[236] Diod. Sic. l. xix. 94. p. 722. ed. Steph.
Strabo (l. xvi. cap. 4. p. 460. ed. Siebenkees.), speaking apparently of another division of the Nebatæi, says they have large oxen, camels, and white sheep.
Various ancient authors mention that extraordinary variety of sheep among the Arabs, the tail of which grew to so great a size as to require to be supported on a wooden carriage, which was dragged after the wearer[237].
[237] The passages of ancient authors relating to this variety, with various confirmations from modern travellers, are quoted with his usual accuracy by Bochart, Hieroz. l. ii. cap. 45. p. 494-497. Ed. Leusden. Lug. Bat. 1692.
We have no reason to believe, that the Phœnicians employed themselves in the breeding and pasture of sheep. The narrow strip of territory, which they occupied at the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean Sea, was in general too densely peopled to be adapted for this purpose. Their activity, intelligence, and enterprize were directed into other channels, and they supplied themselves from foreign countries with wool for their celebrated manufactures.
On the other hand, the Hebrews, who were the immediate neighbors of the Phœnicians, were altogether an agricultural and pastoral people. The history of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, presents to us beautiful images of the kind of life, which still continues with little variation among the Bedouins, or wandering Nomads of Arabia. Not only was David a shepherd boy; but, when he had ascended the throne, he had numerous herds and flocks superintended by distinct officers. “And over the herds that fed in Sharon was Shitrai the Sharonite: and over the herds that were in the valleys was Shaphat the son of Adlai. Over the camels also was Obil the Ishmaelite: and over the asses was Jehdeiah the Meronothite: and over the flocks was Jaziz the Hagarite. All these were the rulers of the substance which was king David’s.” (I. Chron. xxvii. 29-31.) The reader cannot fail to call to mind David’s frequent allusions in the Psalms to those employments, which were no less familiar to his own mind than to the rest of his countrymen, and which supplied to them the most touching comparisons for the expression of their deepest religious convictions. The passage “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod (or crook) and thy staff, they comfort me” (Psalm xxiii. 1, 2, 4.). “He shall feed (i. e. tend) his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young” (Is. xl. ii.). “The pastures are clothed with flocks,” an expression denoting the vast multitudes of sheep, which overspread the mountains and plains (Ps. lxv. 13.). “Be thou diligent,” says Solomon, “to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds. The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of thy field; and thou shalt have goat’s milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance of thy maidens” (Prov. xxvii. 23. 26, 27.). We would particularly refer the reader to the thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet, reprimanding the rulers of Israel under the character of shepherds, makes some allusion to every circumstance connected with the care of sheep and goats. Language very similar is employed by our Saviour in John x. where he speaks of himself as “the good shepherd.” The whole system and history of the sacrifices both before and after the giving of the Mosaic law, might be produced to prove the pastoral habits of this people from the earliest times. The districts of Bashan and Carmel, seem to have attained the highest reputation in respect to the breeding of sheep. Bashan, which lay to the east of the Jordan in the country adjoining that of the Hagarites and Moabites, already mentioned, and Carmel, the mountainous range near the Dead Sea in the south of Judea. In the latter district Nabal kept his flocks, and as he is said to have been “very great,” and we are at the same time informed that “he had 3000 sheep and 1000 goats” (I. Sam. xxv. 2.), these numbers afford us a precise idea of the wealth of a considerable proprietor in this respect. That the “rams of the breed of Bashan,” were particularly celebrated, we learn from Deut. xxxii. 14; and Ezekiel mentions with distinction (ch. xxxix. 18.) a sacrifice “of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.”
It is impossible to conceive a more striking difference in manners and institutions, than that which must have presented itself to the traveller in very ancient times, when on crossing the Isthmus of Suez he passed from the deserts of Arabia and Idumæa to the richly cultivated and populous plains of Egypt. According to the statement already quoted from an ancient historian the wandering tribes of Nabaioth were forbidden by a positive law to till the ground or to construct settled habitations, and they lived on the produce of their flocks, which they continually led from place to place in pursuit of pasture adapted to the season of the year. The Egyptians, on the contrary, appear to have been originally under a prohibition of exactly the opposite kind, since they cultivated the ground with care, excelled most other nations in all the arts of life, and produced the most splendid proofs of their architectural skill, but were not allowed to keep flocks of sheep and goats. That this was the case at the time, when Jacob took his family to sojourn in Egypt, is evident from their application to Pharaoh on arriving in the land of Goshen, which was on the eastern border of Egypt adjoining Palestine and Arabia, to be permitted to remain there on the ground, that from their youth they had been accustomed to tend flocks, whereas “every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians[238].”
[238] Gen. xlvi. 28.—xlvii. 6. Compare Josephus, Ant. ii. 7. 5.
It appears that the Nabatæan law was far more effectual towards the attainment of its object than the Egyptian. For, whereas the pastoral tribes of Arabia have retained their independence and their national peculiarities even to the present day; the Egyptians, on the other hand, became a prey to foreign invasion, and among other changes in their customs we have to notice the introduction of the management of sheep. Even as early as the time of Moses the practice had commenced; for in the account of the effects of the murrain in Exodus ix. 3, we find mention of sheep, and indeed it is remarkable, that the domestic animals there enumerated, viz. horses, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep, are exactly the same, which, as we have before shown, were bred by the ancient Persians[239]. Later historians afford distinct testimony to the same fact. Thus Diodorus Siculus says, that “upon the subsidence of the waters after the inundation of the Nile the flocks were admitted to pasture, and the produce of the soil was so abundant, that the sheep were not only shorn twice, but also brought forth young twice in the year.” Herodotus also plainly supposes, that sheep and goats were bred in Egypt, when he contrasts the inhabitants of the Theban Nome, who worshipped Ammon, with the inhabitants of the Mendesian Nome, who worshipped Mendes. The former, he says, “all abstain from sheep, and sacrifice goats;” the latter “abstain from goats, which they hold in veneration, and sacrifice sheep.” He, however, mentions that the Thebans slew a ram once a year on occasion of a particular ceremony, which he describes (ii. 42. 46.). The testimony of Strabo and Plutarch, though differing in some particulars from that of Herodotus, is to the same general effect. Aristotle (l. c.) mentions, that the sheep of Egypt were larger than those of Greece.
[239] It should be observed, that the Hebrew word translated sheep in Ex. ix. 3. included goats.