The History of Antiquity Volume Ii Part 14

At these three festivals, "thrice in the year, all the males of Israel must appear before Jehovah."[385] Such was the law of the priests. It was the intention of the priests that the three great festivals should be celebrated at the dwelling of Jehovah, _i.e._ at the tabernacle, and afterwards at the temple; hence at the great festivals the Israelites were to go to Jerusalem. But the strict carrying out of such a common celebration was opposed to the character of the festivals themselves. We saw that even when the sacred ark still stood at Shiloh, pilgrimages were made thither once a year at the festival of Jehovah. After the erection of the tabernacle and the temple this, no doubt, took place more frequently, and the numbers were greater. Yet the object of the priests could not be completely realised. The paschal festival was the redemption of the separate house, of each individual family. This meaning and object was very definitely stamped on the ritual. In a similar manner, the feast of the beginning of harvest and of the first fruits required celebration at home, on the plot of land, and this was still more the case with the festival of thanksgiving for the completed harvest.

Before the people rejoiced in the blessing of the completed harvest at the feast of tabernacles, all misdeeds which might have defiled the year to that time must be cancelled and removed by a special sacrifice. For this object the law on this occasion made a requirement never demanded at any other time. From the evening of the ninth to the evening of the tenth day there was not only a cessation of business, but a strict fast was kept. Every man among the people must subject himself to this regulation, and he who transgressed it was threatened with the loss of his life.[386] The high priest had first to cleanse himself and the other priests, and then the dwelling of Jehovah; for even the sanctuary might be defiled by the inadvertence of the priests. When the high priest had bathed he must clothe himself in a coat and trousers of white linen, with a girdle and head-band of the same material, and offer a young bull as a sin offering. Bearing a vessel filled with the blood of this victim, and with the censer from the altar of incense in the interior of the sanctuary, which contained burning coals and frankincense, the high priest went alone into the holy of holies, behind the curtain before the ark of the covenant. Immediately on his entrance the clouds arising from the censer must fill the chamber, that the priest might not see the face of Jehovah over the cherubs and die. Then the high priest sprinkled the blood from the vessel seven times towards the ark, and when thus cleansed he turned back to the court of the sanctuary, in which two goats stood ready for sacrifice. He cast lots which of the two should be sacrificed to Jehovah and which to Azazel, the evil spirit of the desert. When the lot was cast, the high priest laid his hand on the head of the goat a.s.signed to Azazel, confessed all the sins and transgressions of Israel on this goat, and laid them on his head, in order that he might carry them into the desert-land into which the goat was driven from the sanctuary. Then the high priest slew the other goat a.s.signed to Jehovah, and, returning into the holy of holies, sprinkled with his blood the ark of the covenant for the second time, in order to purify the people. When the altar of incense, in the outer part of the sanctuary, had been sprinkled in a similar manner, the high priest declared that Jehovah was appeased. After a second bath he put on his usual robes, and offered three rams as burnt offerings for himself, the priesthood, and the nation.[387]

All sacrifices were to be offered at the tabernacle, "before the dwelling of Jehovah;" and afterwards in like manner in the temple. The law of the priests threatened any one with death who sacrificed elsewhere.[388] The most essential regulations for the offering of sacrifice are perhaps the following:--Any one who intended to bring an offering must purify himself for several days. Wild animals could not be offered. In the Hebrew conception the sacrifice is the surrender of a part of a man's possessions and enjoyments. Hence only domestic offerings could be offered, because only these are really property.

Cattle, sheep, and goats were the animals appointed for sacrifice. The poorer people were also allowed to offer doves. Each victim must be without blemish and healthy, and it must not be weakened and desecrated by labour. Before the animal was killed the sacrificer laid his hand on its head for a time; then he who offered the sacrifice, whether priest or layman, slew the victim, but only the priest could receive the warm blood in the sacrificial vessel. With this vessel in his hand the priest went round the altar and sprinkled the feet, the corners, and the sides of it with the blood of the victim. In the Hebrew conception the life of the victim was in its blood, and thus the sprinklings which were to be made with it form the most important part of the holy ceremony. From ancient times the burnt offering was the most solemn kind of sacrifice.

