herds; for their trade has been to feed cattle; and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have." And he directed them to say, when they should be admitted to an audience of the king: "Thy servants' trade has been about cattle, from our youth even until now, both we and also our fathers." The patriarchal shepherds, rich in flocks and herds, in silver and gold, and attended by a numerous train of servants purchased with their money, or hired from the neighbouring towns and villages, acknowledged no civil superior; they held the rank, and exercised the rights of sovereign princes; they concluded alliances with the kings in whose territories they tended their flocks; they made peace or war with the surrounding states; and in fine, they wanted nothing of sovereign authority but the name. Unfettered by the cumbrous ceremonies of regal power, they led a plain and laborious life, in perfect freedom and overflowing abundance. Refusing to confine themselves to any particular spot, (for the pastures were not yet appropriated), they lived in tents, and removed from one place to another in search of pasture for their cattle. Strangers in the countries where they sojourned, they refused to mingle with the permanent settlers, to occupy their towns, and to form with them one people. They were concious of their strength, and jealous of their independence; and a Gen. xlvi, 32. * In some countries of Africa the modern Bedouin tribes, when the ponds in the desert are dried up, pitch their tents and pasture their flocks in the cultivated regions, among the villages, permission being granted them by the Sultan, who levies heavy duties upon them, paid in cows, camels, and sheep. But in other parts, they refuse to submit to such exactions; and, like the ancient patriarchs, tend their flocks where they please. Burckhardt's Trav. p. 486. although patient and forbearing, their conduct proved, on several occasions, that they wanted neither skill nor courage to vindicate their rights and avenge their wrongs. In the wealth, the power, and the splendour of patriarchal shepherds, we discover the rudiments of regal grandeur and authority; and in their numerous and hardy retainers, the germ of potent empires. Hence the custom so prevalent among the ancients, of distinguishing the office and duties of their kings and princes, by terms borrowed from the pastoral life :-Agamemnon shepherd of the people, (Αγαμέμνονα ποιμένα λαῶν,) is a phrase to be met with every where in the strains of Homer. The sacred writers very often speak of kings under the name of shepherds, and compare the royal sceptre to the shepherd's crook: "He chose David also his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the ewes great with young, he brought him to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands." And Jehovah said to David himself: "Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel.”h The royal Psalmist, on the other hand, celebrates under the same allusions, the special care and goodness of God towards himself, and also towards his ancient people. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." "Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubim, shine forth." But to multiply quotations is useless; in an hundred places of Scripture, the church is compared to a sheepfold, the saints to sheep, and the ministers of reli f Bochart. Hieroz. lib. ii, cap. 44, p. 441. b 2 Sam. v, 2. Psa. lxxviii, 70. i Psa. xxiii, 1, and lxxx, 1. gion to shepherds, who must render at last an account of their administration to the Shepherd and Overseer to whom they owe their authority. The patriarchs did not commit their flocks and herds solely to the care of menial servants and strangers; they tended them in person, or placed them under the superintendance of their sons and their daughters, who were bred to the same laborious employment, and taught to perform, without reluctance, the meanest services. Rebecca, the only daughter of a shepherd prince, went to a considerable distance to draw water; and it is evident from the readiness and address with which she let down her pitcher from her shoulder, and gave drink to the servant of Abraham, and afterwards drew for all his camels, that she had been long accustomed to that humble employment. From the same authority we know, that Rachel, the daughter of Laban, kept her father's flocks, and submitted to the various privations and hardships of the pastoral life, in the deserts of Syria. The patriarch Jacob, though he was the son of a shepherd prince, kept the flocks of Laban his maternal uncle; and his own sons followed the same business, both in Mesopotamia, and after his return to the land of Canaan. This primeval simplicity was long retained among the Greeks. Homer often sends the daughters of princes and nobles, to tend the flocks, to wash the clothes of the family at the fountain, or in the flowing stream, and to perform many other menial services.1 j Varro de Re Rust. lib. ii, cap. 10. Theoc. Idyll. 9. Odyss. lib. xiii, 1. 222, 223. Minerva appeared to Ulysses in the form of a very young shepherd, such as the sons of kings are wont to be. * D'Arvieux Voy. dans la Palest. p. 230. Dr. Russel's Hist. of Aleppo, MS. note, quoted by Dr. Clarke. Forbes's Orient. Mem. vol. i, p. 79, 80, 191. 1 Iliad, lib. vi, 1. 59, 78. Odyss. lib. vi, 1. 57, and lib. xii, 1. 131. Adonis, the son of Cinyras, a king of Cyprus, fed his flocks by the streaming rivers: "Et formosus oves ad flumina pavit Adonis." Vir. Ecl. x, 1. 18. Andromache, the wife of Hector, complains that Achilles had slain her seven brothers when they were tending their flocks and herds." Æneas pastured his oxen on mount Ida, when Achilles seized them and forced the Trojan hero to flee. Phoebus himself was a keeper of oxen in the groves and valleys of Mount Ida.P This custom has descended to modern times; for in Syria the daughters of the Turcoman and Arabian shepherds, and in India the Brahmin women of distinction, are seen drawing water at the village wells, and tending their cattle to the lakes and rivers. But in the course of ages, the character of the shepherd gradually declined, till it fell into supreme contempt. This was particulary the case in Greece, where it had once been held in the highest estimation, and Theocritus has in his Idylls, left us more than one striking example of the insults which these successors of princes and nobles had to suffer in his time. It is by no means improbable that the same feeling operated in other countries; and it is supposed, the prophet Amos alludes to it in the frank avowal which he makes to the priest of Bethel of his original condition: "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit."r The flocks and herds of these shepherds were immensely numerous. The sheep of the Bedoween Arabs in Egypt and probably throughout the east, are very fine, n Iliad, lib. vi, 1. 423. • Ib. lib. xx, 1. 90. P Ib. lib. xxi, 1. 448. The learned reader may consult Bochart's Hieroz. lib. ii, c. 39, p. 382. * Amos vii, 14. black faced and white faced, and many of them clothed in a brown coloured fleece:"s And of this superior breed the overgrown flocks of Syrian shepherds consisted. So great was the stock of Abraham and Lot, that they were obliged to separate, because "the land was not able to bear them." From the present which Jacob made to his brother Esau, consisting of five hundred and eighty head of different sorts, we may form some idea of the countless numbers of great and small cattle, which he had acquired in the service of Laban. In modern times, the numbers of cattle in the Turcoman flocks, which feed on the fertile plains of Syria, are almost incredible. They sometimes occupy three or four days in passing from one part of the country to another. Chardin had an opportunity of seeing a clan of Turco man shepherds on their march, about two days distance from Aleppo. The whole country was covered with them. Many of their principal people with whom he conversed on the road, assured him, that there were four hundred thousand beasts of carriage, camels, horses, oxen, cows, and asses, and three millions of sheep and goats. astonishing account of Chardin, is confirmed by Dr. Shaw, who states, that several Arabian tribes, who can bring no more than three or four hundred horses into the field, are possessed of more than so many thousand camels, and triple the number of sheep and black cattle. Russel, in his history of Aleppo, speaks of vast flocks which pass that city every year, of which many sheep are sold to supply the inhabitants. The flocks and herds which belonged to the Jewish patriarchs, were not more numerous." This + MS. vol. vi. s Dr. Richardson's Trav. vol. ii, p. 197. u Shaw's Trav. vol. i, p. 303, 309. Russel's Hist. of Aleppo, vol. i, p. 165, 388, &c. Harmer's Observ. vol. i, p. 210, 211. VOL. II. B b |