ON LAND TENURE IN ANCIENT TIMES. 165 
When Israel were settled in Palestine, it was doubtless 
partly on account of this joint-tenure of land that under the 
Law no Hebrew was held to have more than a life interest in 
broad acres, and neither possessed, nor had power to alienate, 
any absolute ownership. Provision was made only for the 
sale and conveyance of his life interest, computed in the 
Bible at a term of years not exceeding the interval from 
20 years, when he came of age, to 70 years, the allotted 
span of life. All he could alienate in the lands of a village 
would be the right of muzara’a, or “sowing,” for a period at 
most of 50 years, or so much of it as remained unexpired 
until the next Jubilee, which must often have made the term 
of years for which this right could be conveyed to another a 
very limited one.* 
It has been well said, “as Moses recognises a sacred 
principle in the life and unity of the Israelite nation as a 
whole, so he likewise consecrated two smaller units, the Tribe 
and the Household, within the bounds of the holy nation 
itself. There was, however, an intermediate body between 
these two latter, mentioned and utilized in the Law,f and 
assuming great prominence in the Book of Joshua,} AMpW, 
meeshpahhah, German geschlecht, Latin gens, which, though 
like gens, it has a wider sense, has a definite and technical 
sense, ‘the Father’s House.’ Now as this ‘Father’s House,’ 
or ‘ Family,’ held the important place it obviously did in the 
social organism, it is natural that it should have its economic 
function too. In a word we might expect as each tribe had 
its separate allotted portion, so each family would have a 
district allotted to itself. This explains Joshua xv, 12, 
‘ according to their families’§ . . . . In fact we may infer 
that each ‘Father’s House,’ or ‘ Family,’ or ‘ Thousand, exist- 
ing at the time of the conquest, settled in one or more Com- 
munes; so that, as the settlement became complete, the 
Family and the Commune became co-extensive, and it was a 
chance whether the local or the hereditary name prevailed. 
Boaz was ‘Bethlehem, in the same sense that Jephtha’s 
father was ‘ Gilead,** or Pekah’s victim ‘ Argob,’ff in the 
same sense in which Evan Cameron was Lochiel, and he was 
* Leviticus xxv. 15-17, 
+ Numbers i., iii., iv., xxvi. 
{~ Joshua vii. 17. § See also Joshua, xvii. 1-5. 
| That “ Father’s House” and “Thousand” are identical, see Joshua 
xxii. 14, 30, and Judges vi. 15, and that “Thousand” and “ Family” are 
identical, see 1 Samuel x. 19, 21. 
J 1 Chronicles u. 51 54. ** Judges xi. 1, 2. tt} 2 Kings xv. 25. 
