According to the law, a service was to be continually going on in the dwelling of Jehovah. The sacred fire on the altar in the interior of the tabernacle was never to be quenched; before the holy of holies on the sacred table twelve unleavened loaves always lay sprinkled with salt and incense, as a symbolical and continual offering of the twelve tribes. Each Sabbath this bread was renewed, and the loaves when removed fell to the priests. Before the curtain of the holy of holies the candlestick with seven lamps was always burning, and every morning and evening the priests of the temple were to offer a male sheep as a burnt offering at the dwelling of Jehovah, and two sheep on the morning and evening of the Sabbath. The high priest had also to make an offering of corn every morning and evening.[392]
Beside the sacrifice, the law of the priests required the observance of a whole series of regulations for purity. It is not merely bodily cleanliness which these laws required of the Israelites, nor is it merely a natural abhorrence of certain disgusting objects which lies at the base of these prescriptions; it is not merely that to the simple mind physical and moral purity appear identical, that moral evil is conceived as a defilement of the body; nor are these regulations merely intended to place a certain restriction on natural states and impulses. These factors had their weight, but beside them all a certain side of nature and of the natural life was set apart as impure and unholy. The laws of purity among the Israelites are far less strict and comprehensive than those of the Egyptians and the Indians; but if we unite them with the ritual by which transgressions of these rules were done away and made good, they form a system entering somewhat deeply into the life of the nation.
For the laity also the law required and prescribed cleanliness of clothing. Stuffs of two kinds might not be worn; pomegranates must be fixed on the corners of the robe. The field and vineyard might not be sown with two kinds of seed; nor could ox and ass be yoked together before the plough.[393] Certain animals were unclean, and these might not be eaten. The clean and permitted food was obtained from oxen, sheep, goats, and in wild animals from deer, wild-goats, and gazelles, and in fact from all animals which ruminate and have cloven feet. Unclean are all flesh-eating animals with paws, and more especially the camel, the swine, the hare, and the coney. Of fish, those only might be eaten which have fins and scales; all fish resembling snakes, like eels, might not be eaten. Most water-fowl are unclean; pigeons and quails, on the other hand, were permitted food. All creeping things, winged or not, with the exception of locusts, are forbidden.[394] Moreover, if the permitted animals were not slain in the proper manner their flesh was unclean; if it had "died of itself," or was strangled, or torn by wild beasts,[395] the use of the blood of the animal was most strictly forbidden, "for the life of all flesh is the blood;" even of the animals which might be eaten the blood must be poured on the earth and covered with earth.[396] As the eating of forbidden food made a man unclean, so also did all sexual functions of man or woman, and all diseases connected with these functions, including lying in child-bed. Every one was also unclean on whose body was "a rising scab or bright spot," but above all the white leprosy rendered the sufferer unclean.[397] Finally, any contact with the corpse of man or beast, whether intentional or accidental, rendered a man unclean. The house in which a man died, with all the utensils, was unclean; any one who touched a grave or a human bone was tainted.[398]
The priestly regulations set forth in great detail the ceremonies, the washings and sacrifices, by which defilements were to be removed. The unclean person must avoid the sanctuary, and even society and contact with others, till the time of his purification, which in serious defilements can only begin after the lapse of a certain time. In the more grievous cases ordinary water did not suffice for the cleansing, but from the ashes of a red cow without blemish, which was slain as a sin offering and entirely burnt, the priest prepared a special water of purification with cedar wood and bunches of hyssop. The reception of healed lepers required the most careful preparations and most scrupulous manipulations.
Among the regulations of purity is reckoned the custom of circumcision, which was practised among the Israelites, and retained by the law. Yet the reason for this peculiar custom, which according to the regulations of the priests was performed on the eighth day after birth, the first day of the second week of life,[399] seems to lie in other motives rather than in the desire to remove a certain part of the male body which was regarded as unclean. We saw above that according to the old conception of the Israelites the firstborn must be ransomed from Jehovah, that the life of all boys, if it was to be secured, must be purchased from Jehovah (I. 414, 448). Hence, if we may follow the hint of an obscure narrative, it is not improbable that circumcision of the reproductive member was a vicarious blood-sacrifice for the life of the boy. When Moses returned from the land of Midian to Egypt—so we learn from the Ephraimitic text—"Jehovah met him in the inn, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and he departed from him."[400] To the Israelites circumcision was a symbol of their connection with the nation, of their covenant with Jehovah and selection by him.
