How Desert Culture Helps Us Understand The Bible

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When Abraham sends his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael into the “wilderness of Beersheba” (Genesis 21:14), he hangs from Hagar’s shoulder “a skin of water.” In Sinai and the Negev, Bedouin shepherdesses today still carry to pasture the same type of container, made from the skin of a butchered goat, because its porosity helps to retain the coolness of the water under the hot sun.

Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, affixes a nose-ring to Rebecca’s nose when he meets her at the well while in search of a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:47). This is the same article of jewelry that Bedouin girls bedeck themselves with today to draw attention to themselves in a way deemed more modest than exposing their mouths, which they keep veiled so as not to evoke thoughts of the vagina.

The constraints of life in the deserts of the Near East call forth the same patterns of survival, whether in the remote or recent past. People living off the little that the arid desert 016affords, with its scanty and irregular rains, have few options if they wish to survive. Their culture, which is mainly an array of responses to challenges posed by the desert, cannot vary greatly from one place to another or from one period to another. Hence, many aspects of biblical life, especially as lived by the patriarchs in the Judean and Negev deserts and by the Israelites in Sinai, are similar to traditional Bedouin life as lived by most Bedouin in these areas until the 1960s, and still lived there by some even now.

Many facets of this desert culture common to the Bible and the Bedouin are manifest in common material culture: shelter, implements, dress. When, in the Song of Songs (1:5), reference is made to the black tents of Kedar—“I am black and beautiful / O daughters of Jerusalem / like the tents of Kedar”—it must be to the Bedouin’s winter tents, whose roofs are woven from the hair of black goats raised in the desert. Bedouin pitch these tents in the rainy, winter season, because the fibers of goat hair expand when wet and guarantee a rainproof tent. When it rains, the black tents glisten, perhaps like the “black and beautiful” lover who beckons in the Song of Songs.

Most evidence of the common desert culture, however, is more subtle. When the father of a prospective bride agrees to marry his daughter off to a suitor, thereby creating alliance-like obligations between the two families, he takes a succulent annual desert plant and tears, or cuts, it in two, giving half to the suitor or the suitor’s father. It is possible that the custom of “cutting a covenant” (kritat brit) in the Bible (for example, Genesis 21:32) also began by sharing the most precious resource of the desert: the succulent annual plants containing water, which provide livestock with both vital liquid and nourishment during the winter and spring.

The desert’s cultural continuity, despite the passage of 3,000 years, is also manifest in the details of hospitality, such as Abraham and, then, Lot extended to visiting angels. When Abraham saw the angels, he ran from his tent entrance to greet them (Genesis 18:2). Likewise Lot: He rose to meet them (Genesis 19:1). A contemporary Bedouin poem praises the custom of a host emerging from his tent to show approaching visitors that they are welcome, just as the first patriarch and his nephew did:

“If you should spy travellers from lands far away, / Stand in front of the tent till they see you and turn.”^a

In unlettered nomadic societies, the mystique of the rhymed word is considerable; it is often credited with a magical potency tantamount to weapons of war. (See the sidebar on the weapon of poetry during the Persian Gulf war) We can find this in the Bible, as well as in more recent Bedouin culture. When the migrating Israelites moved north through Transjordan on their way from Sinai to the Promised Land, a local leader named Balak, fearful lest he be overcome by the invading horde of Israelites, called upon the poet and prophet Balaam to “curse this people for me, for they are too mighty for me; perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land; for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed” (Numbers 22:6). (Balaam ended up blessing the Israelites after being signaled by his talking ass that something was amiss, but that’s another story.)

We find the same power accorded to words in more recent Bedouin society. A 19th-century Bedouin tradition tells that when the Tarabin tribe who lived in the Negev were threatening to invade lands of the Tiyaha tribe, the latter’s elders came to one of their poets and entreated him to compose a poem that would deter the Tarabin leader. In 1982, just over 100 years later, elders of the Tarabin came to their most prominent poet in Sinai, ‘Anayz abu Salim al-‘Urdi, and pleaded with him to compose a poem they could send to the chief of the Tiyaha in Sinai to deter him from attacking. In desert society, then as now, a special role was reserved for someone who could protect his group by wielding strong words.

