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kinds of booths, made of the branches of feveral forts of trees, fuch as willows, palms, olives, and the like (A), and erected in the most decent and convenient manner.

THIS feaft was the third grand one, and equal in folemnity to the other two, except in what related partícularly to the paffoyer. It began on the eve of the fifteenth day of the feventh month called Tifri, which was the firft of the civil year, and answered to part of our September; by which time all the harveft being finished and brought in, they returned their folemn thanks to GOD for it. It was to laft feven days, the first and laft of which were kept with the greatest strictness (B), by repairing h Levit. xxiii. 40, & feqq. & alib. i Exod. xxiii. 16.

a

(A) Mofes gives us a fuller defcription of this feaft (6) than of any other, probably because it was not to be celebrated till after they were fettled in the Promised Land; but, as to the particular trees, of which the booths were made, and the manner of their ftru&ture, they are not so easily underflood, nor agreed on, mong the Jewish doctors: tho' all that is fuppofed to be meant by that lawgiver was, that they should choose such trees as yielded the moft lafting and agreeable verdure and fragrancy. This, at leaft, was the fentiment of the wifer Caraites, who, defpifing the niceties of the Cabbalifts, thought they fufficiently answered the defign of the feaft, if they lived in fuch tents or booths as their forefathers had done in the wilderness; whilft the Talmudifts and their commentators have rather obliterated it by their numberlefs additions to it (7).

(B) The first day of this feftival was ushered in by a general proceffion, in which the men carried branches of those trees mentioned by Mofes in the place above quoted, fome in one hand, and fome in the other, waving them about to the four winds, and finging fome pfalms or hymns proper for the folemnity, and crying bofannah! which word doth properly fignify, fave, we befeech thee; from this word the last day of the feaft (on which this ceremony of carrying palms round the altar was performed feven times, and with greater folemnity, in memory, as is pretended (8), of the taking of Jericho) (9), was filed Hofannah Rabbah, or the day of the great HoJannah.

The hundred and eighteenth pfalm is likewise supposed to have been fung on, if not com> pofed for, that feftival; becaufe there are not only feveral expreffions in it, that

(6) Levit. xxiii. 40. (7) Vide Minfb. tra&. i, arbab. thurim. Maimon, tra&t., & alib. (8) Bafnag, ibid. (9), Hospin, rig. feft. c.7. Munft. in calend. & al,

pairing to the tabernacle, or temple, with palms and other branches in their hands, by marching round the altar, and finging the praises of GOD; by facrifices peculiar to the folemnity, over and above the usual ones; and by a ceffation from all fervile works, except cookery k

THEY were likewife obliged to dwell in thofe booths all the feven days, and to eat and drink, and lie in them (C), unless lawfully hindered.

* Numb. xxix. 12, & alib.

have an affinity to it, fuch as

אנא יהוה הושיעה נא :thefe ana אנא יהוה הצליחה נא

adonai hofbibah-na, ana adanai, batzlichah na (10); but also from the very analogy of the whole compofure, with the ceremonies of that feaft; fuch as the praying more particularly for the coming of the Meffiah, for the profperity of the next year, the fetching of water from the pool of Siloah, and the like. This last ceremony, however, is thought to be of much later date, and to have been introduced but a little before our Saviour's time; though fome of the Jews attribute the inftitution of it to the prophets Haggai and Zechariah (1). Our Saviouris thought to have alluded to this, when he cried in the temple, on the last day of this feaft, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, &c (2).

(C) The Jews except out of this number the fick, and their nurfes, and those who could not bear either the dampnefs of the earth, or the fragrancy

1 Levit. xxiii. 42.

THE

of the boughs (3). It is not at all unlikely, that from these ceremonies of carrying branches in their hands, &c. Plutarch might take the notion, that the Jews celebrated this feaft to Bacchus; and that they entered into their temples with branches of the vine and thyrfe in their hands, though he knew not what was done in the inside of them (4). It is true, that Jofephus, fpeaking of this feast, and of the nofegay, or bunch of greens, which the Jews wore in it (5), calls it eipoorn, which, among the Greeks, fignified a bunch of olive, tied up with wool, on which hung great variety of fruit. This nofegay ufed to be carried by a child, and laid at the gate of the temple of Apollo (6). But our author here tells us, that the Jewish one was made up of myrtle, willow, and palm, on which hung little fprouts of peach, or, as others render it, young citrons. However that be, Spencer has from thence fanfied, that it was instituted by Mofes in imitation of the

