Prolegomena to the History of Israel Part 9

In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month, in the feast shall he do the like for seven days, according to the sin-offering, according to the burnt-offering, and according to the meal-offering, and according to the oil."

Here indeed in details hardly any point is in agreement with the prescriptions of the ritual law of Leviticus xxiii., Numbers xxviii., xxix. Apart from the fact that the day of Pentecost is omitted (it is restored in the Ma.s.soretic text by an absurd correction in ver. 11), in the first place there is a discrepancy as to the DURATION of the feasts; both last seven and not eight days, and the pa.s.sover is taken for the first day of Easter, as in Deuteronomy. Further, the offerings differ, alike by their never-varying number and by their quality; in particular, nothing is said of the pa.s.sover lamb, but a bullock as a general sin-offering is mentioned instead. From the _minha_ the wine is wanting, but this must be left out of the account, for Ezekiel banishes wine from the service on principle. Lastly, it is not the CONGREGATION that sacrifices, but the prince for himself and for the PEOPLE. But in spite of all differences the general similarity is apparent; one sees that here for the first time we have something which at all points admits of correlation with the Priestly Code, but is quite disparate with the Jehovistic legislation, and half so with that of Deuteronomy.

On both hands we find the term fixed according to the day of the month, the strictly prescribed joint burnt-offering and sin-offering, the absence of relation first-fruits and agriculture, the obliteration of natural distinctions so as to make one general churchly festival. But Ezekiel surely could hardly have had any motive for reproducing Leviticus xxiii. and Numbers xxviii. seq., and still less for the introduction of a number of aimless variations as he did so. Let it be observed that in no one detail does he contradict Deuteronomy, while yet he stands so infinitely nearer to the Priestly Code; the relationship is not an arbitrary one, but arises from their place in time. Ezekiel is the forerunner of the priestly legislator in the Pentateuch; his pence and people, to some extent invested with the colouring of the bygone period of the monarchy, are the antecedents of the congregation of the tabernacle and the second temple. Against this supposition there is nothing to be alleged, and it is the rational one, for this reason, that it was not Ezekiel but the Priestly Code that furnished the norm for the praxis of the later period.

For, as the festival system of the Priestly Code absolutely refuses to accommodate itself to the manner of the older worship as we are made acquainted with it in Hos. ii., ix. and elsewhere, in the same degree does it furnish in every respect the standard for the praxis of post-exilian Judaism, and, therefore, also for our ideas thence derived. No one in reading the New Testament dreams of any other manner of keeping the pa.s.sover than that of Exodus xii., or of any other offering than the paschal lamb there prescribed. One might perhaps hazard the conjecture that if in the wilderness legislation of the Code there is no trace of agriculture being regarded as the basis of life, which it still is in Deuteronomy and even in the kernel of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., this also is a proof that the Code belongs to a very recent rather than to a very early period, when agriculture was no longer rather than not yet. With the Babylonian captivity the Jews lost their fixed seats, and so became a trading people.

III.III.3. No notice has as yet been taken of one phenomenon which distinguishes the Priestly Code, namely, that in it the tripart.i.te cycle of the feasts is extended and interrupted. In the chronologically arranged enumeration of Leviticus xxiii.

and Numbers xxviii., xxix., two other feast days are interpolated between Pentecost and Tabernacles: new year on the first, and the great day of atonement on the tenth of the seventh month. One perceives to what an extent the three originally connected harvest feasts have lost their distinctive character, when it is observed that these two heterogeneous days make their appearance in the midst of them;--the _yom kippur_ in the same series with the old _haggim_, i.e., dances, which were occasions of pure pleasure and joy, not to be named in the same day with fasts and mournings.

The following points demand notice in detail.

In the period of the kings the change of the year occurred in autumn. The autumn festival marked the close of the year and of the festal cycle (Exodus xxiii. 16, x.x.xiv. 22; 1Samuel i. 21, 21; Isaiah xxix. 1, x.x.xii. 10). Deuteronomy was discovered in the eighteenth year of Josiah, and in the very same year Easter was observed in accordance with the prescriptions of that law--which could not have been unless the year had begun in autumn.

Now the ECCLESIASTICAL festival of new year in the Priestly Code is also autumnal. /1/ The _yom teruah_ (Leviticus xxiii 24, 2;;

1. In this way Tabernacles comes not before but after new year; this probably is connected with the more definite dating (on the fifteenth day of the month), but is quite contrary to the old custom and the meaning of the feast.

