140 Hutton Webster 



for its fruitfulness : " Then I will command my blessing upon 

 you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for the three 

 years.""- That subsequently the produce of the soil was to be 

 devoted to the poor and to the cattle,''^ may be taken as represent- 

 ing a partial triumph of the utilitarian spirit. During the Jubilee 

 at the end of seven times seven years, " Ye shall not sow, neither 

 reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in 

 it of the undressed vines,""* a regulation which can be explained 

 only as the outcome of the Sabbatarian observances attached to 

 the seventh day and the seventh year. 



In the Hawaiian Islands and west Africa the punishment of 

 one who broke a Sabbatarian taboo was death (supra). Among 

 the early Israelites a similar penalty was enforced against the 

 Sabbath-breaker : " Every one that profaneth it shall surely be 

 put to death ; for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall 

 be cut off from among his people.""" We are not informed how 

 frequently this stern ordinance was enforced; the case of him 

 who gathered sticks on the Sabbath"" is the only instance of capi- 

 tal punishment for Sabbath desecration which has found its way 

 into the Scriptures as we now have them. 



From various sources we may gather that the Hebrews kept the 

 Sabbath with varying degrees of rigor in different places and at 

 different times. In the age of Xehemiah the people of Judah made 

 wine and gathered the harvest on the Sabbath. All manner of 

 burdens were brought into Jerusalem on that day and the inhabi- 



^' Leviticus, xxv. 21. 



^Exodus, xxiii. 11. 



'^^ Leviticus, xxv. 11. Whether the Jubilee was celebrated after 48 or 

 after 49 years is a problem incapable of solution from the Old Testament 

 evidence. As Schiaparelli has well shown (Astronomy in the Old Testa- 

 ment, 146 sqq.), the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus combines together 

 two systems of rules which are not only different but actually irrecon- 

 cilable with each other, the septennial system of the Sabbatical year and 

 the Jubilee system of fifty years. 



^Exodus, xxxi. 14. Cf. for a similar regulation, ibid., xxxv. 2. 



"^Numbers, xv. 32-36. The comments of Philo Judaeus on this passage 

 are interesting, if not illuminating {J'ita Mosis, iii. 27-28). 



140 



