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 passage the husband of the woman of Shunem, when she begs him for an ass 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
— Footnote 2 George Smith, Assyrian Eponymn Canon, pp. 19, 20. “Among the Assyrians 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 identity of the Syriac word (ta sabbata) in the New Testament) with the Hebrew is guaranteed by the twofold Arabic form. — Footnote 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/
— Footnote 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. — Footnote 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 passage so early as Judges ix. 27. /2/
— Footnote 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) — Footnote
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 circumstance 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 superstition which readily associated 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 ass 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 institution 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, xxxiv. 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 classes; 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 xxxv. 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 God 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/
— Footnote 1 The contradiction is indubitable when in Genesis ii. 2 it is said in the first place that on the seventh day God 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. — Footnote
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 assembly—-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 attitude 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 circumcision the symbol that bound together the Jewish diaspora; thus already in the Priestly Code the two institutions are the general distinguishing marks of religion [)WT Genesis xvii. 10, 11; Exodus xxxi. 13] which also continue to subsist under circumstances 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. In the Book of the Covenant it is commanded that a Hebrew who has been bought as a slave must after six years of service be liberated on the seventh unless he himself wishes to remain (Exodus xxi. 2-6). By the same authority it is ordained in another passage that the land and fruit-gardens are to be wrought and their produce gathered for six years, but on the seventh the produce is to be surrendered (#M+), that the poor of the people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may <e>at (xxiii. 10, 11). Here there is no word of a sabbatical year. The liberation of the Hebrew slave takes place six years after his purchase, that is, the term is a relative one. In like manner, in the other ordinance there is nothing to indicate an absolute seventh year; and besides, it is not a Sabbath or fallow time for the land that is contemplated, but a surrender of the harvest.
The first of these commands is repeated in Deuteronomy without material alteration, and to a certain extent word for word (xv. 12-18). The other has at least an analogue in Deuteronomy xv. 1-6: “At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release (surrender, s*m+h), and this is the manner of it; no creditor that lendeth aught shall exact it of his neighbour or of his brother, because Jehovah’s release has been proclaimed; of a foreigner thou mayst exact it again, but that which is of thine with thy brother, thy hand shall release.”
That this precept is parallel with Exodus xxiii. 10, 11, is shown by the word #m+h~; but this has a different meaning put upon it which plainly is introduced as new. Here it is not landed property that is being dealt with, but money, and what has to be surrendered is not the interest of the debt merely (comparable to the fruit of the soil), but the capital itself; the last clause admits of no other construction, however unsuitable the regulation may be. A step towards the sabbatical year is discernible in it, in so far as the seventh year term is not a different one for each individual debt according to the date when it was incurred (in which case it might have been simply a period of prescription), but is a uniform and common term publicly fixed: it is absolute, not relative. But it does not embrace the whole seventh year, it does not come in at the end of six years as in Exodus, but at the end of seven; the surrender of the harvest demands the whole year, the remission of debts, comparatively speaking, only a moment.
The sabbatical year is peculiar to the Priestly Code, or, to speak more correctly, to that collection of laws incorporated and edited by it, which lies at the basis of Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. In Leviticus xxv. 1-7 we read:
“When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath to Jehovah. Six years shalt thou sow thy field and prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; but in the seventh year shall the land keep a Sabbath of rest unto Jehovah: thy field shalt thou not sow, thy vineyard shalt thou not prune; that which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest shalt thou not reap, neither shalt thou gather the grapes of thy vine undressed; the land shall have a year of rest, and the Sabbath of the land shall be food for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy cattle, and for all the beasts that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be food.”