At Passover, Jews still eat matzoh (unleavened bread), reminiscent of the yeastless bread eaten by their ancestors when they left Egypt and trekked across the Sinai desert. The usual explanation of this practice is that it is to recall the harshness of life in Sinai or the haste with which they left Egypt, but I wonder if it is not also to distinguish themselves from the sedentary Egyptians (and their way of life) that the Israelites were fleeing. Indeed, the difference between unleavened Bedouin bread and the bread eaten by settled people is an ancient theme. During a 19th-century Bedouin war in the Negev (1875–1887), the Tarabin wished to picture 017their enemies as degenerate; instead of eating Bedouin bread baked in the hot ashes of a campfire, the enemy tribe, it was said, ate “fluffy fellaheen bread baked in the ovens of Brayr,” a village with which the enemy tribe enjoyed close relations.

In the 1940s, when a Negev poet wished to ridicule Bedouin chiefs who had sold tribal land to Jewish Agency, he alluded to the easy life they would live with their earnings, marrying peasant girls, whose only claim to renown, he alleged, was “fried foods and soft bread.” Similarly, when a semilegendary 18th-century Bedouin chief in Iraq argued that the cultural gap between himself and an urban merchant-woman who wanted to marry him was too wide to bridge, he said in verse:

“While you are people used to settled life,

We Bedouin bake our bread in ashes gray.”

Three thousand years earlier, in the Akkadian poem of Erra, the urban god Erra was challenged by nomads with the boast: “The rich bread of the city cannot compare with bread baked in the embers.”

A central event of the Exodus from Egypt was the eating of unleavened Bedouin bread, matzoh (Exodus 12:15–20). Whether or not this was intended to show how different the Israelites had become from the Egyptians in taking up a nomadic existence, recalling the sojourn in Sinai by prescribing the eating of unleavened bread could not be more appropriate. Whoever has eaten Bedouin bread half a day after it was baked knows what true matzoh is.

Another Jewish observance with biblical roots is the Feast of Tabernacles, or Booths (Sukkoth in Hebrew, which means booths). Sukkoth commemorates the Sinai experience. For this holiday, observant Jews still construct a sukkah with a thatched roof through which they must be able to see the stars. There they eat and sometimes even sleep. Sukkoth occurs in the autumn. Late summer and autumn are the hardest seasons in the desert. The heat of summer has long since dried up the succulent annual grasses and plants, as well as the water sources that were collected from the previous winter’s rains. This year’s rains have not yet come, and it is still hot. The livestock must still be watered every day. Hence, the nomads must stop their migrating and camp within easy access to a “well of living waters” (Genesis 26:20; Song of Songs 4:15). At this time, the temporarily stationary. Bedouin take advantage of the respite from migration to fold up and repair their winter tents dwelling instead in booths that they construct from the most common shrub in the area. In northern Sinai, they use Artemisia monosperma—wormwood; in southern Sinai, the booths are assembled from palm fronds.

Could anything more authentically symbolize the Israelite experience of living a nomadic life in Sinai man a shrub booth in autumn? On this festival, the Bible directs, “You shall live in booths seven days…in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 23:42–43).

One final example of how Bedouin culture can elucidate a biblical episode—in this case, one that is especially difficult to understand for those with 018modern sensitivities: the rape of Dinah (Genesis 34). After Jacob’s 20-year sojourn with Laban, Jacob and his family return to the Promised Land. There a lad named Shechem, the favorite son of Hamor, the leader of the city of Shechem, sees Jacob’s daughter Dinah, falls in love with her and rapes her.

Immediately after the rape, Hamor, on behalf of his son, comes to Jacob to request Dinah’s hand in marriage. Hamor also offers marital relations between all the people of Shechem and Jacob’s people. Hamor welcomes them and offers to share the land with them— to enable them to “get property in it” (Genesis 34:10). Shechem joins his father and pledges to “give whatever you tell me” (Genesis 34:12). Jacob’s sons answer deceitfully, because “he had defiled their sister Dinah” (Genesis 34:13). They say they can allow Dinah and their other women to marry Shechem and the men of his city only if they all become circumcised, as are the Israelites.

