In the arid pastures bordering the Arabian Desert, survival required strict adherence to property lines. Landowners marked their territory with heavy field markers. Removing these objects was an act of severe economic violence. Thieves operated in the dark to shift these borders. They claimed adjacent grazing land by mere inches or feet at a time. This slow theft starved out widows and orphans who depended on small tracts of arable soil.
Deprived of their land, the dispossessed moved into the brutal wage labor systems of the fifth century b.c. Agrarian workers endured 100-degree Fahrenheit heat in the vineyards. They crushed olives in heavy wooden beam presses to produce oil for wealthy landowners. Historical records from the Persian period show these laborers often went without food or clothing despite working directly with the harvest. They slept outdoors under the freezing night air of the high desert.
Driven from the settled valleys entirely, these outcasts sought refuge in the surrounding canyon networks. They carved out temporary shelters among the jagged ridges. The landscape offered no natural warmth. Rainstorms frequently washed through these narrow ravines. The exiles huddled against bare granite walls to survive the sudden floods. From these heights, they watched their former neighbors redraw the property maps of the valley below.
Boundary lines drawn in the dirt shift whenever greed outpaces consequence.
This endless shifting of borders left the poorest workers completely exposed to the elements. The victims watched the heavens for a sign of divine justice. They expected the Deity to punish the wicked and restore the stolen fields. Yet he remained silent while the thieves expanded their territories. The oppressors walked away with the harvest.