Part 23 (1/2)

”In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven.”

And again, for the sabbath of rest in the seventh month--

”In the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath.”

The ecclesiastical ”day” of the Jews, therefore, began in the evening, with sunset. It does not by any means follow that their civil day began at this time. It would be more natural for such business contracts as the hiring of servants or labourers to date from morning to morning rather than from evening to evening. Naturally any allusion in the Scriptures to the civil calendar as apart from the ecclesiastical would be indirect, but that common custom was not entirely in agreement with the ecclesiastical formula we may perhaps gather from the fact that in the Old Testament there are twenty-six cases in which the phrases ”day and night,” ”day or night” are employed, and only three where ”night”

comes before ”day.” We have a similar divergence of usage in the case of our civil and astronomical days; the first beginning at midnight, and the second at the following noon, since the daylight is the time for work in ordinary business life, but the night for the astronomers. The Babylonians, at least at a late date in their history, had also a twofold way of determining when the day began. Epping and Stra.s.smaier have translated and elucidated a series of Babylonian lunar calendars of dates between the first and second centuries before our era. In one column of these was given the interval of time which elapsed between the true new moon and the first visible crescent.

”Curious to relate, at first all Father Epping's calculations to establish this result were out by a mean interval of six hours. The solution was found in the fact that the Babylonian astronomers were not content with such a variable instant of time as sunset for their calculations, as indeed they ought not to have been, but used as the origin of the astronomical day at Babylon the midnight which followed the setting of the sun, marking the beginning of the civil day.”

It may be mentioned that the days as reckoned from sunset to sunset, sunrise to sunrise, and noon to noon, would give intervals of slightly different lengths. This would, however, be imperceptible so long as their lengths were not measured by some accurate mechanical time-measurer such as a clepsydra, sandgla.s.s, pendulum, or spring clock.

The first obvious and natural division of the whole day-interval is into the light part and the dark part. As we have seen in Genesis, the evening and the morning are the day. Since Palestine is a sub-tropical country, these would never differ very greatly in length, even at midsummer or midwinter.

The next subdivision, of the light part of the day, is into morning, noon and evening. As David says in the fifty-fifth Psalm--

”Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray.”

None of these three subdivisions were marked out definitely in their beginning or their ending, but each contained a definite epoch. Morning contained the moment at which the sun rose; noon the moment at which he was at his greatest height, and was at the same time due south; evening contained the moment at which the sun set.

In the early Scriptures of the Old Testament, the further divisions of the morning and the evening are still natural ones.

For the progress of the morning we have, first, the twilight, as in Job--

”Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; Let it look for light but have none; Neither let it see the eyelids of the morning.”

Then, daybreak, as in the Song of Solomon--

”Until the day break (literally, breathe) and the shadows flee away,”

where the reference is to the cool breezes of twilight. So too in Genesis, in Joshua, in the Judges and in Samuel, we find references to the ”break of day” (literally, the rising of the morning, or when it became light to them) and ”the dawning of the day” or ”about the spring of the day.”

The progress of the morning is marked by the increasing heat; thus as ”the sun waxed hot,” the manna melted; whilst Saul promised to let the men of Jabesh-Gilead have help ”by that time the sun be hot,” or, as we should put it, about the middle of the morning.

Noon is often mentioned. Ish-bosheth was murdered as he ”lay on a bed at noon,” and Jezebel's prophets ”called on the name of Baal from morning even unto noon.”

We find the ”afternoon” (lit. ”till the day declined”) mentioned in the nineteenth chapter of the Judges, and in the same chapter this period is further described in ”The day draweth toward evening (lit. is weak),”

and ”The day groweth to an end” (lit. ”It is the pitching time of the day,” that is to say, the time for pitching tents, in preparation for the nightly halt).

As there was no dividing line between the morning and noontide, neither was there any between the afternoon and evening. The shadows of the night were spoken of as chased away by the cool breezes of the morning, so the lengthening shadows cast by the declining sun marked the progress of the evening. Job speaks of the servant who ”earnestly desireth the shadow;” that is to say, the intimation, from the length of his own shadow, that his day's work was done; and Jeremiah says, ”The shadows of the evening are stretched out.” Then came sundown, and the remaining part of the evening is described in Proverbs: ”In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night.”

In a country like Palestine, near the tropics, with the days not differing extravagantly in length from one part of the year to another, and the sun generally bright and s.h.i.+ning, and throwing intense shadows, it was easy, even for the uneducated, to learn to tell the time of day from the length of the shadow. Here, in our northern lat.i.tude, the problem is a more complex one, yet we learn from the _Canterbury Tales_, that Englishmen in the time of the Plantagenets could read the position of the sun with quite sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes. Thus the host of the Tabard inn, though not a learned man--

”Saw wel, that the brighte sonne The ark of his artificial day had ronne The fourthe part, and half an houre and more; And though he was not depe experte in lore, He wiste it was the eighte and twenty day Of April, that is messager to May; And saw wel that the shadow of every tree Was as in lengthe of the same quant.i.tee That was the body erect, that caused it; And therfore by the shadow he toke his wit, That Phebus, which that shone so clere and bright, Degrees was five and fourty clombe on hight; And for that day, as in that lat.i.tude, It was ten of the clok, he gan conclude.”[277:1]

In the latter part of the day there is an expression used several times in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers ”between the two evenings” which has given rise to much controversy. The lamb of the Pa.s.sover was killed in this period; so also was the lamb of the first year offered daily at the evening sacrifice; and day by day Aaron was then commanded to light the seven lamps and burn incense. It is also mentioned once, in no connection with the evening sacrifice, when the Lord sent quails to the children of Israel saying, ”At even (between the two evenings) ye shall eat flesh.” In Deuteronomy, where a command is again given concerning the Pa.s.sover, it is explained that it is ”at even, at the going down of the sun.” The Samaritans, the Karaite Jews, and Aben Ezra held ”the two evenings” to be the interval between the sun's setting and the entrance of total darkness; _i. e._ between about six o'clock and seven or half-past seven. A graphic description of the commencement of the sabbath is given in Disraeli's novel of _Alroy_, and may serve to ill.u.s.trate this, the original, idea of ”between the two evenings.”

”The dead were plundered, and thrown into the river, the encampment of the Hebrews completed. Alroy, with his princ.i.p.al officers, visited the wounded, and praised the valiant. The bustle which always succeeds a victory was increased in the present instance by the anxiety of the army to observe with grateful strictness the impending sabbath.