George A. Barton

“ The face of a toiling ox thou shalt not strike with a goad.
10. My knees go, my feet are unwearied; but a fool has cut into my course.
11. His ass I am; I am harnessed to a mule; a wagon I draw; to seek reeds and fodder I go forth.
12. The life of day before yesterday has departed today.
13. If the husk is not right, the kernel is not right; it will not produce seed.
14. The tall grain thrives, but what do we understand of it? The meager grain thrives, but what do we understand of it?
15. The city whose weapons are not strong—the enemy before its gates shall not be thrust through. ”

“ A prefect who has done this deed—why does not the king call him to account? Behold Malkiel and Tagi—the deed which they have done is this: formerly they took Rabuda and now they seek Jerusalem. If this land belongs to the king, why is it oppressed? Gaza has sided with the king. Behold the land of Gath-Carmel belongs to Tagi and the people of Gath are on guard in Beth-shean, and verily it will happen to us when Labaya and the land of Shechem have been given to the Habiri. Malkiel has written to Tagi and his sons: “Let our two forces grant all their desire to the people of Keilah.” ”

“ For thou art the father of the orphan, the husband of the widow, the brother of the desolate, the garment of the motherless. Let me place thy name in this land higher than all good laws: thou guide without avarice, thou great one free from meanness, who destroyest deceit, who createst truthfulness. Throw the evil to the ground. ”

“ At last Seha and Hor, who were known to Anani, exerted themselves with Waidrang and Hornufi, under the protection of the God of heaven, until they secured my release. Now behold they are coming thither to you. Do you attend to them whatever they may desire. And whatever thing Seha and Hor may desire of you, stand ye before them so that no cause of blame may they find in you. With you is the chastisement which without cause has rested upon us, from the time Hananiah was in Egypt until now. ”

“ Job’s virtues are social; those of Tabu-utul-Bêl consist of acts of worship and loyalty. Tabu-utul-Bêl is smitten, like Job, with a sore disease. To him, as to Job, the providence is inexplicable. He, like Job, charges his god with inscrutable injustice. The chasm which often yawns between experience and moral deserts was as keenly felt by the Babylonian as by the Hebrew. ”

“ The Babylonian story, fascinating poetry though it is, has a conception of deity in strong contrast with the dignity of the Biblical monotheism. The Babylonian gods disagree; they blame each other; they crouch with fear like dogs; they come swarming about the sacrifice like hungry flies! Nothing could more strikingly illustrate the inspiration of the Biblical story than to measure it against the background of this Babylonian poem, which is clearly a variant version of it. ”

“ Do the truth for the sake of the lord of truth ....... Thou reed of a scribe, thou roll of a book, thou palette, thou god Thoth, thou oughtest to keep thyself far removed from injustice. Thou virtuous one, thou shouldst be virtuous; thou virtuous one, thou shouldst be really virtuous. Further, truth is true to eternity. She goes with those who perform her to the region of the dead. He will be laid in the coffin and committed to the earth ”

“ If a slave of the palace or the slave of a workingman takes the daughter of a patrician and she bears children, the owner of the slave shall have no claim for service on the children of the daughter of a patrician. ”

“ In case the ox gored a slave, the owner of the ox was to pay 30 shekels of silver and the ox was to be stoned. If a man opened a pit and a neighbor’s ox or ass fell into it, the digger of the pit must make good the loss to the owner of the animal, and the dead beast became the property of the digger of the pit. If one man’s ox killed the ox of another man, the two men were to sell the live ox and divide the price. If it were known that the ox was wont to gore in the past, and its owner had not kept it in, he was to pay ox for ox, and the dead animal should be his. ”

“ Reverence for the king I greatly exalted,
And respect for the palace I taught the people;
For I knew that with god these things are in favor.
[Pg 393] What is innocent of itself, to god is evil!
35. What in one’s heart is contemptible, to one’s god is good!
Who can understand the thoughts of the gods in heaven?
The counsel of god is full of destruction; who can understand?
Where may human beings learn the ways of god?
He who lives at evening is dead in the morning;
40. Quickly he is troubled; all at once he is oppressed ”

