Sitting
Sitting (prop. יָשָׁב, yashab, καθέζομαι). This is the favorite posture of Orientals. In the absence of chairs, it becomes a necessity to sit upon the floor with the feet crossed under one. "In Palestine people sit at all kinds of work. The carpenter saws, planes, and hews with his hand adze sitting upon the ground or upon the plank he is planing. The washerwoman sits by the tub; and, in a word, no one stands where it is possible to sit. Shopkeepers always sit, and Levi sitting at the receipt of custom (Mt 9:9) is the exact way to state the case" (Thomsoft, Land and Book, 1, 191). "No Moslem will move when he can stand, or stand when he can sit. We observed three men in a farrier's shop devoting their combined energies to the shoeing of a little mule. One sat under the mule's nose, and held it down with a halter; another sat with its foot turned up in his lap; and a third sat alongside while he fitted and nailed the shoe. Even the masons must sit on their haunches, and fill their panniers with lime; and a little farther on, where some new pavement was in progress, all the paviors sat at their work, from the boys lolling on their hams, who passed the stones from the heap, to the two men who sat vis-a-vis with a great mallet between them, and in that posture lazily poised and let it fall. But the acme of the art of sitting seemed to have been reached by a party of reapers in a wheat field through which we rode. All in a long row, men and women, sat to reap, and jerked themselves forwards or sideways as their work progressed" (Tristram, Land of Israel, p. 616). SEE ATTITUDE; SEE BED; SEE EATING.