The expressions make it impossible to doubt that Exodus xxiii. 10, 11 lies at the foundation of this law; but out of this as a basis it is something different that has been framed. The seventh year, which is there a relative one, has here become fixed,—not varying for the various properties, but common for the whole land, a sabbatical year after the manner of the Sabbath day. This amounts to a serious increase in the difficulty of the matter, for it is not one and the same thing to have the abstinence from harvest spread over seven years and to have it concentrated into one out of every seven. In like manner a heightening of the demand is also seen in the circumstance that not merely harvesting but also sowing and dressing are forbidden. In the original commandment this was not the case; all that was provided for was that in the seventh year the harvest should not fall to the lot of the proprietor of the soil, but should be publici juris,—a relic perhaps of communistic agriculture. Through a mere misunderstanding of the verbal suffix in Exodus xxiii. 11, as has been conjectured by Hupfeld, a surrender of the fruit of the land has been construed into a surrender of the land itself—a general fallow year (Leviticus xxv. 4). The misunderstanding, however, is not accidental, but highly characteristic. In Exodus xxiii. the arrangement is made for man; it is a limitation, for the common good, of private rights of property in land,—in fact, for the benefit of the landless, who in the seventh year are to have the usufruct of the soil; in Leviticus xxv. the arrangement is for the sake of the land,—that it may rest, if not on the seventh day, at least on the seventh year, and for the sake of the Sabbath— that it may extend its supremacy over nature also. Of course this presupposes the extreme degree of Sabbath observance by absolute rest, and becomes comprehensible only when viewed as an outgrowth from that. For the rest, a universal fallow season is possible only under circumstances in which a people are to a considerable extent independent of the products of their own agriculture; prior to the exile even the idea of such a thing could hardly have occurred.
In the Priestly Code the year of jubilee is further added to supplement in turn the sabbatical year (Leviticus xxv. 8 seq.). As the latter is framed to correspond with the seventh day, so the former corresponds with the fiftieth, i.e., with Pentecost, as is easily perceived from the parallelism of Leviticus xxv. 8 with Leviticus xxiii. 15. Asthe fiftieth day after the seven Sabbath days is celebrated as a closing festival of the forty-nine days’ period, so is the fiftieth year after the seven sabbatic years as rounding off the larger interval; the seven Sabbaths falling on harvest time, which are usually reckoned specially (Luke vi. 1 ), have, in the circumstance of their interrupting harvest work, a particular resemblance to the sabbatic years which interrupt agriculture altogether. Jubilee is thus an artificial institution superimposed upon the years of fallow regarded as harvest Sabbaths after the analogy of Pentecost. Both its functions appear originally to have belonged also to the Sabbath year and to be deduced from the two corresponding regulations in Deuteronomy relating to the seventh year, so that thus Exod xxiii. would be the basis of Leviticus xxv. 1-7 and Deuteronomy xv. that of xxv. 8 seq. The emancipation of the Hebrew slave originally had to take place on the seventh year after the purchase, afterwards (it would seem) on the seventh vear absolutely; for practical reasons it was transferred from that to the fiftieth. Analogous also, doubtless, is the growth of the other element in the jubilee—the return of mortgaged property to its hereditary owner—out of the remission of debts enjoined in Deuteronomy xv. for the end of the seventh year; for the two hang very closely together, as Leviticus xxv. 23 seq. shows.
As for the evidence for these various arrangements, those of the Book of the Covenant are presupposed alike by Deuteronomy and by the Priestly Code. It seems to have been due to the prompting of Deuteronomy that towards the end of the reign of Zedekiah the emancipation of the Hebrew slaves was seriously gone about; the expressions in Jeremiah xxxiv. 14 point to Deuteronomy xv. 12, and not to Exodus xxi. 2. The injunction not having had practical effect previously, it was in this instance carried through by all parties at the same date: this was of course inevitable when it was introduced as an extraordinary innovation; perhaps it is in connexion with this that a fixed seventh year grew out of a relative one. The sabbatical year, according to the legislator’s own declaration, was never observed throughout the whole pre-exilic period; for, according to Leviticus xxvi. 34, 35, the desolation of the land during the exile is to be a compensation made for the previously neglected fallow years:
“Then shall the land pay its Sabbaths as long as it lieth desolate; when ye are in your enemies’ land then shall the land rest and pay its Sabbaths; all the days that it lieth desolate shall it rest, which it rested not in your Sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it.”
The verse is quoted in 2Chronicles xxxvi. 21 as the language of Jeremiah,— a correct and unprejudiced indication of its exilic origin. But as the author of Leviticus xxvi. was also the writer of Leviticus xxv. 1-7, that is to say, the framer of the law of the sabbatic year, the recent date of the latter regulation also follows at once. The year of jubilee, certainly derived from the Sabbath year, is of still later origin. Jeremiah (xxxiv. 14) has not the faintest idea that the emancipation of the slaves must according to “law” take place in the fiftieth year. The name drwr, borne by the jubilee in Leviticus xxv. 10, is applied by him to the seventh year; and this is decisive also for Ezekiel xlvi. 17: the gift of land bestowed by the prince on one of his servants remains in his possession only until the seventh year.