Before the metamorphosis
of shepherds into peasants was effected, they could not possibly
have had feasts which related to agriculture. It would have been
very strange if they had not taken them also over from the
Canaanites. The latter owed the land and its fruits to Baal, and
for this they paid him the due tribute; the Israelites stood in
the same relation to Jehovah. Materially and in itself, the act
was neither heathenish nor Israelite; its character either way
was determined by its destination. There was, therefore, nothing
against a transference of the feasts from Baal to Jehovah; on the
contrary, the transference was a profession of faith that the land
and its produce, and thus all that lay at the foundations of the
national existence, were due not to the heathen deity but to the
God of Israel. The earliest testimony is that which we have to the
existence of the vintage festival in autumn,--in the first instance
as a custom of the Canaanite population of Shechem. In the old and
instructive story of Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal we are told
(Judges ix. 27) of the citizens of Shechem that "they went out
into the fields, and gathered their vineyards, and trode the grapes,
and celebrated _hillulim_, and went into the house of their god, and
ate and drank, and cursed Abimelech.
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