Only male animals, and, as a rule, bulls and rams, could be offered as burnt offerings. When they had been slain and skinned these offerings were entirely burnt in the fire on the altar, without any part being enjoyed by the sacrificer or the priest, as was the case in other kinds of offerings; only the skin fell to the share of the priests. As the burnt offering was intended to gain the favour of Jehovah, so were the sin offerings intended to appease his anger and blot out transgressions.

For sin offerings female animals were used as a rule, as male animals for the burnt offerings,[389] but young bulls and he-goats were also offered as expiatory offerings for the whole people, and for oversights or transgressions of the priests in the ritual, and for sin offerings for princes. In sin offerings only certain parts of the entrails were burnt, the kidneys, the liver, and other parts; and in this sacrifice the priests sprinkled the blood on the horns of the altar; the flesh which was not burned belonged to the priests. In thank offerings and offerings of slaughter (so called because in these the slaying and eating of the victim was the princ.i.p.al matter) only the fat was burnt, the priests kept the breast and the right thigh,[390] the rest was eaten by the sacrificer at a banquet with the guests whom he had invited; but this banquet must be held at the place of sacrifice, on the same or at any rate on the following day. Drink offerings consisted of libations of wine, which were poured on and round the altar (libations of water are also mentioned, though not in the law, p. 115); the food offerings in fruits, corn, and white meal, which the priests threw into the fire of the altar; in bread and cookery, which, drenched with oil and sprinkled with salt and incense, was partly burned, and partly fell to the lot of the priests. Lastly, the incense offerings consisted in the burning of incense, which did not take place, like the other sacrifices, on the larger altar in the court of the sanctuary, but on the small altar, which stood in the s.p.a.ce before the holy of holies of the tabernacle, and afterwards of the temple.[391]

According to the law, a service was to be continually going on in the dwelling of Jehovah. The sacred fire on the altar in the interior of the tabernacle was never to be quenched; before the holy of holies on the sacred table twelve unleavened loaves always lay sprinkled with salt and incense, as a symbolical and continual offering of the twelve tribes.

Each Sabbath this bread was renewed, and the loaves when removed fell to the priests. Before the curtain of the holy of holies the candlestick with seven lamps was always burning, and every morning and evening the priests of the temple were to offer a male sheep as a burnt offering at the dwelling of Jehovah, and two sheep on the morning and evening of the Sabbath. The high priest had also to make an offering of corn every morning and evening.[392]

Beside the sacrifice, the law of the priests required the observance of a whole series of regulations for purity. It is not merely bodily cleanliness which these laws required of the Israelites, nor is it merely a natural abhorrence of certain disgusting objects which lies at the base of these prescriptions; it is not merely that to the simple mind physical and moral purity appear identical, that moral evil is conceived as a defilement of the body; nor are these regulations merely intended to place a certain restriction on natural states and impulses.

These factors had their weight, but beside them all a certain side of nature and of the natural life was set apart as impure and unholy. The laws of purity among the Israelites are far less strict and comprehensive than those of the Egyptians and the Indians; but if we unite them with the ritual by which transgressions of these rules were done away and made good, they form a system entering somewhat deeply into the life of the nation.

For the laity also the law required and prescribed cleanliness of clothing. Stuffs of two kinds might not be worn; pomegranates must be fixed on the corners of the robe. The field and vineyard might not be sown with two kinds of seed; nor could ox and a.s.s be yoked together before the plough.[393] Certain animals were unclean, and these might not be eaten. The clean and permitted food was obtained from oxen, sheep, goats, and in wild animals from deer, wild-goats, and gazelles, and in fact from all animals which ruminate and have cloven feet.