This offer relieves Hamor and Shechem, who successfully persuade the men of their city to undergo circumcision. Then, “on the third day [after the circumcision], when they were still in pain,” Dinah’s full brothers, Simeon and Levi, “took their swords and came upon the city unawares, and killed all the males,” including Hamor and Shechem (Genesis 34:25–26). Simeon and Levi took Dinah away. Whereupon the other sons of Jacob plundered the city, taking “their flocks and their herds, their asses, and whatever was in the city and in the field; all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives; all that was in the houses, they captured and made their prey” (Genesis 34:27–29). Jacob, fearing that this might jeopardize his position in the newly reentered land, reprimands his sons. They answer rhetorically: “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” Genesis 34:31).

Many Bible lovers, outraged by the behavior of Jacob’s sons, wonder whether there is any justification for the deceit they practiced on the Shechemites or for their brutal treatment of the people of the city. Indeed, Jacob himself thought it excessive and duly cursed Simeon and Levi on his death bed:

Simeon and Levi are brothers;

weapons of violence are their swords.

O my soul come not into their council; O my spirit, be not joined to their company;

for in their anger they slay men,

and in their wantonness they hamstring oxen.

Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;

and their wrath, for it is cruel!

I will divide them in Jacob

and scatter them in Israel.”

Genesis 49:5–7

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However, Jacob’s sons—desert people—were behaving according to desert logic, in accordance with Bedouin concepts of justice and law. Understanding this desert logic enables us to understand the story better.

Migration with one’s livestock is necessary for survival in the desert. Nomads must often seek pasture in remote places—remote from any law enforcement agencies that might protect them from attack. To ensure their security, Near Eastern nomads have resorted to a number of strategies. One is their social organization into clans, or blood revenge groups. The Arabic term for such a group is khamsa, meaning five, denoting five degrees of patrilineal kinship. The members of the group have mutual responsibility for one another. All males are obliged to defend and avenge each other, just as they are all liable to suffer revenge for the misdeeds of one. Accordingly, an individual does not exist in his own right, but only as the extension of his clan. This not only gives “strategic depth” to any isolated Bedouin; it also deters one Bedouin from attacking another, lest he cause hardship to the members of his clan.

The ability of a Bedouin khamsa to deter others from attacking depends, however, on its record for acting in defense of its rights, for never tolerating even the slightest infraction. There is only one explanation for a khamsa’s failure to defend its rights: weakness. Once the stigma of weakness attaches to a khamsa— remember, this is a society in which most people barely subsist—the temptation to violate such a group will be very strong.

People who are seen as weak or are deemed easy prey simply cannot go on living in the desert. Such people would even liken themselves to a camel whose saddlebags are unbalanced; he too cannot proceed. Indeed, the Bedouin word for justice, ‘adl, is the word for balance, as in the balancing of saddlebags. However, far from denoting equal justice, as does the image of balanced scales in the West, the Bedouin balance implies vengeance.

When Bedouin take vengeance for an attack on one of them, it is not with the intention of punishing the violator; it is to show everyone else how strong they are, and how they can make any violator suffer for ignoring their strength. Only when the violated Bedouin have accomplished this can they go on living in the desert; and only then, in their eyes has justice been done.

When Simeon and Levi answer Jacob’s protest with the terse exclamation, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” they are really saying: Look father we are new in this Promised Land that you are so keen to get established in; and if, at the very outset, we allow them to rape our sister with impunity, don’t imagine that we’ll be able to stay here for long!

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Indeed, we might see the vindication of their position just five verses later. In describing Jacob’s subsequent migration from Shechem to Beth-El, the Bible tells us that “a terror from God fell upon the cities all around them, so that no one pursued the sons of Jacob” (Genesis 35:5).

