Rest Days; A Sociological Study 13 1 



the new moon seems to have been one of the favorite occasions 

 for consuhing the prophets,-'' a circumstance which could be ex- 

 plained if the day were marked by a cessation of ordinary labor. 

 There are still other reasons, presently to be given, for believing 

 that until the Exile or later, the new moon was a general rest 

 day; and this it has continued to be for Jewish women until the 

 present time.-'^ Finally, it is difficult to understand the rule 

 forbidding fasting at new moon except as a reference to a custom 

 formerly observed but in later times regarded as an illegitimate 

 rite {infra). '^ 



Not only new moon but full moon as well had a religious 

 significance to the early Israelites.^^ The great agricultural 

 festivals must have been celebrated at the time of full moon, for 

 when the sacred calendar was framed in post-Exilic times, they 

 were definitely fixed for the middle of the month. On the 

 fourteenth day of the first month came the Passover, and on 

 the fifteenth day of the same month the Feast of Unleavened 

 Bread (from the fifteenth to the twenty-first ).^'' On the fifteenth 

 day of the seventh month began the Feast of Tabernacles which 

 was likewise celebrated for seven days.^^ It is to be observed, 

 also, that these festivals, like the Sabbath and Day of Atonement, 

 were periods of rest. The first and last of the seven days' Feast 



'^2 Kings, iv. 23. 



^ Abrahams, in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 522 ; John Allen, 

 Modern Judaism, London, 1830, pp. 390 sq. 



=' Cf. Judith, viii. 8. 



^A passage in one of the Psalms (Ixxxi. 3): "Blow the trumpet at 

 the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast-day," probably refers to the 

 New Moon in the seventh month {Leviticus, xxiii. 24). Similarly, "full 

 moon " may be explained as referring to the first day of the Feast of 

 Tabernacles which began on the fifteenth of the same month {ibid., xxiii 



39). 



^Leviticus, xxiii. 5-6; Exodns, xii. 6 sqq.; Numbers, xxviii. 16-17. 



^^ Leviticus, xxiii. 39, 33-36; Numbers, xxix. 12. Esckicl (xlv. 25), 

 seems to have been the first to fix the Feast of Booths on the fifteenth of 

 the seventh month, though from i Kings xii. 32 it would appear that this 

 date was already established in the southern kingdom of Judah. This 

 passage, however, may be post-Exilic. 