Unclean are all flesh-eating animals with paws, and more especially the camel, the swine, the hare, and the coney. Of fish, those only might be eaten which have fins and scales; all fish resembling snakes, like eels, might not be eaten. Most water-fowl are unclean; pigeons and quails, on the other hand, were permitted food. All creeping things, winged or not, with the exception of locusts, are forbidden.[394] Moreover, if the permitted animals were not slain in the proper manner their flesh was unclean; if it had "died of itself," or was strangled, or torn by wild beasts,[395] the use of the blood of the animal was most strictly forbidden, "for the life of all flesh is the blood;" even of the animals which might be eaten the blood must be poured on the earth and covered with earth.[396] As the eating of forbidden food made a man unclean, so also did all s.e.xual functions of man or woman, and all diseases connected with these functions, including lying in child-bed. Every one was also unclean on whose body was "a rising scab or bright spot," but above all the white leprosy rendered the sufferer unclean.[397] Finally, any contact with the corpse of man or beast, whether intentional or accidental, rendered a man unclean. The house in which a man died, with all the utensils, was unclean; any one who touched a grave or a human bone was tainted.[398]

The priestly regulations set forth in great detail the ceremonies, the washings and sacrifices, by which defilements were to be removed. The unclean person must avoid the sanctuary, and even society and contact with others, till the time of his purification, which in serious defilements can only begin after the lapse of a certain time. In the more grievous cases ordinary water did not suffice for the cleansing, but from the ashes of a red cow without blemish, which was slain as a sin offering and entirely burnt, the priest prepared a special water of purification with cedar wood and bunches of hyssop. The reception of healed lepers required the most careful preparations and most scrupulous manipulations.

Among the regulations of purity is reckoned the custom of circ.u.mcision, which was practised among the Israelites, and retained by the law. Yet the reason for this peculiar custom, which according to the regulations of the priests was performed on the eighth day after birth, the first day of the second week of life,[399] seems to lie in other motives rather than in the desire to remove a certain part of the male body which was regarded as unclean. We saw above that according to the old conception of the Israelites the firstborn must be ransomed from Jehovah, that the life of all boys, if it was to be secured, must be purchased from Jehovah (I. 414, 448). Hence, if we may follow the hint of an obscure narrative, it is not improbable that circ.u.mcision of the reproductive member was a vicarious blood-sacrifice for the life of the boy. When Moses returned from the land of Midian to Egypt--so we learn from the Ephraimitic text--"Jehovah met him in the inn, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and he departed from him."[400] To the Israelites circ.u.mcision was a symbol of their connection with the nation, of their covenant with Jehovah and selection by him.

The most important part of the purity of the people of Jehovah was their maintenance of his worship, the strict severance of Israel from the religion of their neighbours and community with them. It was now seen what influence living and mingling with the Canaanites had exercised in the national worship, and it was perceived what an attraction the Syrian rites had presented for centuries to the nation, and what a power they still had upon them. Hence even Moses was said to have given the command to destroy the altars and images of the Canaanites, to drive out all the Canaanites, and make neither covenant nor marriage with them.[401] The law forbade sacrifices to Moloch under penalty of death; any one who did so was to be stoned. Those who made offerings to other G.o.ds than Jehovah were to be "accursed" (I. 499). Wizards were also to be stoned.[402] "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any mark upon you. Do not prost.i.tute thy daughter to cause her to play the harlot."[403] All these are commands directed against the manners, funeral customs, and religious worship of the Canaanites. Strangers were not to be received into the community and people of Israel; nor could Israelites contract marriage with women who were not Israelites; it is only the later law which allows women captured in war to be taken into the marriage bed.[404] These are the "misanthropical" laws of the Jews of which Tacitus speaks with such deep aversion.