“ Somewhat parallel to the Babylonian laws which permit the imprisonment of a debtor in one’s house is the Hebrew law that a poor debtor might become a slave for six years (Exod. 21:2-6; Deut. 15:7-18) . The Old Testament laws are not quite uniform. In reality it is only that of Deuteronomy which contemplates slavery in consequence of indebtedness; Exodus speaks as though [Pg 324] the slave might not be bought in any way. The important point is that in Babylonia a man might be imprisoned for debt; in Israel he might become a temporary slave. ”

“ Palestine was dependent on heaven for its life, and we cannot doubt that this fact was one of the instruments for the training of the Israelites for their great religious mission. In a land of such variety—a land in which for nine months in the year snow-capped Hermon may be seen from many an elevated point and from the whole stretch of the tropical Jordan valley, where oleanders are blooming and mustard seeds are growing into trees—it was possible to think of God in a way that was at least more difficult in Egypt or in Mesopotamia. ”

“ If the son of a temple-servant or the son of a sacred harlot has identified his father’s house and hated the father who brought him up or the mother who brought him up and goes back to his father’s house, they shall pluck out his eye. ”

“ It is the writer’s hope that, in addition to its use as a book of reference for the elucidation or illustration of individual texts, there may be some who will enjoy reading the whole work, and who will find, as he himself has found, that every scrap of knowledge of ancient life in Bible lands serves to make the Bible story and the lives of Biblical characters so much more real, or puts them or their words in a perspective so much more clear, that the eternal message comes with new power and can be transmitted with greater efficiency. ”

“ Importance of Pottery.—In all parts of the world the making of clay jars and receptacles is one of the earliest arts to be discovered, and Palestine was no exception to the rule. In Palestine such jars were particularly useful, as the water for each family had to be carried from the nearest spring to the house. It was natural that, in a country which had so long a history as Palestine, and over which the influences of so many diverse civilizations swept, there should be a considerable variety in the types of pottery in different periods. ”

“ If unto our lord it seems good to think on this temple to rebuild it, because they will not permit us to rebuild it, look upon those who share thy favor and kindnesses who are here in Egypt—let a letter be sent unto them concerning the temple of Yahu God, to build it in Yeb, the fortress, in the way it was built formerly, and meal-offerings and incense and burnt-offerings let them offer upon the altar of Yahu God in thy name, and we will pray for thee at all times, we and our wives and our sons and the Jews, all who are here. ”

“ Finally, in the reign of Ashur-nasirpal II, 884-860 B. C., a period of foreign conquest was once more inaugurated. This monarch again carried the conquests of his country northward and also to the Mediterranean. (See Part II, p. 360.) Under him Assyria became the best fighting machine in the ancient world—a machine that was run with ruthless cruelty over all conquered peoples. This king set his successors the example of flaying and impaling numbers of conquered peoples, and of boasting of such deeds in his chronicles. ”

“ The early cities of Babylonia were the fortified residences of different tribes, which were frequently at war with one another. One city would subjugate its neighbors for a time and establish a small empire. As long as it continued to rule, a certain degree of homage was paid to its god by all the cities over which it ruled. In prehistoric times there were kingdoms of this sort ruled at one time by Eridu, at another by Erech, and at another by Nippur, for Ea, the god of Eridu, Anu, the god of Erech, and Enlil or Bel, god of Nippur, were ever after worshiped as the supreme gods of Babylonia. ”

“ But if the father during his lifetime has not said unto the children which the slave-girl bore him: “My children,” after the father dies the children of the slave-girl shall not share with the children of the wife. ”

“ Nevertheless, these evidences that the mourners who stood by every ancient tomb provided food for their loved ones to eat in the after-life is eloquent testimony to the fact that even in that age the loving heart found it impossible to believe that the life of its dear ones had been altogether terminated. ”

“ The cities, which I had captured, from his country I cut off and gave them to Mitinti, King of Ashdod, Padi, King of Ekron, and Sillibaal, King of Gaza, and diminished his land. In addition to the former tribute, their yearly tax, I added a tax as the impost of my over-lordship and laid it upon them. As to Hezekiah himself, the fear of the luster of my lordship overcame him and the Urbi and his favorite soldiers, whom he had brought in to strengthen Jerusalem, his capital city, deserted. ”

