It is very true that only six tones instead of seven are enumerated, but we must not be too critical in dissecting an aphorism.
We now come to the important subject, the use of the Sheep in sacrifice.
No animal was used so frequently for this purpose as the Sheep, and in many passages of the Mosaic law are specified the precise age as well as the sex of the Sheep which was to be sacrificed in certain circumstances. Sometimes the Sheep was sacrificed as an offering of thanksgiving, sometimes as an expiation for sin, and sometimes as a redemption for some more valuable animal. The young male lamb was the usual sacrifice; and almost the only sacrifice for which a Sheep might not be offered was that of the two goats on the great Day of Atonement. To mention all the passages in which the Sheep is ordered for sacrifice would occupy too much of our space, and we will therefore restrict ourselves to the one central rite of the Jewish nation, the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb, the precursor of the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.
Without examining in full the various ceremonies of the Paschal sacrifice, we will glance over the salient points which distinguish it from any other sacrifice.
The lamb must be a male, which is selected and examined with the minutest care, that it may be free from all blemish, and must be of the first year. It must be killed on the fourteenth of the month Abib as the sun is setting, and the blood must be sprinkled with hyssop. In the first or Egyptian Passover the blood was sprinkled on the lintels and doorposts of the houses, but afterwards on the altar. It must be roasted with fire, and not boiled, after the usual custom in the East; not a bone must be broken. It must be eaten by the household in haste, as if they were just starting on a journey, and if any of it should be left, it must be consumed in the fire, and not eaten on the following day.
Such are the chief points in connexion with the Paschal rite, at once a sacrifice and a feast. The original directions not being sufficiently minute to meet all the practical difficulties which might hinder the correct performance of the rite, a vast number of directions are given by the Rabbinical writers. In order, for example, to guard against the destruction of any part of the animal by careless cooking over a fire, or the possible fracture of a bone by a sudden jet of flame, the Paschal lamb was rather baked than roasted, being placed in an earthen oven from which the ashes had been removed. In order to prevent it from being burned or blackened against the sides of the oven, (in which case it would be cooked with earthenware and not with fire), it was transfixed with a wooden stake, made from the pomegranate-tree, and a transverse spit was thrust through the shoulders. These spits were made of wood, because a metal spit would become heated in the oven, and would cause all the flesh which it touched to be roasted with metal, and not with fire; and the wood of the pomegranate was chosen, because that wood was supposed not to emit any sap when heated. If a drop of water had fallen on the flesh, the law would have been broken, as that part of the flesh would be considered as boiled, and not roasted.
As to the eating of unleavened bread and bitter herbs with the lamb, the custom does not bear on the present subject. In shape the oven seems to have resembled a straw beehive, having an opening at the side by which the fuel could be removed and the lamb inserted.
It is most interesting to compare with the ancient Paschal sacrifice the mode of conducting the Passover as still practised on Mount Gerizim by the Samaritans, who still "worship in this mountain," as their fathers had done. The Samaritans, a turbulent nation, or rather an aggregation of tribes who had adopted their own modification of the Jewish religion, considered Mount Gerizim as the most sacred spot on the earth, and made it a principle of their faith to worship there. They hallowed the mountain with various traditions, some perhaps true, others clearly erroneous. They said that on the summit of Mount Gerizim, and not on the comparatively little hill of Moriah, Abraham's marvellous faith was so fearfully tested. They even now point out the very spot on which it took place—a small smoothed plot of ground on the summit of the mountain, remarkable for the contrast which its level plateau presents to the rough, rugged sides of the mountain, broken by clefts and strewn with great angular stones, as if a rocky mountain had been blown to pieces and the fragments showered on Gerizim.
On Gerizim are the "twelve stones" of Joshua, placed by him in commemoration of the passage of the Jordan. There are the great, massive stones placed closely together in a row, and apparently forming part of the rocky mountain itself.