The law a.s.signed a far-reaching religious influence to the priests. They alone could turn the favour of Jehovah towards his people by correct and effective sacrifices, and appease his wrath; they announced the will of Jehovah by his oracle; in regard to diseases and leprosy, they exercised police functions over the whole nation by means of the regulations for cleanliness and food; they could exclude any one at their discretion from the sacrifices and, consequently, from the community; and, in fine, they were in possession of the skill and knowledge with which the people were unacquainted. The priesthood arranged the chronology and the festivals, they supervised weights and measures,[405] they knew the history of the people in past ages, and their ancient covenant with the G.o.d of the ancestors. From their knowledge of the ordinances of Jehovah followed the claim which the priests made to watch over the application of these ordinances in life, the administration of law and justice. But at first this claim was put forward modestly. The old regulations about the right of blood in the time-honoured observances of justice were added to the law of ritual when this was written down (I. 385, 484); they were modified here and there by the views of the priesthood, and in some points essentially extended; and now, like the ordinances for the places of sacrifice, mode of worship, and purification, they stood opposed in many regulations to real life as ideal but hardly practicable standards.

According to the view of the priests Jehovah was the true possessor of the land of Israel. He had given it to his people for tenure and use.

From this conception the law derived very peculiar conclusions, which might be of essential advantage for retaining the property of the families in their hands, for keeping up the family and their possessions, on which the Hebrews laid weight, and for proprietors when in debt. To aid the debtor against the creditor, the poor against the rich, the labourer against him who gave the work, the slave against his master, is in other ways also the obvious object of the law.

As all work must cease on the seventh day, the day of Jehovah, so must there be a similar cessation in the seventh year, which is therefore called the Sabbath year. In every seventh year the Israelites were to allow the land which Jehovah had let to them to lie fallow, in honour of the real owner. In this year the land was not sowed, nor the vine-trees cut, nor the wild beast driven from the field, every one must seek on the fallow what had grown there without culture. If this Sabbath of the seventh year was kept Jehovah would send such increase on the preceding sixth year that there should be no want.[406] When this period of seven fallow years had occurred seven times the circle appeared to be complete, and from this point of view the law ordained that at such a time everything should return to the original position. Hence, when the seventh Sabbath year was seven times repeated (in the year of Jubilee) not only was agriculture stopped, but all alienated property, with the buildings and belongings, went back to the original owner or his heirs.[407] The consequence was that properties were never really sold, but the use of them was a.s.signed to others, and hence, even before the year of Jubilee, the owner could redeem his land by paying the value of the produce which would be yielded before the year of Jubilee.

But the priests were far from being able to carry out these extended requirements which proceeded from the sanct.i.ty of the Sabbath, and from the conception that the land of Israel belonged to Jehovah, and every family held their property from Jehovah himself, and which were intended to make plain the true nature of the property of the Israelites. It was an ideal picture which they set up, and hardly so much as an attempt was made to carry it out. They could reckon with more certainty on obedience to a law which ordained that no interest was to be taken from the poor, and no poor man's mantle was to be taken in pledge.[408] Nevertheless, the law of debt was severe. If the debtor could not pay his debt before a fixed time the creditor was allowed to pay himself with the moveable and fixed property of the debtor; he could sell his wife and children, and even the debtor himself, as slaves, or use him as a slave in his own service.

For the legal process we find in the law no more than the regulation "that one witness shall not bear evidence against a man for his death,"

