Occupations in the Bible

A shepherd kept sheep and goats, which gave milk, cheese, wool, meat and leather. He led the flock out each morning to find grass and water, often walking long distances in dry country, and brought them back at night to a fold: a ring of stone walls, sometimes against a cave, with one opening. In the Middle East shepherds led their flocks from the front; the sheep knew his voice and followed.

The work was hard and dangerous. Jacob, who kept his uncle Laban’s flocks for twenty years, said the heat wore him out by day and the frost by night, and he lost sleep. Wild animals were a real threat: David told Saul he had killed a lion and a bear to save lambs from his father’s flock. If an animal was lost, the shepherd might have to pay for it, unless he could bring back what was left as proof that a wild beast had taken it (Exodus 22:13).

Many of the great leaders of Israel were shepherds: Abel, Abraham, Jacob, Rachel, Moses, and David, who was called from the sheep to be king. God himself is called the shepherd of his people, and Jesus called himself the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. Luke records that shepherds keeping watch at night were the first to hear of his birth.

The farmer’s year began with the first rains in October and November. He ploughed the ground with a light wooden plough with an iron point, pulled by an ox or a pair of oxen, then scattered seed by hand and ploughed again to cover it. Through the winter he waited for rain. Barley was harvested in spring and wheat in early summer.

At harvest the grain was cut with a curved sickle, tied in sheaves, and carried to the threshing floor. There oxen trod it out or dragged a threshing sledge over it, a heavy board with sharp stones set into its underside. Then the farmer winnowed it, tossing it into the evening breeze with a wooden fork so the chaff blew away. The grain was sieved and stored in jars or pits. Isaiah describes how the farmer knows to treat each crop differently.

The Law protected both farm animals and the poor. An ox treading grain was not to be muzzled, so it could eat as it worked. An ox and a donkey were not to be yoked together. The corners of the field and the grain dropped at harvest were left for the poor and the foreigner (Leviticus 19:9–10).

The vinedresser tended grapevines. A new vineyard took years of work before it gave a full crop. The ground was dug and cleared of stones, which were piled into walls and a stone watchtower. Vines were planted in rows, often on terraces cut into the hillside. A hedge of thorns or a wall kept out animals, and a winepress was cut into the rock.

In winter and spring the vinedresser pruned the vines with a small curved knife, the pruning-hook, cutting off dead and weak branches so the plant would bear more fruit. In late summer, when the grapes ripened, families often moved out to the vineyard and slept in huts or the watchtower to guard the crop from thieves and foxes. Grapes were picked into baskets and trodden in the press with bare feet, with singing and shouting.

Large vineyards hired day labourers. In Jesus’ parable, a landowner hired men at different hours of the day and paid each a shilling (a denarius), a full day’s wage. When Babylon carried Judah into exile, the poorest people were left behind to work as vinedressers and farmers.

Fishing was the main work in the towns around the Sea of Galilee, a freshwater lake about 21 kilometres (13 miles) long. Fishermen worked mostly at night, when the fish came up near the surface, in wooden boats with oars and a small sail. A boat from that time, about 8 metres (27 feet) long, was found in the mud of the lake shore in 1986 and is now in a museum at Ginosar.

They used several kinds of net. A cast net was thrown by one man from the shore or a boat; it spread in a circle and sank, trapping the fish beneath. A dragnet was a long wall of net with floats on top and weights below, let out from a boat and pulled in to shore by teams of men; it caught every kind of fish, good and bad, which then had to be sorted. Fishermen also used hooks and lines. After every night’s work the nets had to be washed, dried and mended.

Fishing could be a family business. Zebedee had a boat, hired workers and two sons, James and John, who were partners with Simon Peter and Andrew. Fish was salted and dried to keep it, and sold all over the country. Four of Jesus’ first followers were fishermen, and he told them he would make them fishers of men.

In Bible times hunting was a way to add meat to the family’s food, and to protect flocks from lions, bears and wolves. Deer, gazelles, wild goats (ibex) and birds were hunted. The hunter used a bow and arrows, or a sling; birds were caught with nets, snares and traps by the fowler.

