JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

economic history
land. Isaiah was not alone in exclaiming: “Woe unto them that
join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room
and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land” (5:8;
see also Hos. 5:10; Micah 2:1–2). The ensuing social unrest gave
rise to the immortal calls for social justice by the great Israelite
prophets. It also stimulated much idealistic social legislation
(see below), the practical implementation of which left much
to be desired. The rumblings of discontent among the masses
helped to undermine the existing social order, particularly in
Northern Israel with its constant revolts and assassinations of
reigning monarchs. Of its ten ruling dynasties in the relatively
short period of 931–721 B.C.E. all but two were replaced after
the reign of one or two kings. Such instability was also ruinous
for the country’s economy and helped to bring about the
disastrous fall of Samaria in 721 and of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.
which spelled the end of the First Temple period.
Exile and Restoration
The fall of Jerusalem marked a turning point also in the economic
history of the Jews. Not only was Palestine severely
devastated – the reservations voiced by some modern scholars
were disproved by the widespread desolation evidenced
by archaeological diggings – but a large segment, perhaps the
majority, of the Jewish population either perished during the
war, was deported by the Babylonians, or emigrated voluntarily.
The removal of the most active members of the community,
including the royal house, the priests, the great landowners,
and the artisans, further aggravated the effects of the
depopulation and material destruction. Like the Philistine
overlords of the early Israelite tribes, many ancient conquerors
saw in the exile of smiths, the main suppliers of weapons
as well as of industrial and agricultural tools, the best method
of disarming the conquered population. Deprived of their
leadership, the Israelites who remained behind were prone to
adopt some of the more primitive ways of life and thought of
their pagan neighbors.
On the other hand, the exiles to Babylonia joined the
ever-growing Jewish dispersion. There are reasons to believe
that a number of those deported from Northern Israel by
the Assyrians in 733–719 B.C.E. had continued to profess their
ancestral religion on the foreign soil. Their descendants, as
well as those of the Judeans deported by Sennacherib in 702,
now joined the groups of the new arrivals to form a powerful
new community. (Only thus can we explain why those returning
from the exile half a century later included descendants
of families who had lived in Northern Israelite localities
before the fall of Samaria; see Ezra 2:2ff. and the commentaries
thereon.) They developed a new center in and around Nippur,
the second largest city in Babylonia, which was located on
the “river” Chebar, or rather the canal connecting the Euphrates
and the Tigris. Here, both the new and old settlers now
enjoyed the distinguished leadership of Ezekiel and many
former Palestinian elders. They were also supported by surviving
members of the royal family after Amel Marduk (“Evil-
Merodach”) released the imprisoned king of Judah, Jehoi-
achin, and restored him to a high position at the royal court
of Babel. This release, narrated in the Bible (II Kings 25:27ff.)
and confirmed also by Babylonian sources (E.F. Weidner
in Mélanges Dussaud, 2 (1939), 923–35), seems to have laid
the foundation for the development of the exilarchate, a remarkable
institution which lent the dispersed Jews a focus of
leadership, with few interruptions, for the following 2,000
years.
Besides Babylonia, Egypt also accommodated a number
of Jewish communities; the best known being the Jewish
military colony of *Elephantine in Upper Egypt, established
perhaps as early as the seventh century by Psammetichus I
to help defend the southern frontier of Egypt against Nubian
raiders. Before long, Jewish settlers spread throughout
the Middle East, especially after 549 B.C.E. when Cyrus and
his successors founded the enormous Persian Empire, territorially
exceeding in size even the later Roman Empire at the
height of its grandeur. The author of the Book of Esther did
not hesitate to place in the mouth of Haman, the anti-Jewish
courtier in the capital of Susa, the accusation against “a certain
people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples
in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are
diverse from those of every people” (3:8). Nor was Deutero-
Isaiah guilty of vast exaggeration when he prophesied that “I
[God] will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from
the west; I will… bring My sons from far and My daughters
from the end of the earth” (Isa. 43:5–6).
This multitude of Jewish settlers appears to have been
rather speedily integrated into the environmental economic
structures. Despite their vivid messianic expectations, their
majority followed Jeremiah’s advice and built houses, took
wives, and generally established themselves in their new countries
on a semipermanent basis. In Babylonia, particularly,
which at that time marched in the vanguard of a semicapitalistic
civilization, Jews entered the stream of advanced mercantile
exchanges. The people who at home had devoted itself
largely to agriculture and small crafts now assumed an important
role in *banking and far-flung commerce. Whether or not
Jacob, the founder of the leading banking house of Egibi, was
Jewish – there is some support for this hypothesis in the fact
that loans were formally extended without interest, though
the bankers collected the revenues from the mortgaged properties
including slaves and cattle – there is no question that
some Jewish landowners and businessmen wrote significant
contracts with leading Babylonian capitalists. In the archives
of the House of *Murashu, an important banking and warehousing
firm, no less than 70 Jewish names have been identified.
Some of the Jewish contracting parties, to be sure, merely
undertook to raise sheep and goats in return for a specified
annual delivery of cattle, butter, wool, and hides. Others obligated
themselves to deliver to the firm 500 good fish within
20 days if they were provided with five nets and permits to
fish in the firm’s waters. But some major contracts were signed
by wealthy Jewish landowners in their own right who traded
with the Murashu Sons on a basis of equality.
98 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6