Numbers xxix. 1 seq.) falls on the first new moon of autumn, and it follows from a tradition confirmed by Leviticus xxv. 9, 10, that this day was celebrated as new year [R)# H#NH). But it is always spoken of as the first of the seventh month. That is to say, the civil new year has been separated from the ecclesiastical and been transferred to spring; the ecclesiastical can only be regarded as a relic surviving from an earlier period, and betrays strikingly the priority of the division of the year that prevailed in the time of the older monarchy. It appears to have first begun to give way under the influence of the Babylonians, who observed the spring era. /1/ For the designation of the

1. In Exodus xii. 2 this change of era is formally commanded by Moses: "This month (the pa.s.sover month) shall be the beginning of months unto you, it shall be to you the first of the months of the year." According to George Smith, the a.s.syrian year commenced at the vernal equinox; the a.s.syrian use depends on the Babylonian (a.s.syrian Eponym Canon, p. 19).

months by numbers instead of by the old Hebrew names, Abib, Zif, Bul, Ethanim and the like,--a style which arises together with the use of the spring era,--does not yet occur in Deuteronomy (xvi.1), but apart from the Priestly Code, and the last redactor of the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy i. 3) is found for the first time in writers of the period of the exile. It is first found in Jeremiah, but only in those portions of his book which were not committed to writing by him, or at least have been edited by a later hand; /2/

2. Kuenen, Hist.-Krit. Onderzoek (1863), ii. pp. 197, 214.

then in Ezekiel and the author of the Book of Kings, who explains the names he found in his source by giving the numbers (1Kings vi. 37, 38, viii. 2); next in Haggai and Zechariah; and lastly in Chronicles, though here already the Babylonio-Syrian names of the months, which at first were not used in Hebrew, have begun to find their way in (Nehemiah i. 1, ii. 1; Zech. i. 7). The Syrian names are always given along with the numbers in the Book of Esther, and are used to the exclusion of all others in that of Maccabees. It would be absurd to attempt to explain this demonstrable change which took place in the calendar after the exile as a mere incidental effect of the Priestly Code, hitherto in a state of suspended animation, rather than by reference to general causes arising from the circ.u.mstances of the time, under whose influence the Priestly Code itself also stood, and which then had for their result a complete change in the greater accuracy and more general applicability of the methods by which time was reckoned. A similar phenomenon presents itself in connection with the metric system. The "shekel of the sanctuary," often mentioned in the Priestly Code, and there only, cannot possibly have borne this name until the most natural objects of the old Israelite _regime_ had begun to appear surrounded by a legendary nimbus, because themselves no longer in actual existence.

Over against it we have the "king's weight" mentioned in a gloss in 2Samuel xiv. 26, the king being none other than the great king of Babylon. It is an interesting circ.u.mstance that the "shekel of the sanctuary "spoken of in the Priestly Code is still the ordinary shekel in Ezekiel; compare Exodus x.x.x. 13 with Ezekiel xliv. 12.

During the exile the observance of the ecclesiastical new year seems to have taken place not on the first but on the tenth of the seventh month (Leviticus xxv. 9; Ezekiel xl. 1), and there is nothing to be wondered at in this, after once it had come to be separated from the actual beginning of the year. /1/ This fact alone

1. The tenth of the month is to be taken in Ezekiel as strictly new year's day; for the designation R)# H#NH occurs in no other meaning than this, and moreover it is by no mere accident that the prophet has his vision of the new Jerusalem precisely at the new year.

But according to Leviticus xxv. 9 it is the seventh month that is meant, on the tenth day of which the trumpets are blown at the commencement of the year of jubilee.

would suffice to bring into a clear light the late origin of the great day of atonement in Leviticus xvi., which at a subsequent period was observed on this date; for although as a ceremonial of general purification that day occurs appropriately enough at the change of the year, the joyful sound of the new year trumpets ill befits its quiet solemnity, the YWM TRW(H in the Priestly Code being in fact fixed for the first of the seventh month.