Two famous hunters appear in Genesis. Nimrod was “a mighty hunter before Jehovah.” Esau was “a skilful hunter, a man of the field,” while his brother Jacob stayed by the tents. Their father Isaac loved the meat Esau brought home, and sent him out with his quiver and bow to hunt before giving him a blessing.

The Law allowed hunting clean animals, but the blood had to be poured out and covered with earth (Leviticus 17:13). The prophets often use the hunter’s net, snare and pit as pictures of danger and of judgment.

Merchants bought goods in one place and sold them in another. Joseph’s brothers sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelite merchants carrying spices, balm and myrrh from Gilead down to Egypt. Solomon’s merchants traded horses and chariots between Egypt and the north, and his ships went to Ophir for gold. Ezekiel 27 describes the great trading city of Tyre and lists the goods it bought and sold from all over the world.

Before coins, merchants weighed silver on balance scales with stone weights, and the Law and the Prophets repeat again and again that weights and measures must be honest. A merchant could easily cheat with two sets of weights, one heavy for buying and one light for selling (see Weights, Measures and Money).

Jesus told of a merchant seeking fine pearls who sold everything he had to buy one pearl of great price. In Acts, Lydia sold purple cloth. In Revelation the merchants of the earth weep when the great city falls.

In the New Testament, “publican” means a tax collector. Rome and the rulers it appointed collected taxes on land and people, and tolls on goods carried along roads, across borders and through ports. The right to collect tolls in an area was often sold to the highest bidder, who then hired local men to sit at the toll booths. They had to raise the amount promised, and anything they collected above it they kept.

This made tax collectors rich and hated. They worked for a foreign power, they handled the money of Gentiles, and many took more than they should. People counted them with sinners and prostitutes. When tax collectors came to John the Baptist and asked what they should do, he told them: take no more than you are told to.

Matthew (also called Levi) sat at a toll booth in Capernaum, a town on a busy road by the Sea of Galilee. Jesus called him to follow, and he left everything and gave a great dinner for his fellow tax collectors. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector in Jericho, on the main road from the Jordan, and rich. After Jesus came to his house he gave half his goods to the poor and paid back four times anything he had taken wrongly.

Many kinds of coins were used in Jesus’ day: Roman, Greek, local Jewish coins, and silver from Tyre. Moneychangers sat at tables and exchanged one kind for another, for a fee. They also kept money for people and lent it out at interest; in Jesus’ parable of the talents, the master says the lazy servant should at least have put the money with the bankers.

Every Jewish man paid a half-shekel each year to the temple, as the Law commanded in Exodus 30:13. The Mishnah, a Jewish writing of about A.D. 200, records that tables for changing money were set up in the temple in the weeks before Passover so that people could pay it, and that a small fee was charged on each exchange (Mishnah, Shekalim 1:3 and 1:6). The Greek word for them, kollubistes, comes from kollubos, a small coin or fee.

Jesus drove the moneychangers and the sellers of animals out of the temple courts, overturning their tables, and said his Father’s house should be a house of prayer, not a house of trade.

Israel had its own armies in the Old Testament, but the soldiers of the Gospels and Acts are Roman. Rome’s army had two kinds of soldiers. Legionaries were Roman citizens, organised in legions of about 5,000 men. Auxiliaries were soldiers from the provinces who were not citizens; they received citizenship when they finished 25 years of service. In Judea in Jesus’ time, the governor commanded auxiliary units, many of them recruited from the non-Jewish cities of Caesarea and Sebaste (Samaria), according to the Jewish historian Josephus. The legions were stationed in Syria.

Soldiers were organised in centuries of about 80 men, each led by a centurion, an experienced officer. Several centuries made a cohort, the “band” of the ASV, of about 500 men, led by a tribune, the “chief captain” of Acts. A legionary in Jesus’ day was paid about 225 denarii a year, a little less than a denarius a day, from which food and gear were taken out. When soldiers asked John the Baptist what to do, he told them not to take money by force or false charges, and to be content with their wages.

