a little longer than
those of men, but in other respects the same. As for the feet, they
mostly went barefoot. But on long journeys over rough ground they wore
sandals of wood or roughly shaped shoes of sheepskin. On the head for
a protection against sun and wind they, like the modern Arab, probably
wore a sort of large scarf gathered around the neck.

=Making the garments.=--All these garments were cut and sewed by the
women. They had no sewing machines to work with, not even fine steel
needles like ours. They used large, coarse needles made of bronze or,
very often, of splinters of bone sharpened at one end, with a hole
drilled through the other. With such rough tools, and all this work to
be done, we can be sure that the wives and daughters of Hebrew
shepherds did not lack for something to do.

FAMILY LIFE

Among ancient Hebrews family life, from the very beginning, was often
sweet, kindly, and beautiful. This is shown by the many stories in the
early books of the Old Testament which reflect disapproval of
unbrotherly conduct, or, which hold up kindness and loyalty in family
life as a beautiful and praiseworthy thing. Take the story of Joseph.
It begins indeed with an unpleasant picture of an unhappy and unloving
family of shepherd brothers. We read of a father's partiality toward
the petted favorite, of a spoiled and conceited boy, of the bitter
jealousy of the other brothers, and finally of a crime in which they
showed no mercy when they sold their hated rival to a caravan of
traders to be taken away, it might be, forever. But the story goes on
to tell how that same lad, years later, grown to manhood and risen to
a position of extraordinary power and influence in the great kingdom
of Egypt, not only saved from death by starvation his family,
including those same brothers who had wronged him, but even effected a
complete reconciliation with them and nobly forgave them.

Now, the most notable facts in connection with this story are those
"between the lines." It is not merely that such and such events are
said to have happened, but that for generations, perhaps centuries,
Hebrew fathers and mothers kept the story of these events alive,
telling it over and over again to their children. On numberless days,
no doubt, in this shepherd life there were bickering and angry words
among the children by the spring or at meal time, or in their games.
The older brothers were tyrannical toward the younger, or one or
another