that the sheep shearing would have to be overtaken before they set in. During all this time little or no rain falls in Palestine. The country becomes excessively parched, the brooks and springs dry up, and almost the only supply of water is from the pools and reservoirs that have been filled during the winter.
October and November are the seed time. “The former rain” falls now. It often falls with violence, fills the dry torrent-beds, and illustrates our Savior’s figure of the rains descending, and the floods coming and beating upon the houses. (Matt. vii: 25, 27.) December and January are the winter months, when frost and snow are not uncommon; February and March are also cold. “The latter rains” fall at this season. About the end of it, “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes have a good smell.” (Song of Sol., ii: 11, 13.)