_i.e._ that one witness was not sufficient to establish a serious charge, that "injustice shall not be done in judgment, that the person of the small shall not be disregarded, nor the person of the great honoured;" "according to law thou shalt judge thy neighbour."[409] For every injury done to the person or property of another, the guilty shall make reparation. We know already the old ordinances which require life for life, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth (I. 485). Injury to property and possession was to be fully compensated; even the injury done by his beast was to be compensated by the master. Theft was merely punished by restoring four or five times the value of the stolen goods. If the thief could not pay this compensation he was handed over to the injured man as a slave. But any one who steals a man in order to keep him as a slave, or to sell him, was to be punished with death.[410] If a murder was committed, the avenger of blood, _i.e._ the nearest relative and heir of the murdered man, was to pursue the murderer and slay him, wherever he met him, as soon as it was established by two persons that he was really guilty. The law even forbade the avenger of blood to accept a ransom instead of taking the life of the guilty, because the land was desecrated by the blood of the murdered man, "and the land is not cleansed from the blood spilt, save by the blood of the murderer." An exception was allowed only when one man slew another by accident, and without any fault of his own, and not out of hostility or hatred. In this case the slayer was to fly into one of the six cities which were marked out as cities of refuge.[411] From the elders of the city the pursuing avenger of blood was to demand the delivery of the slayer, and they were to decide whether the act was done from hatred and hostility, or was merely an accident. If the elders decided in favour of the first alternative, they were to give up the guilty into the hands of the avenger of blood, that he might die. In the other case, the slayer must remain in the city of refuge till the death of the high priest, and the avenger was free from the guilt of bloodshed if before that time he met him beyond the confines of the city of refuge and slew him.[412] The regulations of the priests even went so far as to lay down a rule that if a savage bull slew a man the bull was not only to be stoned, and not eaten as an unclean animal, but his master also must die, or at any rate pay a ransom, if he knew that the animal was savage, and yet did not control him.[413]

Among the people of the East the wealthier men did not content themselves with one wife. This custom prevailed in Israel also. The law of the priests did not oppose a custom which had an example and justification in the narratives of the patriarchs. The Israelites also followed the general custom of the East, in purchasing the wife from her father, and recompensing the father for the loss of a useful piece of property--for the two working hands which he lost when he gave away his daughter from his house. Thus Jacob obtained the daughters of Laban by a service of 14 years. The price of a wife purchased for marriage from the father seems to have been from 15 to 50 shekels of silver (36_s._ to 125_s._).[414] The conclusion of the marriage was marked by a special festivity, after which the bride was carried by her parents into the nuptial chamber. The prost.i.tution of maidens in honour of the G.o.ddess of birth, so common among the neighbouring nations, was strictly forbidden by the book of the law. The daughter of a priest who began to prost.i.tute herself was to be burnt with fire, because she thus "defiled not herself only, but also her father."[415] The man who seduced a virgin was compelled to purchase her for his wife, and even if her father would not give her to wife he was to pay him the usual purchase-money. Adultery was punished by the law with even greater severity than violations of chast.i.ty before marriage. The adulteress, together with the man who had seduced her into a violation of the marriage bond, were to be put to death.[416] If a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness without being able to prove it against her a divine judgment was to decide the matter.

The priest was to lead man and wife before Jehovah. Then he was to draw holy water in an earthen pitcher, and throw dust swept from the floor of the dwelling of Jehovah into this, and say to the woman, "If thou hast not offended in secret against thy husband, remain unpunished by this water of sorrow, that bringeth the curse; but if thou hast sinned, may this water go into thy body and cause thy thighs to rot, and may Jehovah make thee a curse and an oath among thy people." The woman answered, "So be it;" and when the priest had dipped in the water a sheet written with the words of this curse, she was compelled to drink it.[417] Thus the woman was brought to confession, or was freed from the suspicion of her husband.

Marriages were forbidden not only with strange women, but also within certain degrees of relationship; in which were included not only those close degrees, to which there is a natural abhorrence, but also such as did not exclude marriage in other nations. In this matter the law of the priests proceeded from the sound view that marriage did not belong to a natural connection already in existence, but was intended to found a new relationship. Not only was marriage forbidden with a mother, with any wife or concubine of the father, with a sister, a daughter, or granddaughter, a widowed daughter-in-law; but also with an aunt on the father's or mother's side, with a stepsister, or sister by marriage, with a sister-in-law, or wife's sister so long as the wife lived.[418]

