390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of seven days is introduced into the most solemn event of their Egyp- 

 tian sojourn, namely, the ordinance of the Passover : "Seven days 

 shall ye eat unleavened bread ; even the first day ye shall put away 

 leaven out of your houses, for whosoever eateth leavened bread from 

 the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from 

 Israel. And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation ; and 

 in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you ; no 

 manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man 

 must eat, that only shall be done of you " (Exodus xii, 15, 16). And a 

 little farther on, in the chapter from which the preceding passage is 

 quoted, there is an apparent reference to the division of the month 

 into four weeks, as the recognized method of division : " In the first 

 month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat un- 

 leavened bread, until the one-and-twentieth day of the month at 

 even. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses" 

 (Exodus xii, 18, 19). Here we have seven mentioned as well as its mul- 

 tiples : seven, fourteen, twenty-one, and the month or twenty-eight 

 days. It is difficult not to believe that either in consequence of 

 Egyptian custom, or their old Syrian tradition, or both combined, the 

 Israelites were at this time familiar with the notion of a week of 

 seven days. 



But there is evidence that not only was the week known to the 

 Israelites, but also the ordinance of the Sabbath, early in their wan- 

 derings. The Sabbath does not appear to have been ordained for the 

 first time when promulgated from Sinai. In Exodus xvi we read con- 

 cerning the manna, " To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto 

 the Lord." Again : "Closes said, Eat that to-day; for to-day is a 

 Sabbath unto the Lord ; to-day ye shall not find it in the field ; six 

 days ye shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sab- 

 bath, in it there shall be none." And, once more : " See, too, that the 

 Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the 

 sixth day the bread of two days ; abide ye every man in his place ; let 

 no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested 

 on the seventh day." Thus the promulgation from Sinai was only the 

 republication, and confirming by more solemn sanction, of that which 

 existed already. It should be observed, however, that the appointment 

 of the Sabbath and the institution of the week are two different things : 

 the week might be, and perhaps originally was, a merely secular divis- 

 ion of time, like the month and the year ; what was done by the 

 teaching connected with the manna, and subsequently more explicitly 

 by the fourth commandment, was to take one day out of the seven 

 and impress a peculiar character upon it. Man, so to speak, made the 

 week, but God made the Sabbath : the week was secular, the Sab- 

 bath was religious. If I may venture so to express myself, the task 

 of Moses in forming his horde of Egyptian slaves into " a holy nation, 

 a peculiar people," was a good deal facilitated by this course of pro- 