“ The Babylonians called these towers Ziggurats. As the bricks of these towers decayed, they formed in connection with the city mound a kind of hillock or peak, which varied in accordance with the height of the tower. The ruin of the Ziggurat at Birs Nimrûd, the ancient Borsippa, is one of the most imposing to be seen in ancient Babylonia; it was long thought to be the original of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:9) . It thus came about that no ancient temple of Babylonia, like some of those in Egypt, has remained above ground. Explorers have had to dig to discover antiquities ”

“ It is the purpose of this book to gather into one volume the most valuable information of all sorts that the excavations in Bible lands have afforded, and to put it in such form that it may be of service to the pastor and Sunday-school teacher. An attempt has been made so to present the material that one may not only have the wealth of illumination for Biblical study that exploration has produced, but also that he may possess an outline of the history of the exploration and of the countries sufficient to enable him to place each item in its proper perspective. ”

“ The Babylonian poem is mythological and polytheistic. Its conception of deity is by no means exalted. Its gods love and hate, they scheme and plot, fight and destroy. Marduk, the champion, conquers only after a fierce struggle, which taxes his powers to the utmost. Genesis, on the other hand, reflects the most exalted monotheism. God is so thoroughly the master of all the elements of the universe, that they obey his slightest word. He controls all without effort. ”

“ If a man causes the finger to be pointed at the woman of a god or the wife of a man and cannot prove it, they shall bring him before the judges and they shall brand his forehead.
The nearest parallel to this in the Old Testament is in Deut. 22:13-21, which is really quite a different law, for it applies only to cases where men, when just married, slander their wives by charging them with previous impurity. The Hebrew law provides a method of trial, a punishment for the man, if guilty, and a much severer one for the woman, if the charge is true. ”

“ The Babylonian scribes did not recognize his high-sounding name of Tiglath-pileser, but still called him Pul.
In the first year of his reign Tiglath-pileser IV inaugurated a new policy with reference to conquered peoples. This was the policy of transporting to a distant part of his empire the wealthy and influential members of a conquered nation, and of putting similar exiles from other lands in their place. Individuals so transported would be unable longer to foment rebellion against him. It was a brutal policy, but it was a measure designed to build up a permanent empire. ”

“ In Egypt and Babylonia vistas of history have been opened to view that were undreamed of before exploration began. The same is true for that part of the history of Palestine which antedates the coming of Israel. Information has also been obtained which illumines later portions of the history, and makes the Biblical narrative seem much more vivid. It is now possible to make real to oneself the details of the life of the Biblical heroes, and to understand the problems of their world as formerly one could not do. ”

“ To the end of Egyptian history the kings bore the title, “king of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt.” Even in the Hebrew of the Old Testament the name for Egypt is literally “The two Egypts.” In this long pre-dynastic period the people were gradually emerging from savagery toward civilization. They were solving the initial problems of civilized life. According to Meyer and Breasted the people of Lower Egypt had progressed [Pg 25] far enough before 4200 B. C. to invent a calendar which approximately coincided with the solar year. ”

“ If a woman who keeps a wine-shop does not receive grain as the price of drink, but takes money of greater value, or makes the measure of drink smaller than the measure of grain, that mistress of a wine-shop they shall put on trial and into the water shall throw her. ”

“ At the feet of my lord I prostrate myself seven times and seven times. Behold Malkiel, he has not separated himself from the sons of Labaya and from the sons of Arzaya that they may seek the hand of the king for themselves. ”

“ Herod was a man of great energy, an Edomite by descent, whose ancestors had become Jews by compulsion. While professedly a Jew, he was deeply enamored of the Græco-Roman culture. He wrung taxes from the people in order to beautify Palestine with cities and temples built on Hellenic models. He rebuilt, among other undertakings, the Jewish temple at Jerusalem and the city of Samaria. This last he named Sebaste, the Greek for Augusta, naming it in honor of the Emperor Augustus. ”

“ If a man has stolen ox, or sheep, or ass, or pig, or a boat, either from a god (temple) or a palace, he shall pay thirtyfold. If he is a poor man, he shall restore tenfold. If the thief has nothing to pay, he shall be put to death. ”