The husband purchased his wife as a chattel; hence in marriage she continued to live in entire dependence beside her husband. The husband could not commit adultery as against his wife; it was the right of another husband which was injured by the seduction of the wife. It rested with the husband to take as many wives as he chose beside his first wife, and as many concubines from his handmaids and female slaves as seemed good to him. The husband could put away his wife if she "found no favour in his eyes," while the wife, on her part, could not dissolve the marriage, or demand a separation; she possessed no legal will. Like the wife, the children stood to the father in a relation of the most complete dependence. Nor only did he sell his daughters for marriage, he could give them as pledges, or even sell them as slaves, but not out of the land;[419] and though the father was not allowed to sell the son as a slave, he could turn him out of his house. Obedience and reverence towards parents were impressed strongly on children, even in the earliest regulations derived from the time of Moses. The son who curses his father or mother, or strikes them, must be put to death.[420] The first-born son is the heir of the house; after the death of the father he is the head of the family, and succeeds to his rights over the younger sons and the females. It is not clear whether the law allows any claims to the moveable inheritance to any of the sons besides the eldest, to whom the immoveable property pa.s.sed absolutely; the sons of concubines and slaves had no right of inheritance if there were sons in existence by legitimate marriage. Daughters could only inherit if there were no sons. The heiress could not marry beyond the tribe, in order that the inheritance might at least fall to the lot of a tribesman. If there were neither sons nor daughters, the brother of the father was the heir, and then the uncles of the father.[421]

The law attempts to fix and ameliorate the position of day-labourers and slaves. "The hire of the labourer shall not remain with thee till the morrow."[422] The number of slaves appears to have been considerable.

They were partly captives taken in war, and partly strangers purchased in the way of trade; partly Hebrews who, when detected in thieving, could not pay the compensation, or who could not pay their debts, or Hebrew daughters sold by their parents. The marriages of slaves increased their number. The law required that slaves should rest on the Sabbath day;[423] and even the oldest regulations restrict the right of the master over the life of his slave by laying down the rule that the slave shall be free if his master has inflicted a severe wound upon him, and that the master must be punished if he has slain his slave.[424] The slave who was a born Israelite might be ransomed by his kindred, if they could pay the sum required.[425] The Hebrew slave was treated by his master as a hired labourer, and hind.[426] When the Hebrew slave had served six years his master was compelled to set him free without ransom in the seventh year. A Hebrew could only remain in slavery for ever when, after six years of service, he voluntarily declared that he wished to remain with his master; then, as a sign that he permanently belonged to the house of his master, his ear was pierced on the door-post with an awl.

FOOTNOTES:

[368] Exod. xiii. 2; Numbers iii. 5-51; viii. 16.

[369] Numbers xviii. 20-26.

[370] Vol. i. 488, 502.

[371] Numbers xviii. 8-20.

[372] Levit. xxvii. 29-33.

[373] Genesis xiv. 20; xxviii. 22.

[374] Exod. x.x.x. 11-16; x.x.xviii. 25-28.

[375] Levit. xxi. 16-21.

[376] Levit. xxi. 5.

[377] Exod. xx. 26.

[378] Exod. xxviii. 31-35; x.x.xix. 22-27.

[379] Exod. xxviii. 4-30, 36-43.

[380] 1 Sam. xx. 5, 24, 27, and many pa.s.sages in the prophets; Numbers xxviii. 11; xxix. 6; Ewald, "Alterthumer," s. 360.

[381] Exod. xii. 15-19; Numbers ix. 13; xxviii. 16-24.

[382] Levit. xxii. 9-21.

[383] At the division of the kingdom Jeroboam is said to have changed this festival to the fifteenth day of the eighth month; 1 Kings xii. 33.

[384] _E. g._ 1 Sam. i. 3; 1 Kings xii. 27-32.

[385] Exod. xxiii. 13; x.x.xiv. 23.

[386] Levit. xxiii. 29.

[387] Levit. xvi., xxiii. 26-32.

[388] Levit. xvii. 3-5.

[389] Levit. i-vi.

[390] Levit. vii. 23-34, and in other pa.s.sages.

[391] _Supr._ p. 183. Exod. x.x.x. 1-9.

[392] Levit. vi. 12, 13; ix. 17.

[393] Numbers xv. 38; Levit. xix. 19.