Of Fathers, Kings and the Deity

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Ancient Israelite society was structured in a way that few of us in modern times experience. Its focus was on family and kin groups organized around agrarian activities. Family and kin groups, in turn, generated the symbols by which the higher levels of the social structure—the political and the divine—were understood and represented.

A three-tiered structure formed a series of, as it were, nested households. At ground level was the ancestral or 044patriarchal household known in the Bible as bêt ’aµb literally “house of the father” (Genesis 24:7; Joshua 2:12, 18; 6:25). As a social unit, the joint or extended family, not the biological family, was most important. Sometimes as many as three generations lived in a large family compound, comprising a minimal bêt ’aµb. This, the basic unit of Israelite society, was the focus of religious, social and economic spheres of Israelite life and was at the center of Israel’s history, faith and traditions.

In this household, there was no mistaking that ultimate authority was with the father, the paterfamilias. His word had the authority of command, subject only to the constraints of customary rules that governed Israelite society and provided a traditional framework in which his word was to be understood.

Besides the parents and unmarried children, the bêt ’aµb might include several generations of family members, depending on who is claimed as the paterfamilias, along with his wife or wives, sons and their wives, grandsons and their wives, the unmarried sons and daughters, slaves, servants, geµrÎm, aunts, uncles, widows, orphans and Levites who might be members of the household. The geµrÎm were non-kin who were nevertheless included in the “protective” network. A geµr often became a “client” or “servant” of the patron who protected him. For example, the household of Micah in the hill 045country of Ephraim was occupied by Micah, probably his wife or wives, his widowed mother, his sons, probably their wives, a hired priest (the Levite), and servants (Judges 17–18). To obtain a wife for Isaac, Abraham directed his servant, “You shall go to my father’s house (bêt ’aµb) [in Mesopotamia], to my clan (misûpaµhâ), and get a wife for my son” (Genesis 24:38).

The further back one traced the ancestry, the larger the lineage or household. Very large families formed the misûpaµhâ or “clan.” Later in Iron Age II (1000–586 B.C.E.), the state constituted the largest family of all in ancient Israel.

At the level of the state or, better, tribal kingdom, in both ancient Israel and neighboring polities, the king functioned as paterfamilias. His subjects were dependent on personal relationships and loyalty to him; in return for this allegiance, they expected protection and succor. As sovereign and proprietor of the land, the king presided over his “house” (bayit), which included the families and households of the whole kingdom. Thus, in the Tel Dan stele of the ninth century B.C.E. the southern kingdom of Judah is referred to as the “house of David” (byt dwd).^a The same designation has recently been deciphered in the contemporaneous Mesha stele found in Moab.^b Similarly, the northern kingdom of Israel is known as the “house of Omri” (beµt H|umri) in Assyrian annals.¹

The king, however, does not sit at the top of the social order; rather it is Yahweh (in the case of Israel) who is the supreme paterfamilias. He is the ultimate patrimonial authority over the “children” of Israel, who are bound to him through covenant as his kindred (‘am) or kindred-in-law.² Human kingship and divine kingship are simply more inclusive forms of patrimonial domination.

Thus we find households nested within households on up the scale of the social hierarchy, each tier becoming more inclusive as one moves from domestic to royal to divine levels. At the same time, this entire structure reinforces and legitimates the authority of the paterfamilias at each of the three levels. In this way, the family and household provide the central symbol about which the ancient Israelites created the world in which members of that society expressed their relationships to each other, to their leaders (whether “judge” in early Israel or, later, “king”) and to the deity. Through the three-tiered patrimonial model of Israelite society, we can understand how kingship in Israel, as elsewhere, could be a compatible institution with other forms of patriarchal dominance.

It is sometimes suggested that the Israelite monarchy was some kind of “alien” urban institution grafted onto a reluctant egalitarian, kin-based tribal society, which through internal conflict and contradiction became a class-riven society dominated by an oppressive urban elite.³ This fantasy—kingship cancelling kinship and giving rise to class consciousness—is little more than Karl Marx’s dialectic in modern guise, in which society evolves from “primitive communalism” to “slave society” with their masters holding the means of production. It is a groundless analysis. Seen through the lens of the patrimonial model we are using, Israelite kingship is simply a higher level of kinship.

Similarly, the rural-urban conflict posited by this Marxist perspective is more a mirage than a reality in ancient Israel. There were inequalities to be sure, 062both in premonarchic and monarchic Israel, but social stratification along class lines and class consciousness did not exist. The vertical relationships of superior to inferior were of a different sort and far more variegated than class concepts allow.

Take the term ‘ebed, literally “servant,” for example. It can refer to anyone from a slave to a high government official, as on certain seals which refer to ‘ebed hammelek, “servant of the king.”⁴ The particular social context of the term in ancient society must be known in each instance in order to understand its meaning. In a society in which countless variations within the patrimonial order were possible, it is not so difficult to imagine a farmer such as Saul or a shepherd such as David becoming king. Moreover, because kingship was not an alien institution, it could be idealized long after the demise of the monarchy (in 586 B.C.E.) into the messiah-king redidivus.

As already noted, family and kinship relationships were organized largely around agrarian activities. That, too, separates us from the ancients as we become further removed from our agrarian roots. Today less than two percent of the population in the United States are farmers. In ancient Israel, it was just the opposite. Nearly everyone, even those living in royal cities such as Jerusalem and Samaria, was involved in some form of agriculture and had encounters with animals wherever they went. Two of the main city gates leading into Iron Age Jerusalem took their names from the creatures being bought and sold there—the Sheep Gate (Nehemiah 3:1, 32, 12:39) and the Fish Gate (2 Chronicles 33:14; Nehemiah 3:3; 12:39; Zephaniah 1:10).

Agricultural life was conducted by a “calendar” very different from ours. Our appointment and planning books mark the day, month, year and even the hour when something is to be done. In premodern agricultural societies, activities were organized around a different “clock” and “calendar.” In agrarian societies one rises with the sun and retires when it sets. The seasons of activities revolve about farming and herding.

The Gezer calendar highlights the seasonal patterns of the agricultural year. This small limestone plaque with a mere seven-line inscription was found at Gezer in 1908 by the Irish archaeologist R.A.S. Macalister. It dates to the second half of the tenth century B.C.E. (Solomon’s reign) and is one of the oldest known Hebrew inscriptions. It describes agricultural operations during the course of 12 months, with time subdivided by the seasonal farming activities. It refers to the months of the year not by their names but by the harvest associated with them:

His two months are (olive) harvest,
His two months are planting (grain),
His two months are late planting;
His month is hoeing up of flax,
His month is harvest of barley,
His month is harvest and feasting;
His two months are vine-tending,
His month is summer fruit.⁵

The produce mentioned in the Gezer calendar is consistent with the Biblical description of the Promised Land as “a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you [Israelites] may eat bread without scarcity” (Deuteronomy 8:8–9). The land itself, however, belonged to God, although it was entrusted to the kings and their subjects (Genesis 12:7; 17:8; Joshua 1:2–3). The earthly king, the paterfamilias of his subjects, was only the representative of the heavenly king.

Excerpted and adapted from Philip J. King and Lawrence E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001].