(10) Pfal. cxviii. 25. (1) Vid. Cun. ub. fup. Calm. fub. voc. Pentecoft. Meyer. feft. Heb. Goodwin's Mof. & Aar. & al. Vide & Mifhn. fub tit. 10, & Wott. & al. comment. in ead. (2) John vii. 37, 38. (3) Vid. Munft. in Levit. xxiii. præc. aff. & neg. & auct. fup. citat. pofiac. probl. v. (5) Ant. lib. iii. c. 10. (6) Vid. glof. in vec.

(4) Sym

heather,

THE facrifices peculiar to this feaft were, on the first day, thirteen bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of a year old; all without blemish, which were offered up in a burnt-offering, with their ufual meat and drinkofferings, confifting of a certain quantity of flour mingled with oil, and fome wine. To thefe was added likewise a kid, for a fin-offering, which was offered up in the name of the whole people of Ifrael; befides the usual morning and evening facrifices, which were never to be intermitted, and those which any one might offer out of devotion. On the 2d day they offered 12 bullocks, two rams, and 14 lambs, with their concomitant offerings of flour and wine, and a kid, as on the first day ; and thus on the third, fourth, fifth, fixth, and feventh, they offered the fame facrifices, only leffening every day one bullock; fo that on this laft day they facrificed but feven (D); as for the other

m

m Num. xxix. 17.

heathen, who about that time ufed to celebrate fome feafts to their gods, with the fame mirth and folemnity (7); but Mofes gives us a quite different reafon, namely, that their pofterity might know, that GOD had made the Ifraelites to dwell in booths at their coming out of Egypt (8); and elsewhere, that they departed from Ramefes, and encamped at Succoth (9), fo called from the booths which they reared up there, the place abounding with proper materials for them.

Walton adds another reason to this of Mofes, namely, that it was on the 10th day of the month Tifri that Mofes came down the second time from the mount, and brought them the joyful news, that GOD was appeased for the fin of the golden calf; and that he had ordered the tabernacle of the congregation to be reared up

(which that idolatrous defection had obstructed for a time), in token that he did now no longer difdain to be among them, feeing he vouchfafed to dwell with them in the tabernacle (10): and, as he obferves there, that this happened fix months after the exod, it accounts for that feast being inftituted in that month, rather than in the firft, in which the people began to live in booths or tents. Leo de Modena (14) tells us, that the pfalms which begin with, Halleluja, that is, the cxi, cxii cxiii. &c. to the cxviii. were the proper ones to be fung on that day. Thofe who are curious to know how the Jews obferve this feaft fince their difperfion, may find a full account of it in the fame author and place.

(D) The reason which the Jews give for leffening one (8) Levit. xxiii. 42. (10) Harmon. evang. ad Luc. iii. 21. ap. Meyer (14) Carem. Jud. part ii, c. 7, bullock

(7) De leg. rit. Jud. 1. i. c. 6. & l. iii. c. 8. (9) Exod. xii. 37.

de temp. facr. cap. 16. §. 3.

other offerings, they continued the fame throughout. On the eighth or laft day, which was the most folemn of all, and on which they were to hold a folemn affembly, and to abstain from all fervile work, they offered but one bullock, one ram, and feven lambs, befides the goat for a fin-offering, and the ufual and voluntary facrifices 1; which laft rofe and fell, according as their harvest had been more or less plentiful. Laftly, on this day, the firstfruits of those things, which were of later growth, were brought up, and offered to GOD; and thefe came fometimes in fuch numbers, that they were forced to continue the feast one day longer

m

The feast of the trumpets, and new-moons.

