When I am writing scenes of life in ancient Israel, I am always trying to transport myself back in time, to be able to picture the details of the scene as though I was there. Historical research and even reenactment have become a vital part of my work on The Eternal Throne Chronicles. When imagining the textures, tastes, sights and smells of life in ancient Palestine, one cannot escape olive oil.
Golden olive oil flowed like blood through the life and economy of ancient Israel. It was an inseparable part of everyday activities. In Psalm 128 the psalmist says of blessed families: "Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots around your table." The Promised Land was sometimes called 'a land of olive oil' (Deuteronomy 8:8). A Hebrew idiom complimented a good man by calling him "pure olive oil."
An olive tree planted more than fifteen centuries ago
Few people would consider the olive tree beautiful: Its bark is tortuously gnarled; its leaves spiky and dull green. Like most trees, it is at its most beautiful in the spring when white blossoms cover it and then carpet the ground beneath like falling snow (Job 15:33).
Domesticated olive trees were often grown by cutting down a wild tree and grafting a cultivated shoot onto the stump. Fifteen years later the tree would begin to produce harvestable fruit. This may seem like a long time from our fast-paced perspective, but olive trees were frequently planted next to the ancestral family home. That property would stay in the family for hundreds of years--and the tree would continue to produce all of that time. There are ancient olive trees outside Jerusalem that were being harvested before the days of Christ.
The fruit is ready by late September or early October. Women and children would spread cloth around the trunk and use poles to beat the branches, knocking the olives free. The Torah required that any olives that refused to fall be left on the tree; orphans, widows, and other landless poor could come after and glean them for themselves. This harvesting technique was not gentle--new shoots were likely destroyed by the beating. This resulted in a good crop often being followed the next year by a poor crop.
Olives were eaten raw (olives and barley bread may have been a standard breakfast) or preserved by immersion in salt water. The far majority, though, were used for oil. A number of early Iron Age olive presses have been uncovered in excavations--some small enough to put in one's lap, some so large they were undoubtedly turned by pairs of mules or oxen. Larger presses used a rolling stone wheel to crush the olives. Smaller presses operated much like cider presses today, utilizing a lever and a lid to squeeze a basket of olives so that the oil ran out between the gaps in the basket weave.
Olive oil was used for cooking, as a condiment, as fuel for lamps, as a medicine, to make soap, lotion, hair products and for ceremonial purposes. Religious objects, prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with oil. Warriors oiled the leather surfaces of their shields to keep the leather supple and make it slicker so that an enemy's blows would slide easily off. Sandals, belts, and other leather objects would be similarly treated.
In Iron Age Palestine the smell of olive oil must have been everywhere. In the hot, dry climate a person might rub their face, arms, and legs with olive oil twice a day or more. Every household object would pick up this oil from the skin of those who handled it. Wooden handles of tools and implements absorbed it; it rubbed off on clothing and bedding. The scarcity of water meant that people did not bathe as frequently as they do today; an alternative was to rub the hair with oil to keep it healthy and presentable looking.
Olive oil thus became a symbol of wealth, health, and times of plenty. To the people of ancient Israel these were all inseparably connected to God's blessing. It is not surprising, then, that in the Scriptures olive oil is frequently used as a religious symbol and continued to be so right into the early days of Christianity.
For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novels Prophet of Israel and Judge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.
Ancient Hebrew has two primary words for transportation routes: messilah, meaning “highway,” and derekh meaning “road.” From earliest times trade routes linked cities and kingdoms throughout the Middle East. The most important and well-traveled routes were the Via Maris (Way of the Sea) that followed the coast almost from Egypt all the way to Lebanon, and the King’s Road, running up central Palestine, paralleling the Jordan. Maintaining these roads was important for religious, as well as economic, reasons. Since all Israelites worshipped at a central location, travel was constant and required by the Torah. The maintenance of the roads to the Cities of Refuge was even more crucial.
