They managed, however, to get along without nearly so much clothing as we think necessary.  The little children, through warm days of summer, played around the tents almost naked.  And the grown people dressed very simply.  There were only two garments for either men or women.  They wore a long shirt reaching to the knees.  This was made by doubling over a strip of cloth, sewing the sides, and cutting out holes for arms and neck.  The outer garment was a sort of coat, open in front, and gathered about the waist with leather belt.  This outer garment was often thrown aside when the wearer was working.  It was worn in cold weather, however, and was often the poor man’s only blanket at night.  Women’s garments were probably 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.