iv. Wages of hirelings in continual employment. —The class of whom we read most are the priests ; their wages in earlier times consisted of a share of the sacrifices, and of freewill offerings. Probably, as a rule, either a priest had land as a family in- heritance, or the sanctuary held land. Some priests received a stipend from the owners of a private or tribal sanctuary. Moses’ grandson was hired by Micah of Ephraim to be priest of his sanctuary for a yearly salary of 10 pieces of silver (shekels), a suit of clothes, and his board and lodging (Jg 17} 2), No doubt this was fairly liberal ; yet when the Danites invited him to go with them ‘he was pets (Polychrome Bible), probably expecting a
arger income. Thus he became priest of the sanctuary of the northern Danites at Dan. The Priestly Code has very large ideas as to the proper revenues of priests and Levites, but these were never fully realized; see art. PRIESTS AND LEVITES (in vol. iv.), §8f, §10b.
In early times there were no professional soldiers ; probably the leader or the king may have made some contribution of provisions or arms to the levy engaged in actual warfare. The chief wage of the soldier was plunder. The bodyguard, the foreign mercenaries, and the forces of horsemen and chariots must have received some regular pay and have been provided with fodder and stabling, board and lodging (1 K 478), In 2 Ch 256 Amaziah hires 100,000 mercenaries for 100 talents of silver; the hiring would be for a single campaign, which might perhaps last a month. The wages of a successful soldier would be augmented by royal gifts, as in the ease of David (18 17”), and grants of land. Thus we read in 18 8! ‘ The king will take your fields, and vineyards, and oliveyards, even the best of them, and will give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your grain, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.’
Little is said about the pay of other classes of hirelings. Jacob purchased a wife by seven years’ service (Gn 29'8), and of course had ‘all found’ during the period; afterwards he was paid by a portion of the increase of the flock (30%); but we do not know the normal price of wives; it probably depended on the eagerness of the would- be son-in-law.
The hireling is not referred to in the JE legisla- tion (Ten Commandments, Book of the Covenant, etc.), so that, apparently, work for wages was rare in early times. It increased with the growth of civilization. The hirelings were sufficiently numer- ous to be the subject of ordinances in the later codes, Dt 24", Ly 221°(H), Ex 12(P). The pay-
ment of wages would be increased by the attempt of the Priestly Code (Lv 25*°-) to minimize slavery amongst the Jews.
The hireling seems to have
been at the mercy of his employers as to the amount of his wages, and even as to getting them paid at all. Laban changed Jacob’s wages ten times (Gn 317). Both the Prophets and the Law intervene on behalf of the wage-earner (Dt 24", Jer 22%, Mal 3°); he was to be paid promptly, usually, as it seems, at the end of each day (Dt 2415, Ly 19", Job 7”), but Lv 25% refers to a ‘servant hired year by year.’ The hireling was considered inferior in industry to a slave, of whom it is said in Dt 15'8 ‘to the double of the hire of a hireling hath he served thee.’ In the earlier periods of Israelite history, when almost every family had its own land, it would be the exceptionally poor ‘ne’er-do-well’ who was on bad terms with his kin, _ or the foreigner, that hired himself into service. Dt 244 speaks of the hireling as ‘poor and needy . . . of thy brethren or of thy strangers.’ Natur- ally the connexion of the hireling with the family was less close than that of the slave; he has no share in the family sacra; he may not eat the passover (Ex 12#[P]); nor may the hired servant of a priest eat the holy food (Ly 22”). When we consider these facts, together with the control of the labour market by the employer, and the full advantage which the latter took of the situation, we may be sure that the usual rate of wages afforded only a bare subsistence to the free labourer. The description of the miserable condition of the working classes in Job 241 will refer to hired servants. In the case of the corvée, or compulsory service for public works, no wages were paid be- yond. food and lodging. The corvée was used by Solomon to build the temple (1 K 5% 124), and doubtless by other kings and nobles (Jer 22").
v. Wages for occasional pieces of work, — Pro- phets, priests, judges, etc., received payment under different names for the occasional services rendered by them to their clients (Mic 3"). These payments or fees were variously known as gifts, shares of victims (cf. above), or even bribes. The gifts or bribes varied with the importance of the occasion, the wealth of the giver, and the standing of the recipient. Saul considered that Samuel would accept a quarter of a shekel as a sufficient fee for information about his lost asses (18 98). Jeroboam’s wife going to Ahijah, disguised as an ordinary woman, took him ‘ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruse of honey’ (1 K 14°). But the princes who consulted Joseph (Gn 41**), Balaam (Nu 22’), and Daniel (Dn 2° 515), made them munificent offers of wealth, power, and honour. _ ;