It is very difficult to get a clear picture of where roads and highways were once located, but a great deal of effort has been put into doing so. The Bible provides us with very little information regarding either their locations or description, but does contain a few allusions to their construction and maintenance. Isaiah talks about hills being leveled; Josephus wrote of Solomon paving the roads to Jerusalem with black stone. Archival texts, itineraries and military annals collected from the Biblical period throughout the Middle and Near East allow us to make a reasonably accurate estimate of how far one could travel in a day: about 17 to 23 miles, whether by land or by sea.
To the modern reader, references to “highways” conjures up a very different picture than the Iron Age reality. Late in the 13th century B.C.E. (during the time of the Judges), an Egyptian official was sent on a trip through Palestine. Fortunately for us, he kept a detailed record of his journey—and he spared no details when describing the condition of the roads:
“…the sky is darkened by day [because the road] is overgrown with cypresses and oaks and cedars which reach the heavens. Lions are more numerous than leopards or bears [and it is] surrounded by Bedouin on [every] side of it…Behold, ambushers wait in a ravine 2000 cubits deep, filled with boulders and pebbles…the narrow valley is dangerous with Bedouin hidden under the bushes. Some of them are four or five cubits from their noses to the heel, and fierce of face. Their hearts are not mild, and they do not listen to wheedling. You are alone; there is no messenger with you, no army host behind you. You find no scout, that he might make you a way of crossing. You come to a decision to go forward, although you do not know the road. Shuddering seizes you, [the hair of] your head stands up, and your soul lies in your hand. Your path is filled with boulders and pebbles, without a toe hold for passing by, overgrown with reeds, thorns, brambles and ‘wolf’s-paws’. The ravine is on one side of you, and the mountain rises on the other. You go on jolting, with your chariot on its side, afraid to press your horse too hard.”
When Pharoah Thutmosis III traveled the “highway” sometime between 1490 and 1436 B.C.E. (the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan or shortly thereafter), he reported that parts of it were so narrow that his horses had to walk single file—a singularly dangerous formation for an army. The passage of three and a half centuries didn’t see much improvement: in around 1100 B.C.E. (about the time of the birth of David), Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I wrote that he had to send engineers ahead of his army with copper pickaxes to make the road passable for his chariots. There were portions of the road that proved too rough—charioteers and cavalry were forced to dismount and pick their way through on foot.
When we imagine the travels of people in the time of David, then, we should include in that mental picture a sense of just how difficult travel was. Wealthier people may have ridden on donkeys or used them to carry their burdens. Many sojourners likely took a siesta to avoid traveling in the oppressive heat of the Mediterranean day; night travel also served as an additional way to avoid detection by highwaymen. They crossed the miles on narrow, winding paths, choked with mud after winter rains, heavily rutted throughout the summer. They tried to avoid the deep canyons cut by rivers that raged during rainstorms, as well as the disease-infested swamps, barren deserts and broad badlands of sharp, hardened volcanic stone. Mountain roads took them up steep slops broken by twisting gorges; the ranges could be crossed only at well-traveled passes. They sought safety in numbers, traveling whenever possible in caravans.
While writing The Eternal Throne Chronicles, one of the challenges is that I continually discover new details about the biblical world as the project continues. I gratefully incorporate them into future novels but—alas—there is nothing I can do about those already published. The state of roads in Israel is one of those details. I look forward, though, to traveling those roads with fresh eyes in the near future as I write the first chapters of Hero of Israel.
For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novels Prophet of Israel and Judge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.
Having never traveled to Palestine myself, I have often enjoyed reading descriptions of the land by those who have traveled extensively there. I have compiled a few of my favorites for this blog post. Enjoy!
The Historical Geography of the Holy Land” by George Adam Smith (1966, Harper & Row):
“There is the excellency of Carmel itself: wheat-fields from Esdraelon to the first bare rocks, then thick bush and scrub, young ilex, wild olives and pines, with undergrowth of purple thistles, mallows with blossoms like pelargoniums, stocks of hollyhock, golden broom, honeysuckle and convolvulus; then, between the shoulders of the mountain, olive-groves, their dull green mass banked by the lighter forest trees, and on the flanks broad lawns, where in the shadow of oaks you look far out to sea” (p.80).