Roman soldiers appear all through the end of the Gospels: they mocked Jesus with a crown of thorns, crucified him, and cast lots for his clothes, and a centurion at the cross said “Truly this man was the Son of God.” Two other centurions are remembered well: one in Capernaum whose faith Jesus praised, and Cornelius of Caesarea, the God-fearing officer to whom Peter was sent in Acts 10.

A cupbearer served wine at a king’s table. Because a king could be poisoned through his food or drink, the man who handed him his cup had to be completely trusted. A cupbearer stood close to the king every day, and could become one of his most trusted advisers. The Hebrew word, mashqeh, means “one who gives to drink”; the ASV translates it “butler” in Genesis and “cupbearer” in Nehemiah.

Joseph met Pharaoh’s chief butler in prison and explained his dream; the butler was restored to his post, as Joseph said, but forgot Joseph for two years. Nehemiah was cupbearer to Artaxerxes, king of Persia. When the king noticed his sad face as he served the wine, Nehemiah asked for leave to go and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and the king gave it.

The Queen of Sheba was overwhelmed by everything she saw at Solomon’s court, including his cupbearers.

The Hebrew word eved and the Greek word doulos cover many kinds of people: a hired worker, a household servant, a steward who ran a rich man’s house, a royal official, and a slave owned by a master. The ASV usually translates both as “servant.” Servants fetched water, ground grain, cooked, tended animals, worked the fields and ran the house.

The Law of Moses set limits. A Hebrew who sold himself because of debt was to serve six years and go free in the seventh, and his master was to send him off with gifts from the flock, the threshing floor and the winepress. A servant whose master knocked out an eye or a tooth went free (Exodus 21:26–27). A runaway slave who escaped to Israel was not to be handed back. Some servants rose high: Abraham’s chief servant ran all he had, and Joseph, sold as a slave, became overseer of his master’s house and later ruler of Egypt.

In the New Testament the word becomes a title of honour. Paul calls himself a servant of Jesus Christ. Jesus said that whoever wants to be first must be servant of all, for he himself came to serve. Paul sent Onesimus, a runaway slave who had become a believer, back to his master Philemon, “no longer as a servant, but more than a servant, a brother beloved.”

Physicians in Bible times treated wounds, broken bones, fevers and skin diseases with what they had: olive oil, wine, herbs and plant resins, poultices, salves and bandages. Egypt was famous for its doctors; Joseph’s physicians embalmed his father Jacob, a work that took forty days.

The Bible shows the common treatments. Wounds were cleaned, bound up and softened with oil; the Good Samaritan poured oil and wine on the injured man’s wounds and bandaged them. A cake of figs was laid on Hezekiah’s boil. Balm, a healing resin, was traded from Gilead, and Jeremiah asks, “Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?”

Doctors could not cure everything, and they were costly. A woman who had bled for twelve years had spent all she had on many physicians and only grew worse before she touched Jesus’ clothing. King Asa was criticised for seeking only physicians and not God. Paul calls his companion Luke “the beloved physician”; Luke is traditionally held to be the writer of the Gospel of Luke and Acts.

Music was part of everyday life, of feasts, weddings, harvest, mourning and war, and above all of worship. Genesis names Jubal as the father of all who play the lyre and pipe. The book of Psalms is a book of songs, and many psalms name the leader of the music or the instruments to be used.

The instrument the ASV calls a “harp,” the kinnor, was a lyre: a small, light wooden frame with strings, held in the arms and plucked with the fingers or a pick. David played it so well that he was brought to Saul’s court to calm the king. Other instruments were the larger stringed psaltery, pipes and flutes, hand drums (timbrels), cymbals, silver trumpets, and the ram’s horn (shofar).

David organised the Levites into choirs and bands for worship. Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun led them; 288 trained musicians served in twenty-four groups. When Solomon dedicated the temple, the singers and the trumpeters praised God together, and the cloud of glory filled the house. In exile in Babylon, the singers hung their harps on the willows.