Notwithstanding its conspicuous importance, there is nothing known of the great day of atonement either in the Jehovistic and Deuteronomic portions of the Pentateuch or in the historical and prophetical books. It first begins to show itself in embryo during the exile. Ezekiel (xiv. 18-20) appoints two great expiations at the beginning of the two halves of the year; for in xiv. 20 the LXX must be accepted, which reads B#B(Y BXD#, "in the seventh month at new moon." The second of these, in autumn, is similar to that of the Priestly Code, only that it falls on the first and new year on the tenth, while in the latter, on the contrary, new year is observed on the first and the atonement on the tenth; the ritual is also much simpler. Zechariah towards the end of the sixth century looks back upon two regular fast days, in the fifth and the seventh month, as having been in observance for seventy years, that is, from the beginning of the exile (vii. 5), and to these he adds (viii. 19) two others in the fourth and in the tenth. They refer, according to the very probable explanation of C. B. Michaelis, to the historical days of calamity which preceded the exile. On the ninth day of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jeremiah x.x.xix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth the city and the temple were burnt (2Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was murdered, and all that remained of the Jewish state annihilated (Jeremiah xli.); in the tenth the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar was begun (2Kings xxv. 1). Zechariah also still knows nothing of the great day of atonement in Leviticus xvi., but only mentions among others the fast of the seventh month as having subsisted for seventy years. Even in 444 B.C., the year of the publication of the Pentateuch by Ezra, the great day of atonement has not yet come into force. Ezra begins the reading of the law in the beginning of the seventh month, and afterwards the feast of tabernacles is observed on the fifteenth; of an atoning solemnity on the tenth of the month not a word is said in the circ.u.mstantial narrative, which, moreover, is one specially interested in the liturgical element, but it is made up for on the twenty-fourth (Nehemiah viii., ix.). This _testimonium e silentio_ is enough; down to that date the great day of the Priestly Code (now introduced for the first time) had not existed. /1/ The term is

1. "If Leviticus xvi. belongs to the original of the Priestly Code, and the entire Pentateuch was published by Ezra in the year 444, and yet the day was not then celebrated, then it has _ipso facto_ been conceded that it is possible that there can be laws which yet are not carried into effect." So writes Dillmann in his introduction to Leviticus xvi. (1880, p. 525); every one will grant him that the law, before it could attain public currency, must have been previously written and promulgated.

partly fixed, following Ezekiel, by reference to the old new year's day (Leviticus xxv. 9); partly, following Zechariah, by reference to the fast of Gedaliah, which indeed was still observed later as a separate solemnity.

Even before the exile general fast days doubtless occurred, but they were specially appointed, and always arose out of extraordinary occasions, when some sin was brought home to the public conscience, or when the divine anger threatened, especially in connection with calamities affecting the produce of the soil (1Kings xxi. 9, 12; Jeremiah xiv. 12, x.x.xvi. 6, 9; Joel i. 14, ii. 12, 15). In the exile they began to be a regular custom (Isaiah lviii.), doubtless in the first instance in remembrance of the _dies atri_ that had been experienced, but also in a certain measure as a surrogate, suited to the circ.u.mstances, for the joyous popular gatherings of Easter, Pentecost, and Tabernacles which were possible only in the Holy Land. /l/

1. After the second destruction of Jerusalem by t.i.tus, the system of fasts received such an impulse that it was necessary to draw up a list of the days on which fasting was forbidden.

At last they came into a position of co-ordination with the feasts, and became a stated and very important element of the ordinary worship.

In the Priestly Code, the great fast in the tenth of the seventh month is the holiest day of all the year. Nothing could ill.u.s.trate more clearly the contrast between the new cultus and the old; fixing its regard at all points on sin and its atonement, it reaches its culmination in a great atoning solemnity. It is as if the temper of the exile had carried itself into the time of liberation also, at least during the opening centuries; as if men had felt themselves not as in an earlier age only momentarily and in special circ.u.mstances, but unceasingly, under the leaden pressure of sin and wrath. It is hardly necessary to add here expressly that also in regard to the day of atonement as a day sacred above all others the Priestly Code became authoritative for the post-exilian period. "Ritual and sacrifice have through the misfortunes of the times disappeared, but this has retained all its old sacredness; unless a man has wholly cut himself adrift from Judaism he keeps this day, however indifferent he may be to all its other usages and feasts."

III.IV. [.1?]

A word, lastly, on the lunar feasts, that is, new moon and Sabbath.

That the two are connected cannot be gathered from the Pentateuch, but something of the sort is implied in Amos viii. 5, and 2Kings iv. 22, 23. In Amos the corn-dealers, impatient of every interruption of their trade, exclaim, "When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn; and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?" In the other pa.s.sage the husband of the woman of Shunem, when she begs him for an a.s.s and a servant that she may go to the prophet Elisha, asks why it is that she proposes such a journey now, for "it is neither new moon nor Sabbath;" it is not Sunday, as we might say. Probably the Sabbath was originally regulated by the phases of the moon, and thus occurred on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first (and twenty-eighth) day of the month, the new moon being reckoned as the first; at least no other explanation can be discovered. /2/ For that the week should

2 George Smith, a.s.syrian Eponymn Canon, pp. 19, 20. "Among the a.s.syrians the first twenty-eight days of every month were divided into four weeks of seven days each, the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eight days respectively being Sabbaths; and there was a general prohibition of work on these days."

