The construction of the tabernacle and its furniture called into use the skill and workmanship of the best artisans; but, aside from that, there was nothing to tax their talent. During the forty years they lost the arts they had learned in Egypt.
For many years after they entered the Holy Land their mode of living was rude and simple, depending mainly upon the produce of their flocks and herds for sustenance. We have reason to infer that they also drew upon the same source for many articles of clothing.
The forty years of pilgrimage in the wilderness swept into the grave nearly all the vast multitude that left Egypt with Moses. Those who entered the Holy Land had not witnessed the idolatry of Egypt. Moreover, their very existence had depended upon the fall of the manna. Witnessing this daily miracle, a spirit of dependence and submission must have engrafted itself upon this new generation.
The dreary chastisement of the forty years, the plagues that once and again made such havoc, the sad fact that the bones of their fathers were left to whiten in the wilderness, must have produced a terrible impression. The people who came out from Egypt were haughty, unbelieving, rebellious. Their descendants, humbled by chastisement, made dependent by their helplessness, became gentle, submissive, and obedient. We must hence infer that they remained for many years simple in habit and devotional in spirit.
For three hundred and thirty-two years after the death of Joshua, the successor of Moses, the Israelites were governed by judges. During this period the Jews were a nation of farmers, and each farmer was the proprietor of his own farm. The size of the farm allotted to each family may at first have averaged from twenty to fifty acres; and as there were very few servants or laborers, except such hewers of wood and drawers of water as the Gibeonites, each family had to cultivate its own estate. The houses were seldom built apart from each other, like the farm houses of our own country—that would have been too insecure; they were placed together in villages, towns, and cities; and when the place was very much exposed, and of great importance, it was surrounded by a wall.
The lands were adapted chiefly for three kinds of produce—grain, fruit, and pasture. Wheat, millet, barley, and beans were the principal kinds of grain; flax and cotton were also cultivated, and small garden herbs, such as anise, cummin, mint, and rue. (Mat. xxiii: 23.)