“Even in the barest provinces you get many a little picture that lives with you—a chocolate-coloured bank with red poppies against the green of the prickly-pear hedge above it, and a yellow lizard darting across; a river-bed of pink oleanders flush with the plain; a gorge in Judea, where you look up between limestone walls picked out with tufts of grass and black-and-tan goats cropping at them, the blue sky over all, on the edge of the only shadow, a well, a trough, and a solitary herdsman” (p.81).
“In the days of the pride of the land, what a plunge through nature it must have been, when one came down from oaks, through olives sycamores and walnuts, to palms with roots washed by the Lake [of Gennesaret]…Even now one sees proof of that luxuriance in the rich patches of garden upon Gennesaret, in the wealth of flowers on the surrounding slopes, and in the maidenhair fern that springs up wherever a stream gives water and a ruin throws shade” (p.289).
“[In Edom] elow 3000 feet flourish laurels, oleanders and tamarisks…Nubk or thorn and retem or broom abound and, in wadies running into the Arabah and Wadi Hesa, thick bush and reeds. Honeysuckle, caper, and other trailers are also found, and a flowering aloe in Wady Musa…On the limestone the olive, fig, and vine flourish…with the less frequent pomegranate, carob, and mulberry” (p.363).
“[In Damascus] you pass between orchards of figs and apricots. For hedges there are the briar rose, and for a canopy the walnut. Pomegranate blossoms glow through the shade; vine-boughs trail across the briar; a little waterfall breaks on the edge of the road. To the left the river, thirty feet of dark green water with white curls, shoots down a steep, smooth bed…For two miles more you ride between trees, through a village, over a bridge, between high banks of gardens, road and river together, flecked with light” (p.429-30).
“You do not have to be a specially religious man to feel cleansed by Palestine; it is a country where sky and earth seem to meet; the heavens brood so closely over the hills that you feel you could stretch up your hands and just manage to touch the golden gates.
And I wanted the flowers. Unless you have roamed through Palestine in the spring you have never seen wild flowers; like rivers of blood the scarlet anemones tumble down from the highlands that lead to the Jordan; near Nazareth there are fields so thick with crocuses that you would say the hills were draped with tapestries of blue; and only a few miles from Jerusalem there are quiet places where the little violet sword-lily—gladiolus atroviolaceus—grows so freely that you can pick an armful of it in a couple of minutes.
And always, as you walk, you remember that on these same flowers the shadow of Jesus might have fallen, the poppy that you pluck for your buttonhole may be a direct descendant of some flower that His hands had touched as He wandered through the cornfields. Even the anemones, that riot so profusely throughout the land, may be the ‘lilies of the field’ which He made to shine so brightly in the loveliest of the parables. So, at least, maintain the majority of the scholars, and they quote the Song of Solomon to prove their contention—“My love is like a lily among the thorns.” For the tallest of the anemones, which are indeed of the lily family, are always to be found among the thorn bushes, struggling towards the light.”
For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novels Prophet of Israel and Judge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.
Sizeable chapters and even entire books have been written on the subject of the agricultural practices of the Israelites in Bible times. This article just skims the surface, but I have tried to include details that I felt readers might find interesting or particularly informative.
It is extremely difficult for modern people to comprehend what agriculture was to the ancients—it was, as the word itself suggests, a culture that influenced every aspect of their lives. Israelites felt a connection to the land that most of us will never experience. Common people came to be known as amha’arets, or “people of the land” because their identities were so inextricably tied up with the earth upon which they walked.
They were, at least prior to the period of the monarchy, self-sufficient farmers; each family was an economically independent unit. That meant that when they sat down to a meal of mutton, they were eating an animal that their hands had slaughtered and dressed, but also one that they had watched be born (even helped to deliver), carried as a lamb, bandaged and shorn. During the winter, they had hand fed it food that they had grown, using tools they had made from trees, stones, and ore that came from the land that God had given them and that had been in their family for hundreds of generations—land that had never belonged to anyone else and, from their perspective, never would. The knife they used to slaughter, the staff they leaned upon and the clothes they wore were all made by their own hands from materials they had harvested.