See further Hyde, Hist. Rel. Vet. Pers., p. 239. Among the Syrians $bbh means the week, just as among the Arabs _sanba_ and _sanbata_ (Pl. _sanabit_), dim. _suneibita_) mean a period of time (Lagarde, Ps. Hieronymi; p. 158), and in fact, according to the lexicographers, a comparatively long one. But in the sole case cited by the _Tag al 'Arus_, it means rather a short interval.

"What is youth? It is the beginning of a _sanbata_," meaning something like the Sunday of a week. According to this it would appear as if the sabbath had been originally the week itself, and only afterwards became the weekly festival day. The ident.i.ty of the Syriac word (ta sabbata) in the New Testament) with the Hebrew is guaranteed by the twofold Arabic form.

be conditioned by the seven planets seems very barely credible.

It was not until after people had got their seven days that they began to call them after the seven planets; /1/

1. The peculiar order in which the names of the planets are used to designate the days of the week makes this very clear; see Ideler, Handb. d. Chron. i. 178 seq., ii 77 seq.

the number seven is the only bond of connection between them.

Doubtless the week is older than the names of its days.

Lunar feasts, we may safely say, are in every case older than annual or harvest feasts; and certainly they are so in the case of the Hebrews. In the pre-historic period the new moon must have been observed with such preference that an ancient name for it, which is no longer found in Biblical Hebrew, even furnished the root of the general word for a festive occasion, which is used for the vintage feast in a pa.s.sage so early as Judges ix. 27. /2/

2. Sprenger (Leben Moh. iii. 527) and Lagarde have rightly correlated the Hebrew _hallel_ with the Arabic _ahalla_ (to call out, _labbaika_, see, for example Abulf. i. p. 180). But there is no uncertainty as to the derivation of _ahalla_ from _hilal_ (new moon) *****************************************

But it is established by historical testimonies besides that the new moon festival anciently stood, at least, on a level with that of the Sabbath. Compare 1Samuel xx. 5, 6; ~2Kings iv. 23; Annos viii. 5; Isa i. 13; Hos. ii. 13 (A.V. 11). In the Jehovistic and Deuteronomic legislation, however, it is completely ignored, and if it comes into somewhat greater prominence in that of Ezekiel and the Priestly Code (but without being for a moment to be compared with the Sabbath), this perhaps has to do with the circ.u.mstance that in the latter the great festivals are regulated by the new moon, and that therefore it is important that this should be observed. It may have been with a deliberate intention that the new moon festival was thrust aside on account of all sorts of heathenish superst.i.tion which readily a.s.sociated themselves with it; but, on the other hand, it is possible that the undersigned preponderance gained by the Sabbath may have ultimately given it independence, and led to the reckoning of time by regular intervals of seven days without regard to new moon, with which now it came into collision, instead of, as formerly, being supported by it.

As a lunar festival doubtless the Sabbath also went back to a very remote antiquity. But with the Israelites the day acquired an altogether peculiar significance whereby it was distinguished from all other feast days; it became the day of rest _par excellence_. Originally the rest is only a consequence of the feast, e.g. that of the harvest festival after the period of severe labour; the new moons also were marked in this way (Amos viii. 5; 2Kings iv. 23). In the case of the Sabbath also, rest is, properly speaking, only the consequence of the fact that the day is the festal and sacrificial day of the week (Isaiah i. 13; Ezekiel xlvi. 1 seq.), on which the shewbread was laid out; but here, doubtless on account of the regularity with which it every eighth day interrupted the round of everyday work, this gradually became the essential attribute. In the end even its name came to be interpreted as if derived from the verb "to rest."

But as a day of rest it cannot be so very primitive in its origin; in this attribute it presupposes agriculture and a tolerably hard-pressed working-day life. With this it agrees that an intensification of the rest of the Sabbath among the Israelites admits of being traced in the course of the history. The highest development, amounting even to a change of quality, is seen in the Priestly Code.

According to 2Kings iv. 22, 23, one has on Sabbath time for occupations that are not of an everyday kind; servant and a.s.s can be taken on a journey which is longer than that "of a Sabbath day." In Hos. ii. 13 (11) we read, "I make an end of all your joy, your feasts, your new moons and your Sabbaths," that is to say, the last-named share with the first the happy joyousness which is impossible in the exile which Jehovah threatens. With the Jehovist and the Deuteronomist the Sabbath, which, it is true, is already extended in Amos viii. 5 to commerce, is an inst.i.tution specially for agriculture; it is the day of refreshment for the people and the cattle, and is accordingly employed for social ends in the same way as the sacrificial meal is (Exodus xx. 10, xxiii. 12, x.x.xiv. 21; Deuteronomy v. 13, 14).