The feaft WE

E have lately taken notice, that the month Tifri was the first of the civil, as that of Abib, or Nifan, trumpets. was of the facred year: this feast was appointed to be kept

of the

1 Ibid. ver. 14, ad fin. m Vide SIGONIUM, Bertrand. CUNEUM, MEYER, GOODW. & al.

bullock every day is, that the
whole number of them offered
in those seven days amounted
to 70, which, they fay, is the
number of the nations for
whom these facrifices were of
fered, that they might dwindle
by little and little, till they
were all brought under the
fceptre of the Meffiah, who
is emphatically called the de-
fire of all nations (15). Thofe
who have called this eighth
day the Hofannah-rabba (16),
are certainly contradicted by
all the Jews, who affirm, that
it was the seventh day (17):
as for this eighth day, on which
there was to be what most in-
terpreters render, as we do, a

folemn affembly; the Hebrew word nyy, hetzereth, signifies a retention; or, as our margin hath it (18), restraint; for which reafon they affirm, that after the seventh day was over, and fo confequently the festival, the people used to stay, or be detained, one day longer (19). On this day it is that the fews end the last parasha or fection of the pentateuch ; and, immediately after, beginthe firft, that they may not feem to be better pleased with having ended the one, than with beginning the other (zo); and, for this reafon, it is called

now an, the feast of

joy of the law (21).

(15) Haggai ii. 7. Vid. Hofpin. orig. feft. in loc.
lib. iii. c. 6. §. 8.
(16) Goodwin, ubi fup.
(17) Vide Mifhn. ubi fup. Shulchan Haruch,

Goodwin's Mof. & Aar. Calm, in vor. Tabernacle. Arbab Thurim, & al.

(18) Levit. xxiii. 36. (19) Vide Munft. ibid. Meyer de feft. c. xvi. §. 15. (20) Buxtorf in abbreviat. & fynag. Jud. c. 28. Vide Abarb. in Deut, xxxi. (21) Rab. Eliezer in Exod. xxiii. 16. © xxxiv. 22.

on the first and fecond day of that month, It was to be ushered in by the found of the trumpets, to be kept holy, free from all fervile work, and to be diftinguished from other new-moons by particular facrifices".

As the Scripture no-where gives the reafon of this feftival, authors are much divided about it; the Jews, in general, believe it was instituted in memory of the creation, which happened on that month (F); though fome rabbies think, that it was alfo in memory of Ifaac's deliverance, and of the ram that was caught by the horns, and fubftituted for him. Some of the fathers are of opinion, it was in memory of the law being given upon mount Sinai P, at which time the trumpet and thunder was heard others laftly, from fome of the ceremonies obferved by the Jews, by way of preparation for, and from fome of their notions about this feftival (G), have

n Levit. xxiii. 24. Num. xxix. 12, & feqq.

R. SAL. FAG. MUNST. & al. in Levit. xxiii.
Pf. lxxxi. THEODORET. qu. 32. in Levit.

(F) The Gemarrah doth pofitively affirm, that

fanfied,

• Vide

P BASIL. in

this time, for the good or bad deeds of the foregoing year;

the
world
was

according to which he ordered נברא העולם

created in the month of Tifri; for which reason, it is thought that this feaft was ordained to prevent the old or civil year being obliterated by the facred; and obferves, that that of the tabernacles was to be kept w nap, at the revolution or return, or, as our verfion renders it, though not fo properly, at the end of the year(t.) And the mifhnah adds, that the first day of this month is the head of the year, from which the feventh year, the jubilee, &c. are to be computed (22).

(G) The antient Jews had a notion, that GOD paffed a kind of judgment upon men at

S that at

his bleffings and punishments.
for the next (23). The mish-
nah exprefly fays
the beginning of the year they
pafs before him like fheep, ac-
cording to the faying of the
pfalmiit (24), From the place of
bis habitation he looketh upon
the inhabitants of the earth:
he formed their hearts alike, and
confiders for takes notice of] all
their works. For this reafon
they thought, that nothing
could be more proper to awak-
en men from their fleep of fin
than the found of the trumpets,
according to that of the pro-
phet Joel (25), Blow the trum-
pet in Sion, fanctify a faft, &c.
Accordingly Maimon obferves

WND, cap. 1. (24) Pf. xxxiii. 14, 15.

(t) Vide Maim. Kidufh bakodesh, c. 9. (22) Tract. Vide& Levit. xxv. 3, 5, 6. (23) Ubi fup. Vide Hotting. Wotton, in mifhn. (25) Ch. ii. pass.

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