This little corner of the earth has always been remarkably productive. Somewhere between 1991 and 1786 B.C.E., an Egyptian scribe wrote the document now called “TheStory of Si-nuhe” that described Palestine this way: “It was a good land…Figs were in it, and grapes. It had more wine than water. Plentiful was its honey, abundant its olives. Every [kind of] fruit was on its trees. Barley was there, and emmer. There was no limit to any [kind of] cattle.”
Unlike Egypt that depended on the flooding of the Nile, or Mesopotamia that depended on irrigation, the people of Israel lived and died by rainfall. Droughts were deadly serious events—lengthy ones completely destroyed the economy. They were also one of the primary bases for war. During times of drought, farmers who lived in the drier areas would retreat to parts of the country that received more rainfall or heavier dew, or was nearer to some more permanent water source. The land they left, barren as it was, was still better than the land inhabited by the desert nomads to the east. They quickly moved in to take advantage of it. When the rains finally came and the farmers wanted to return to their ancestral lands, they had to fight to get it back.
Some of what we know about Israelite farming is based on a broken piece of pottery upon which is scratched a little poem—probably some sort of mnemonic writing exercise done by a child. It is called the Gezer Calendar, and it says:
The two months are olive harvest
The two months are planting grain
The two months are late planting
The month is hoeing up of flax,
The month is barley harvest,
The month is harvest and festivity
The two months are vine tending
The month is summer fruit
Most of the land was hilly and rocky, and farmers were obliged to cut the hillsides into narrow terraces and to fell whatever trees had been spared from the blacksmith’s forge and the carpenter’s saw. Family farms were small because they required constant tending and because it was easier to supply water to a smaller area during the dry summer months. The early rain mentioned in the Calendar (October and November), softened the ground, which had become rock-hard during the summer, for plowing. Such plowing was frequently unpleasant work, since it was done during the cold torrential rain of late fall. The rain was so torrential, in fact, that there was constant danger of flash floods and serious erosion of the shallow soil in the hill country.
By spring the “latter rain” came, concluding the rainy season and heralding the beginning of the harvest. The writer of the Gezer Calendar mentions harvest and festivity in one phrase because the two were one and the same. For a people whose survival depended on a successful harvest (and who had subsisted on stored food for many months), bringing in the crops was the most exciting time of the year.
But some crops remained in the ground through the summer, and it was these that were most at risk from the changeable weather of the Levant. Summer brought hot winds (siroccos) from the desert, parching the land and carrying plagues of locusts. The wind might blow nonstop for up to seven days, raising the temperature to as much as 20 degrees above average. The only moisture the crops would get for several months was the water that prudent farmers had managed to store in underground cisterns, and the heavy dews created by cold air from Mount Hermon’s snowy cap meeting the warmer air from the eastern desert.
As the grain crops (wheat and barley) were harvested with plowshares and sickles (iron ones, during the time of King David), they were carried to threshing floors, almost always located atop a high hill. There the poor whipped them with willow switches to separate the grain kernels from the stalks. In later times, oxen were allowed to tread over them; their sharp hooves did the work of the willow switches. Later still, the oxen would drag sledges behind them—an indication of the increasing volume of grain being harvested.
Once the grains had been separated, the farmers stepped in with wood-tined pitchforks and began to toss the harvest into the air. The hot eastern wind blew over the hills and carried away the lightest parts—the chaff. The fruit fell back to the threshing floor where it could be collected and placed into storehouses.
As touched on by the Gezer Calendar, the primary crops were grain, wine, and olive oil. Other standards included millet, peas, lentils, melons, cucumbers, beans, mallow, sorrel, artichokes, figs, pomegranates and dates. These latter three, along with wild honey, were the only sources of sugar. Flax was grown in the south to make into linen, and many Israelite mothers no doubt had a small herb garden somewhere near the family home.
