Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/406

390 of seven days is introduced into the most solemn event of their Egyptian 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 unleavened 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 multiples: 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 wanderings. The Sabbath does not appear to have been ordained for the first time when promulgated from Sinai. In Exodus xvi we read concerning the manna, "To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." Again: "Moses 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 Sabbath, 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 division 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 Sabbath 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