160 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
sin amongst this simple agricultural people to remove one of 
these land-marks after the ground has been sown.* Doubtless 
with reference to this particular case the solemn anathema 
was pronounced on Mount Ebal against a secret fraud, which 
could be so easily committed, would be so difficult to detect, 
and would be attended with such serious injury, “ cursed be 
he that removeth his neighbour’s land-mark.”f It has been 
hitherto supposed that these words applied to the original 
boundaries of fields and farms, but such land-marks are for 
the most part of a permanent and immovable character, 
while the stones which are yearly brought and placed to 
distinguish the strip or strips assigned to each individual, 
can be tampered with far more readily, and in this case not 
only the land, but also the crop sown and worked by another 
be thus stolen. Besides, in farming by maress, amongst a 
people wholly given as Israel were to agricultural pursuits, 
the temptation to such an act of dishonesty would constantly 
present itself to all, in every part of the country. 
An inflexible rule prevails as to the cultivation of the soil 
thus annually distributed. A man may not sow any crop 
which he pleases on his strip or strips, but is compelled to 
erow the same produce as the rest of his fellow-farmers are 
growing in the field cr district where his allotments le. And 
there is a good reason for this. When the crop is cut and 
the ground is bare, the beasts which are at other times kept 
in the proper pastures of Palestine, wide unfenced desert 
hills, are brought to these stubble lands, and are fed on the 
wild growth which then springs up. In agriculture, through- 
out the East, they never use any manure that requires 
leading, but the flocks and herds when thus pastured oyer 
it serve not only to clear but also to enrich the soil. But 
this requires that the whole ground in each part of the 
village lands should lie fallow at the same time, in order 
that the common rights of pasturage may be enjoyed with- 
out doing harm to any adjacent standing crops. Hence the 
* The fellahheen call the boundary marks they place to distinguish the 
sown strips (mawaress) into which they divide the fields takhem (plural 
tukhum), which is evidently the same word as that which occurs in the 
Talmud for “bound,” or “limit,” tehoom, in the expression, DIAN 
Maw, tehoom hashshabath, “bound of the sabbath,” that is, “ limit 
of the sabbath day’s journey.” M. Clermont-Ganneau discovered this 
word in the rock-cut inscription twice repeated, \3}) OPWM, tehoom Gezer, 
limit of Gezer,” at Tell el Jezer (Mr. Bergheim’s village, the Abu Shusheh 
of the maps), now identified with the royal Canaanite city of Gezer, in 
after times a Levitical city (Joshua xxi. 21). 
+ Deut. xxvii. 17. See also Deut, xix. 14; Job xxiv. 2. 
