So gentle, he was yet daring. When an old law was abused, he ventured to modify it. The Law, for example, for release of debts every seventh year, made particularly for the benefit of the poor (Deut. xv), hampered the growth of trade in more complex times and changed a generous purpose into an occasional embarrassment. There is a gulf of difference between a loan to buy bread and a loan for business enterprise. In the latter case Hillel allowed the stipulation to be stated in the contract, called prosbul, that the law of release was to be suspended.
To Hillel is due the important service of devising a logical system of seven rules of deduction by which new laws to meet new needs could be developed out of the fewer and more general principles in the Bible code. It must be confessed that these deductions were occasionally far-fetched. None the less the custom prevailed among the rabbis to make laws for all exigencies in that way for many centuries to come. The practice arose from the reverence paid the five books of Moses that induced them to seek authority for every regulation they found needful, in their pages. We might say it was a virtue carried to the extreme of a fault. Hillel's method earned him the title "Regenerator of the Law."
Last Days.
"Where goest thou, Master," said Hillel's disciples one day when he hastened from the house of learning. "I go to meet a guest," Hillel replied. "Who is this guest of whom thou so often speakest?" The sweetness of the master's face deepened into earnestness. "My guest is my soul. Too often in intercourse with the world must its claims be pushed aside."
But the day came, as indeed it must, when the soul was summoned to a greater tribunal than his own. The day of Hillel's death was a day of mourning in Israel. "O, pious, gentle, worthy follower of Ezra," cried the sorrowing people. Contrast his death with Herod's.
Such was the love and esteem in which he was held by the scholars of his own and later ages, that the presidency of the Sanhedrin was kept in his family for four centuries (like a royal succession), and in this way his memory reverenced for many generations.
Shammai.
In Hillel and Shammai, the "Pairs" referred to in chapter viii reached their culmination. A teaching of Shammai ran, "Say little but do much." These two men were the founders of two distinct schools of interpretation of Jewish Law. They were as distinct in their character as in their exposition of Scripture. Hillel was broad, tolerant and original; Shammai—narrow, strict, and conservative. (Hillel's opinions were usually accepted by later generations.) Shammai was a pessimist saying "It were better not to have been born." Hillel was an optimist, and said, "Being born, make the most of life."
To the Shammai school we owe the many stringent prohibitions with regard to the Sabbath and to ecclesiastical purity. They objected even to teaching the young, visiting the sick, or comforting mourners on the Sabbath day. We are glad to state that Jewish practice has taken the opposite view. The rabbis of the Shammai school were not only severe in their religious decisions, but also in the interpretation of patriotism and in their views of life generally. Their gloomy philosophy is shown in Second Esdras: see chap. v., on the Apocrypha. We might compare them with the first Puritan settlers in America.