=Serving the meal.=—­Soon the father and the boys come home.  The ox and the ass are fed in the stall behind the house.  The mother spreads a cloth on the ground and on it places a small stand about eight inches high, which is their only dining-room table.  The pot of beans is placed on this stand, and the bread and other good things on the cloth around it.  We all sit down on the ground and begin to eat.

Fingers were made before forks.  For the beans, however, we need a spoon, and here are some shells from the beach that serve admirably for that purpose; and we all dip into the same dish on the little stand.  By and by, when all is gone but the liquid, we sop that up with pieces of bread.  When every crumb is picked up and eaten, we all lift our eyes to heaven, and the father repeats a prayer of thanksgiving to God.  Dinner is over.  The sun has set.  It is growing dark, and soon it will be time to go to bed.

STUDY TOPICS

1.  Explain the following Scripture passages in the light of this chapter: 

Judges 16. 13; Deuteronomy 24. 6; Matthew 24. 41.

2.  Read Proverbs 31. 10-31 for another picture of daily life in an ancient Hebrew home.  What is said in this chapter about the making of beautiful as well as necessary things, and about the doing of kindly deeds?

CHAPTER X

MORAL VICTORIES IN CANAAN

On the whole, Canaan was a good school for the Hebrew shepherds.  New arts to learn, new crops to raise, new kinds of cloth to spin and weave, new kinds of food to cook—­all this helped to make life more interesting and worth while.  But there were other lessons which newcomers might learn which were not so wholesome.

Wine drinking, for example, was a habit which the wisest of the Hebrews always feared.  The wine which they made in those foaming wine-presses was, of course, mild and harmless as compared with the distilled liquors of modern times.  But even Canaanitish wine could deaden men’s consciences and make them more like beasts than men.  “Wine is a mocker,” said one of the sages who wrote the book of Proverbs, “strong drink is raging, and he that is deceived thereby is not wise.”

IDOLATRY IN CANAAN

Canaanite religion was to a large extent an unwholesome influence.  The Canaanites worshiped many gods.  Each village had its Baal, or lord, who had to be bribed with burnt offerings of fat beasts, or (as they thought) the soil would lose its fertility and the crops would fail.

=Dangerous examples.=—­These sacrificial rites were carried on in the shrines or “high places,” one of which stood outside almost every village and town.  They often were accompanied by dances and other performances which were licentious and degrading.  The Hebrews, of course, were pledged to worship only Jehovah.  Moreover, during these first centuries in Canaan they were very poor, and had little time for the carousals which went on at the “high places” in the name of religion.  Corruption usually comes with wealth and luxury.  Poverty and hardship are often useful safeguards.  But from the beginning these heathen rites were a temptation and a snare in the lives of the Hebrews.