The thirteenth tribe, the tribe of Levi who served as the religious leaders of the people, had no farmland allocated to them (although they did gain land of their own as time progressed). They were supported by the tithe, by which every family donated one-tenth of its harvest to care for the needs of the Levites and their families. The Levites, in turn, donated one-tenth of this to the priestly families among them. Additionally, every time a family began to harvest a crop (whether wheat, grapes, or even the herbs in their little family garden), they were required by the Torah to donate the “firstfruits” of that harvest to Jehovah by offering it to the priests at the Temple. The amount was not specified; it seems that was determined by the giver’s appreciation and generosity.
One final aspect bears mentioning: every seven years, the Torah ordered, they were not to plant any crops. Instead they were to rely on Jehovah to make their stored foodstuffs last until the year was over. In addition to being a powerful lesson in reliance on Jehovah for their sustenance, this practice also allowed the soil to recuperate, and similar practices are employed by many farmers today.
For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novelsProphet of Israel andJudge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.
The Calendar of Ancient Israel
By Timothy S. Wilkinson
www.timothywilkinson.net
A book could be written describing the characteristics of the agricultural year in Iron Age Palestine. The Israelites, like their neighbor nations, were agrarian and marked the passing of time by weather, harvest, and planting. The famous “Gezer Calendar” (believed by most experts to be a schoolboy’s writing exercise) is a small limestone tablet found in the city of Gezer in 1908. It provides us with some information regarding the rituals of the year. In combination with information from the Bible and other sources, we can get an overall picture of the passing of the seasons.
Abib (March/April)
The name of the month means “green ears,” referring to the ripe but soft heads of barley that marked the start of the agricultural year. It was cool still (50-85° F) and people would have lit fires at night for warmth. The Bible calls this the “latter rains,” when an inch or so of precipitation (snow in the hills) ripened the grain for harvest. Snowmelt and this rain brought the Jordan and other rives to flood stage.
Lentils are harvested. Flax was harvested and the stalks lain on rooftops or in streambeds where moisture would rot the stems and release the inner fibers that were harvested to make linen. In Philistia and Sharon, along the coastal plain, the barley harvest begins. Herb gardens, grown within the courtyards of houses, are also harvested. Calves frolic in the new grass and the smell of lanolin is everywhere as sheep are shorn. Storax trees explode in clusters of white blossoms.
Abib was a month of celebrations: the Passover, the Festival of Unfermented Cakes, and the offering of the firstfruits of the barley harvest.
Ziv (April/May)
Ziv means “brightness”—not referring to the light but to the blossoms and flowers that blanketed the country. Rainfall drops to three-quarters of an inch as the dry season begins; plants rely on the dew for their survival. Morning clouds burn off to clear skies and 60-90° temperatures.
The barley harvest spreads into the terraced hills, and sickles flash among the wheat fields in the valleys. The hills of Galilee are ablaze with flowers: lily, anemone, gladiolus, hyacinths, tulips, irises. Farmers plant millet and women harvest the cucumbers grown in courtyards or near the town walls. When fig trees begin to get their leaves, everyone knows that summer is near.
Sivan (May/June)
The dry season arrives in force. The quarter-of-an-inch of rain that falls this month will be the last until the end of summer. A hot, dry southeasterly wind spreads a fine layer of dust over everything and temperatures climb to 70-90°.
Spring is over. Under the heat of the sun harvesters bring in the wheat and on hills all around the land it is winnowed and threshed, filling the air with blowing chaff. Figs are “nipped” (pierced with a sharp instrument to speed ripening) and leaves are plucked from grapevines to expose the fruit to direct sunlight.
Tammuz (June/July)
Weeks of clear skies keep temperatures between 70 and 90°; the heavy dews of morning are all the moisture that plants get. The hillsides turn a reddish-brown as vegetation and springs dry up. Millet and lentils are harvested and the first grapes are tasted to correctly schedule the vintage.
Ab (July/August)
Heat soars to 95° Fahrenheit. No rain falls. The early grape harvest and the harvest of summer fruits yield refreshing fruit juices that replace scarce water at mealtimes.
