Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NOBILITY

Ancient Israel as a society held strong equalitarian ideals, rooted early in their history. The origin of the Israelite tribes in the Arabian steppes gave them a system of authority based on tribal and clan chieftains, family heads, and tribal elders. Under this complex system of tradition, authority, and family, where social rank was based on age, experience (wisdom), and merit, a rough equality was administered between members by those in authority, and real justice was expected from those in power. After the settlement of these tribes in Canaan, this system remained in place, with vestiges surviving into the period of the Monarchy. Indeed, its equalitarian aspects were strengthened as Israel developed from a semi-nomadic tribal society to a society based on a landed peasantry, with the contempt for rank based on status that such societies engender.

By the period of the Divided Monarchy, although the tribal system could still play a decisive political role — as in the revolt of the northern tribes against Rehoboam — a real class society had emerged, with a real nobility. Rehoboam’s rash decision not to conciliate the demands of the Israelites reflects the emergence of an influential nobility at court. At the outset of Rehoboam’s reign, this nobility was young, upstart, and lacking in sympathy for the peasantry (1 Kgs. 12:6-11). Throughout the subsequent years of the Israelite monarchies, the division widened between the landed (or unlanded) peasantry and the nobles in their “great houses” (cf. Amos 3:15). Various terms attest to this noble class, e.g., Heb. gāḏôl, “the great”; nāgîḏ, “designated one”; and partĕmîm, “nobles, grandees” (Persian loanword). Sem. śār is used widely in contexts where it can be applied to military officers, commanders, rulers, or nobles (cf. Hos. 7:16).

In any society based on peasant agriculture, where the possibility of buying and selling land exists, a gradual and natural impoverishment of small landowners, caught in the vicissitudes of weather and other natural setbacks or disasters, or between the variable qualities of land, leads to increasing divisions between the large, wealthy landowners and the peasantry. As large landowners acquire increasing amounts of land they are, by honest means, able to apply economies of scale to agricultural production, thus increasing not only their income but their hedge against economic disaster. As the small landowners are forced to turn to their more prosperous neighbors for loans and other kinds of assistance, their relative economic position is further eroded. Those who borrow could well find themselves having to sell their land to their more prosperous neighbors, signing themselves on as tenants, being reduced to field laborers, or selling oneself or one’s family members into “debt slavery.” The bitter — and nearly universal — prophetic invective against the rich and noble reflects this progressive degradation of the native Israelite peasantry. Thus, we may consider that the formation of a landed nobility in Israel came about at least partly through and in conjunction with the decline of small landholders. The process was exacerbated by the exertion of power, either by the great landowners or the royal administrations, or both, to suspend the ancient laws designed to prevent just such a development (cf. Exod. 21:2-11; Deut. 15:7-18; Lev. 25).

Militarization provided another means by which aristocracies or nobilities could be formed. To meet the threats posed by the Philistines to the west and the rising Semitic states to the east, Israelite leaders such as Jephthah and Saul began to build private armies of professional soldiers, using booty as the primary means of remuneration. As Saul and later David moved to regularize the military, more satisfactory means of payment — relieving the ruler of the need to pay his troops out of his own resources — may have included distribution of the lands of conquered peoples among the soldiery. Because of the intractability of Israel’s native land tenure system (cf. 1 Kgs. 21), such practice may have been feasible only in the conquered or annexed lands of the Canaanite city-states of the Jezreel and Sharon. Land and position were the most likely means to secure the long-term loyalty of the professional soldiery to the king, rather than to the people of Israel.

Another factor was the creation of actual feudal sinecures for members of the warrior class. Solomon instituted a chariot corps, perhaps necessitating creation of a class of warriors similar to the Canaanite maryannu to support this mode of fighting. By annexing the Canaanite city-states, David or, more likely, Solomon may have integrated the maryannu into the military. The later Israelite nobility may well have grown out of this Canaanite nobility, drawn wholesale into Israelite society as a part of Solomon’s military expansion and reform. Support for this class would have been made more palatable to the largely peasant Israelite population because it required relatively little new taxation (unlike his building projects, which required corvée service). The maryannu would quickly have become integrated into Israel’s life and culture; indeed, the later prophets make no such distinction between Israelite and old Canaanite nobility (but cf. Isa. 2:6-7). However, the injection of a strong element of foreign nobility into Israelite society would have placed the native peasantry at an even greater disadvantage in confronting the challenge to their ancestral rights.

The prophets chastised the Israelite and Judean nobility for failing to provide the just political and social leadership required of persons in positions of power and authority: justice, integrity, and knowledge of the law (cf. Jer. 5:4-5). The abuse of position and power, or the neglect of the responsibilities inherent therein, elicits terrible divine judgment (Amos 5:10-13; 6:1-7; 8:4-8).

Donald G. Schley

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NOBILITY

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)