With the wand, and with their staves.
Here we have a song to the well, though no mention is made of the sacred dance; but in a striking parallel, recorded by Nilus, we are told that when the nomadic Arabs found a well they danced by it and sang songs to it[136]. Both song and dance were sacred, for, as Robertson Smith says:
Of all inanimate things that which has the best marked supernatural associations among the Semites is flowing (or, as the Hebrews say, “living”) water ... and sacred wells are among the oldest and most ineradicable objects of reverence among all the Semites, and are credited with oracular powers and a sort of volition by which they receive or reject offerings. Of course these superstitions often take the form of a belief that the sacred spring is the dwelling-place of beings which from time to time emerge from it in human or animal form, but the fundamental idea is that the water itself is the living organism of a demoniac life, not a mere dead organ[137].
Kazwini[138] relates that “when the water [of the wells of Ilabistan] failed, a feast was held at the source, with music and dancing, to induce it to flow again.”
One thinks of the “Well of Fair Dances” at Eleusis; though not offering a parallel to what has just been said, it is in so far an analogy in that it was a spring at which sacred dancing took place, in this case by women in honour of Demeter[139].
We have mention of sacred dancing, again, in another connexion, viz. around the Golden Calf. The passage is Exod. xxxii. 5, 6, 19:
And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, Tomorrow shall be a feast (ḥag) to Jahwe. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to dance[140].... And it came to pass, as soon as he [i.e. Moses] came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing....
This definite mention of the sacred dance here justifies the assumption that it was also performed in honour of a similar idol set up in other sanctuaries, such as those in Dan and Bethel (1 Kings xii. 28, 29, 2 Kings x. 29; cp. Hos. x. 5), in Samaria (Hos. viii. 5, 6), and possibly in Gilgal (Hos. xii. 11 [12], Am. v. 4, 5)[141].
Again, there are several passages in which the encirclement of the altar is mentioned; these merit a little attention. In 1 Sam. xvi. 11, where there is, however, a little uncertainty about the reading, there is some justification in translating the Hebrew thus: “And Samuel said ... we will not go round, i.e. the altar, till he come.” The Revised Version follows the Septuagint and the Vulgate in rendering: “We will not sit down, i.e. to the feast, till he come”; but this use of the word is otherwise unknown in the Old Testament[142]. Taking it in its natural sense the word would here refer to the ceremonial encircling of the altar which is mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament, and was a recognized part of the ritual in offering sacrifices among other peoples. In Ps. xxvi. 6 it is said: “I will wash mine hands in innocency and will go round thy altar, Jahwe”; this points clearly to the ritual encircling of the altar, and the incidental mention of it without further comment seems to imply that it formed part of the ordinary ritual[143]. A procession on a larger scale may well be in the mind of the writer of Ps. xlviii. 13 [12 in R.V.]: “Encompass ye Zion, and go round about her”; the context points to the reference being to some act of ritual worship; and that it is a literal, and not a figurative, encirclement that is meant is clear both from the use of sābab, as well as of nāqaph, which refers often to the surrounding of cities.