Elul (August/September)
At last, summer draws to a close, although temperatures remain between 70 and 90° and heavy dews every morning remind the people that no rain will fall this month, either. Dates and figs are harvested. The general vintage gets underway and, by the end of the month, the new wine is flowing.
Ethanim (September/October)
Summer is ending; by mid-month it is autumn and preparations are underway for winter. Approximately half an inch of rain softens the ground for plowing even while parching, oppressive winds blow in from the southeast. Temperatures drop to 65-88°.
Long-handled hooks are used to shake the carob pods from the trees; these are used as animal food and for making sweetmeats. Harvesting is complete, and it is a month of festivals. On the first day of the month a trumpet blast commemorates Noah’s first look out the windows of the Ark following the Great Flood. The most sacred day of the year, the annual Day of Atonement, is celebrated on the 10th, closely followed by the week-long Festival of Booths, where Israelites remember their nomadic roots by living in tents on their rooftops.
Heshvan (October/November)
“Heshvan” means “yield.” The rainy season begins with about an inch falling during the month, and temperatures drop considerably to the 55-75° range. Plowing continues, and barley and wheat are sown in the fields. In regions where olive trees flourish, harvesters beat the limbs and collect the fallen fruit, then pressed to extract their oil. (Alternatively, the crushed olives can be thrown into water and the oil skimmed off of the top).
As the weather turns more harsh, shepherds bring their flocks in from the fields to the cover of barns and pens. Delicate saffron is harvested by hand and the fragile threads are pressed into cakes for storage.
Chislev (November/December)
Winter arrives in earnest. Two to three inches of cold rain falls and people burn charcoal in braziers indoors for heat. Snow dusts the mountains and mornings bring a thick layer of frost to the highlands. Highs do not reach 70° even on the warmest days, and it may drop to below 50° at night.
By the end of the month, though, the land begins to turn green with sprouting grasses. In valleys and lowlands, egumes such as peas and chickpeas are sown, and people traditionally enjoy spring dishes made from freshly harvested vegetables.
Tebeth (December/January)
The name of this month evokes the season; “Tebeth” means “to sink down” as one does in muddy ground. Four inches or more of rain flood the land and temperatures continue to fall (48-68°). The hills are frosty every morning and the snow begins to make its way to lower elevations; it is not uncommon for Jerusalem to see flurries. Mountain passes may be temporarily blocked by snow and floods, and poorly constructed homes are in danger of being washed away.
Unlike other parts of the world, winter in Israel sees the greening of the land as grains and the earliest flowers of spring emerge.
Shebat (January/February)
Shebat is the middle of winter, and the rain slackens somewhat to around two inches. Temperatures rise; though nights may drop as low as 45°, days reach the low seventies. Toward the end of the month as the weather warms, almond trees brighten the landscape with explosions of pink and white blossoms. Fig trees bud, and the fields are alive with frolicking lambs.
Adar (February/March)
At last, spring arrives. Thunder- and hailstorms (called the “latter rains” in Scripture) drench most of the land with two more inches of precipitation, providing the moisture and nutrition for plants to mature. Temperatures moderate to between 50 and 70°.
The land is painted with all the color’s of nature’s pallete. The tiny, red flower clusters of carob trees and the bright red blossoms of pomegranates are visible on distant hills like flame. In the lowlands, terebinth trees display their reddish-purple flowers alongside the bright green of their new leaves. In courtyards and small plots outside the city walls women plant cucumbers, lettuce, endive, coriander, horehound, tansy, horseradish, cumin, garlic, hyssop, mint, and rue.
Life in ancient Israel was inextricably connected to the land and the seasons. The pagan nations’ religious rituals and beliefs were almost all based on elements of planting, harvest, weather, and reproductive cycles.
Understanding life in Bible times is impossible without some understanding of these seasonal changes. It is an aspect of life that most people in Western cultures have lost touch with—to our detriment, in the opinion of the author.
For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novelsProphet of Israel andJudge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.