Although the moral turn given to the observance is genuinely Israelitic and not original, yet the rest even here still continues to be a feast, a satisfaction for the labouring cla.s.ses; for what is enjoined as a duty--upon the Israelite rulers, that is, to whom the legislation is directed--is less that they should rest than that they should give rest. In the Priestly Code, on the contrary, the rest of the Sabbath has nothing at all of the nature of the joyous breathing-time from the load of life which a festival affords, but is a thing for itself, which separates the Sabbath not only from the week days, but also from the festival days, and approaches an ascetic exercise much more nearly than a restful refreshment. It is taken in a perfectly abstract manner, not as rest from ordinary work, but as rest absolutely. On the holy day it is not lawful to leave the camp to gather sticks or manna (Exod. xvi.; Numbers xv.), not even to kindle a fire or cook a meal (Exodus x.x.xv. 3); this rest is in fact a sacrifice of abstinence from all occupation, for which preparation must already begin on the preceding day (Exodus xvi.). Of the Sabbath of the Priestly Code in fact it could not be said that it was made for man (Mark ii. 27); rather is it a statute that presents itself with all the rigour of a law of nature, having its reason with itself, and being observed even by the Creator. The original narrative of the Creation, according to which G.o.d finished His work on the seventh day, and therefore sanctified it, is amended so as to be made to say that He finished in six days and rested on the seventh. /1/

1 The contradiction is indubitable when in Genesis ii. 2 it is said in the first place that on the seventh day G.o.d ended the work which He had made; and then that He rested on the seventh day from His work. Obviously the second clause is an authentic interpretation added from very intelligible motives.

Tendencies to such an exaggeration of the Sabbath rest as would make it absolute are found from the Chaldaean period. While Isaiah, regarding the Sabbath purely as a sacrificial day, says, "Bring no more vain oblations; it is an abominable incense unto me; new moon and Sabbath, the temple a.s.sembly---I cannot endure iniquity and solemn meeting," Jeremiah, on the other hand, is the first of the prophets who stands up for a stricter sanctification of the seventh day, treating it, however, merely as a day of rest: "Bear no burden on the Sabbath day, neither bring in by the gates of Jerusalem nor carry forth a burden out of your houses, neither do ye any work" (xvii. 21, 22). He adds that this precept had indeed been given to the fathers, but hitherto has not been kept; thus, what was traditional appears to have been only the abstinence from field work and perhaps also from professional pursuits. In this respect the att.i.tude of Jeremiah is that which is taken also by his exilian followers, not merely by Ezekiel (xx. 16, xxii. 263 but also by the Great Unknown (Isaiah lvi. 2, lviii. 13), who does not otherwise manifest any express partiality for cultus. While according to Hos. ii. 13, and even Lam. ii. 6, the Sabbath, as well as the rest of the acts of divine worship, must cease outside of the Holy Land, it in fact gained in importance to an extraordinary degree during the exile, having severed itself completely, not merely from agriculture, but in particular also from the sacrificial system, and gained entire independence as a holy solemnity of rest. Accordingly, it became along with circ.u.mcision the symbol that bound together the Jewish diaspora; thus already in the Priestly Code the two inst.i.tutions are the general distinguishing marks of religion [)WT Genesis xvii.

10, 11; Exodus x.x.xi. 13] which also continue to subsist under circ.u.mstances where as in the exile the conditions of the Mosaic worship are not present (Genesis ii. 3, xvii. 12, 13). The trouble which in the meantime the organisers of the church of the second temple had in forcing into effect the new and strict regulations is clear from Nehemiah xiii. 15 seq. But they were ultimately successful. The solemnisation of the Sabbath in Judaism continued to develop logically on the basis of the priestly legislation, but always approximating with increasing nearness to the idea; of absolute rest, so that for the straitest sect of the Pharisees the business of preparing for the sacred day absorbed the whole week, and half man's life, so to speak, existed for it alone. "From Sunday onwards think of the Sabbath," says Shammai. Two details are worthy of special prominence; the distinction between _yom tob_ and _shabbath_, comparable to that drawn by the Puritans between Sundays and feast days, and the discussion as to whether the Sabbath was broken by divine worship; both bring into recognition that tendency of the Priestly Code in which the later custom separates itself from its original roots.

III.IV.2. Connected with the Sabbath is the sabbatical year.