"Ritual and sacrifice have through the
misfortunes of the times disappeared, but this has retained all its
old sacredness; unless a man has wholly cut himself adrift from
Judaism he keeps this day, however indifferent he may be to all
its other usages and feasts."
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.
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