honor. There were no kings nor princes; the chief of the tribe held
his position by virtue of his long experience and practical wisdom.
The distinction between close blood relationship and the brotherhood
of membership in the same tribe was not sharply drawn; all were
brothers. This is true to-day of all these desert tribes.

Only a tribe, however, with an unusual capacity for brotherly
affection and for making social life sweet and harmonious could have
produced a Joseph or the story of Joseph, or would have preserved that
story in oral form through the centuries until it could be written
down. It is worth while looking into the later history of such a
tribe, and seeing what happened to them and how they thought and
acted, and what they contributed to the life of the world.


STUDY TOPICS

1. Get some cotton at a drug store, and see if you can spin some
cotton thread, with a homemade spindle, such as is described in this
chapter.

2. Who had the harder work among the Hebrew shepherds, the women or
the men?

3. Find other stories in Genesis besides the story of Joseph which
show how the Hebrews felt in regard to the relations between brothers.

4. Compare the home life in America with the home life of the Hebrews.
Are American brothers and sisters growing more quarrelsome or more
kindly and loving toward one another?