DESERT PILGRIMS
According to one of the Hebrew traditions recorded in the book of
Genesis, the earliest home of their ancestors was Ur of the Chaldees.
This was one of the leading cities of ancient Babylonia. It was
situated southwest of the Euphrates River, near the plains which were
the nation's chief grazing grounds. And it is possible that of the
shepherds who brought their sheep to market in Ur some were, indeed,
among the ancestors of the Hebrews.
BABYLONIAN CIVILIZATION
Babylonia is one of the two lands (Egypt being the other) where human
civilization began. This rich alluvial plain, lying between the lower
Tigris and the lower Euphrates Rivers, became the home of a gifted
race which at least in its later history through intermarriage was in
part Semitic and thus related to the Hebrews. Several thousand years
before Christ the people of this land began to till the soil, to
control the floods in the rivers by means of irrigating canals, to
make bricks out of the abundant clay and with them to build houses and
cities. They also invented a system of writing upon clay tablets.
These were baked in the sun after the letters were inscribed.
Commercial records and written laws and histories were thus made
possible and in time a varied literature was created. Whole libraries
of these baked clay tablets have been unearthed and deciphered by
modern investigators.
=Evidences of ancient culture.=--By B.C. 4000 there flourished on the
plains of Babylonia a splendid civilization in many ways similar to
ours to-day. The people raised enormous crops of grain and exported it
by ship and caravan to distant lands. They had developed to a high
point the arts of the weaver, the dyer, the potter, the metal worker,
and the carpenter. They had devised a system of geometry for the
measuring of their wheat fields and city streets. Through astronomy
they had worked out the calendar of days, weeks, months, and years
which with modifications we still use. They had erected magnificent
temples to their gods. From translations of the 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 a good father to his son. And he put a higher
value on personal friendship and kindly family relations than on
property interests. When his herdsmen quarreled with those of his
nephew, Lot, he said to the latter with dignified generosity and
common sense, "Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and
thee ... for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before thee?
Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left
hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou take the right hand,
then I will go to the left." Just what Abraham looked forward to, we,
of course, do not know. Probably his ideas were vague. Yet it seems
that such men as he must have dreamed of a nation great in faith as
well as in material wealth; a nation in which money would not be
considered more important than justice and kindness; in which home
life might be sweet and loving, free from the fear of want or the
blighting influence of greed; and in which the door of opportunity
would always be kept open even for the humblest.
At any rate, some centuries after the time when Abraham is supposed to
have lived, we find a group of shepherd tribes living in and around
Canaan, who believed themselves to be descended from the twelve sons
of Jacob, Abraham's grandson, and among whom there was the tradition
of a divinely guided pilgrimage from Babylonia to Canaan under
Abraham's leadership just as we have described. It is a great thing to
have memories of noble parents and traditions of heroic ancestors.
These the Hebrews had from the very beginning.
STUDY TOPICS
1. Look up in any good Bible dictionary, the articles on Babylonia and
Hammurabi.
2. Read Genesis 12, 15, and 24 and form your own opinion of Abraham as
a husband and father.
3. What was Abraham's most valuable contribution to history?
4. From any map of western Asia, draw a sketch map showing the Nile,
Euphrates, and Tigris Rivers, the Mediterranean Sea, and the general
direction of Abraham's pilgrimage.
5. Where in the Bible is found the sentence spoken by Abraham to Lot,
and quoted in this chapter?