The most important part of the purity of the people of Jehovah was their maintenance of his worship, the strict severance of Israel from the religion of their neighbours and community with them. It was now seen what influence living and mingling with the Canaanites had exercised in the national worship, and it was perceived what an attraction the Syrian rites had presented for centuries to the nation, and what a power they still had upon them. Hence even Moses was said to have given the command to destroy the altars and images of the Canaanites, to drive out all the Canaanites, and make neither covenant nor marriage with them.[401] The law forbade sacrifices to Moloch under penalty of death; any one who did so was to be stoned. Those who made offerings to other gods than Jehovah were to be "accursed" (I. 499). Wizards were also to be stoned.[402] "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any mark upon you. Do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to play the harlot."[403] All these are commands directed against the manners, funeral customs, and religious worship of the Canaanites. Strangers were not to be received into the community and people of Israel; nor could Israelites contract marriage with women who were not Israelites; it is only the later law which allows women captured in war to be taken into the marriage bed.[404] These are the "misanthropical" laws of the Jews of which Tacitus speaks with such deep aversion.
The law assigned a far-reaching religious influence to the priests. They alone could turn the favour of Jehovah towards his people by correct and effective sacrifices, and appease his wrath; they announced the will of Jehovah by his oracle; in regard to diseases and leprosy, they exercised police functions over the whole nation by means of the regulations for cleanliness and food; they could exclude any one at their discretion from the sacrifices and, consequently, from the community; and, in fine, they were in possession of the skill and knowledge with which the people were unacquainted. The priesthood arranged the chronology and the festivals, they supervised weights and measures,[405] they knew the history of the people in past ages, and their ancient covenant with the God of the ancestors. From their knowledge of the ordinances of Jehovah followed the claim which the priests made to watch over the application of these ordinances in life, the administration of law and justice. But at first this claim was put forward modestly. The old regulations about the right of blood in the time-honoured observances of justice were added to the law of ritual when this was written down (I. 385, 484); they were modified here and there by the views of the priesthood, and in some points essentially extended; and now, like the ordinances for the places of sacrifice, mode of worship, and purification, they stood opposed in many regulations to real life as ideal but hardly practicable standards.
According to the view of the priests Jehovah was the true possessor of the land of Israel. He had given it to his people for tenure and use. From this conception the law derived very peculiar conclusions, which might be of essential advantage for retaining the property of the families in their hands, for keeping up the family and their possessions, on which the Hebrews laid weight, and for proprietors when in debt. To aid the debtor against the creditor, the poor against the rich, the labourer against him who gave the work, the slave against his master, is in other ways also the obvious object of the law.
As all work must cease on the seventh day, the day of Jehovah, so must there be a similar cessation in the seventh year, which is therefore called the Sabbath year. In every seventh year the Israelites were to allow the land which Jehovah had let to them to lie fallow, in honour of the real owner. In this year the land was not sowed, nor the vine-trees cut, nor the wild beast driven from the field, every one must seek on the fallow what had grown there without culture. If this Sabbath of the seventh year was kept Jehovah would send such increase on the preceding sixth year that there should be no want.[406] When this period of seven fallow years had occurred seven times the circle appeared to be complete, and from this point of view the law ordained that at such a time everything should return to the original position. Hence, when the seventh Sabbath year was seven times repeated (in the year of Jubilee) not only was agriculture stopped, but all alienated property, with the buildings and belongings, went back to the original owner or his heirs.[407] The consequence was that properties were never really sold, but the use of them was assigned to others, and hence, even before the year of Jubilee, the owner could redeem his land by paying the value of the produce which would be yielded before the year of Jubilee.
But the priests were far from being able to carry out these extended requirements which proceeded from the sanctity of the Sabbath, and from the conception that the land of Israel belonged to Jehovah, and every family held their property from Jehovah himself, and which were intended to make plain the true nature of the property of the Israelites. It was an ideal picture which they set up, and hardly so much as an attempt was made to carry it out. They could reckon with more certainty on obedience to a law which ordained that no interest was to be taken from the poor, and no poor man's mantle was to be taken in pledge.[408] Nevertheless, the law of debt was severe. If the debtor could not pay his debt before a fixed time the creditor was allowed to pay himself with the moveable and fixed property of the debtor; he could sell his wife and children, and even the debtor himself, as slaves, or use him as a slave in his own service.