While every violation of a Bedouin “right” viewed with gravity—whether it be the violation life, limb, property or honor—the violation of woman’s, or girl’s, honor is the most serious. Bedouin traditionally entrust their principal property and wealth—their livestock—to the care women, their wives and daughters. This delegation of responsibility is considered essential to free the men for other tasks, such as searching for new pasture and looking after the security of the clan, which may entail anything from actual fighting to being present at trials and other male gatherings of the tribe. Only fear of vengeance and the reputation the menfolk for relentlessness keeps other men away from their women. If a woman is indeed violated, it can only mean that the perpetrator considers her menfolk too weak to worry about; that is, the reputation of her menfolk is not sufficient to deter violation. No Bedouin can tolerate this. That is why Simeon and Levi felt obliged to avenge the rape of their sister so ruthlessly.

Another aspect of Bedouin culture helps us understand why Simeon and Levi acted as they did: The mutual responsibility of Bedouin for one another is based on common blood. For this reason, they are very concerned that the people whom they consider patrilineal kin are in fact kin, and not of outside origin. The only way to guarantee this is to ensure the inviolability of their women. This they do in two ways: (1) “educating” their girls about the consequences of moral laxity (including the mandatory murder of errant girls, to set an example); and (2) “educating” men about the consequences of violating “a woman’s honor,” also by example. Bedouin law stipulates extreme punitive measures for the violation of a woman, including excessive fines and public confessions. It also allows the offended clan to despoil the culpable party to an extent that transcends the measured “eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth” allowed for the physical attack on, or murder of, a man. In a case of murder, the victim’s khamsa may exact only actual blood vengeance and must desist from plunder; this is so that acts possibly perceived as motivated by greed do not dilute the impression that one is interested only in defending in one’s rights. In cases of rape, however, the Bedouin allow the plunder of as much of the violating clan’s, livestock as can be taken in a period of seven days.

Bedouin culture also explains the behavior of Hamor, Shechem’s father, in coming directly to Jacob after the rape, in order to mollify him. Knowing that the violated party must dispel any impression of weakness, Bedouin will try to assuage the injured party’s outrage by immediately acknowledging their folly in not having recognized the strength of the violated party and its ability to retaliate. Not to do so would compound the injury.

Indeed, such representations are made even when the violators are much stronger than the violated party. In 1972, for example, when a man from one of the smallest and weakest tribes in Sinai, the Bili, was accidentally shot to death by someone from delegation one of the largest and strongest tribes, the Suwarka, the latter, before a large intertribal assembly convened for the occasion (at which this writer was present), implored the Bili to forgo their right to being vengeance and to settle for blood-money. The powerful Suwarka declared, despite their strength and the comparative weakness of the Bili, “The Bili are strong and determined people and can cause us harm.”

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The violated clan’s strength is usually acknowledged by immediately dispatching delegation to its leaders requesting a ceasefire (‘atwa), during which the violators agree to adjudicate the violation and compensate the violated clan.

In Genesis 34, Hamor indeed comes Jacob and his sons and offers, by way compensation, a welcome to the newly arrived Jacob, pasture and property rights Shechemite territory, marriage for the violated girl and general marital relations—an implied alliance—between the two groups. Shechem himself offers “anything” Jacob and his sons may ask. It is a generous proposition. But the sons of Jacob, taking long view of their prospects in the Promised Land, decide that the defense of their honor (that is, their reputation) is more important, for without it there would be no guarantee of future security or welfare.

Considering the tribal context in which the events of Genesis 34 take place, the tribal logic that impelled Jacob’s sons to choose the path they took, we can only marvel at the spiritual progress that is reflected in Jacob’s rejection of that logic, when he curses Simeon and Levi in Genesis 49:6–7:

“For in their anger they slay men,…

Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;

and their wrath, for it is cruel.”

When Abraham sends his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael into the “wilderness of Beersheba” (Genesis 21:14), he hangs from Hagar’s shoulder “a skin of water.” In Sinai and the Negev, Bedouin shepherdesses today still carry to pasture the same type of container, made from the skin of a butchered goat, because its porosity helps to retain the coolness of the water under the hot sun. Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, affixes a nose-ring to Rebecca’s nose when he meets her at the well while in search of a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:47). This is the same article of […]