CHAPTER VII
THE MOON
"The balmy moon of blessed Israel
Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine:
All night the splintered crags that wall the dell
With spires of silver shine."
So, in Tennyson's words, sang Jephthah's daughter, as she recalled the days of her mourning before she accomplished her self-sacrifice.
It is hard for modern dwellers in towns to realize the immense importance of the moon to the people of old. "The night cometh when no man can work" fitly describes their condition when she was absent. In sub-tropical countries like Palestine, twilight is short, and, the sun once set, deep darkness soon covers everything. Such artificial lights as men then had would now be deemed very inefficient. There was little opportunity, when once darkness had fallen, for either work or enjoyment.
But, when the moon was up, how very different was the case. Then men might say—
"This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick;
It looks a little paler: 'tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid."
In the long moonlit nights, travelling was easy and safe; the labours of the field and house could still be carried on; the friendly feast need not be interrupted. But of all men, the shepherd would most rejoice at this season; all his toils, all his dangers were immeasurably lightened during the nights near the full. As in the beautiful rendering which Tennyson has given us of one of the finest passages in the Iliad—
"In heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart."
A large proportion of the people of Israel, long after their settlement in Palestine, maintained the habits of their forefathers, and led the shepherd's life. To them, therefore, the full of the moon must have been of special importance; yet there is no single reference in Scripture to this phase as such; nor indeed to any change of the moon's apparent figure. In two cases in our Revised Version we do indeed find the expression "at the full moon," but if we compare these passages with the Authorized Version, we find them there rendered "in the time appointed," or "at the day appointed." This latter appears to be the literal meaning, though there can be no question, as is seen by a comparison with the Syriac, that the period of the full moon is referred to. No doubt it was because travelling was so much more safe and easy than in the moonless nights, that the two great spring and autumn festivals of the Jews were held at the full moon. Indeed, the latter feast, when the Israelites "camped out" for a week "in booths," was held at the time of the "harvest moon." The phenomenon of the "harvest moon" may be briefly explained as follows. At the autumnal equinox, when the sun is crossing from the north side of the equator to the south, the full moon is crossing from the south side of the equator to the north. It is thus higher in the sky, when it souths, on each succeeding night, and is therefore up for a greater length of time. This counterbalances to a considerable extent its movement eastward amongst the stars, so that, for several nights in succession, it rises almost at sundown. These nights of the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel was rejoicing over the ingathered fruits, each family in its tent or arbour of green boughs, were therefore the fullest of moonlight in the year.[81:1]
