served, still belongs to the history of Caleb; as it is added in the next verse, "And they gave Hebron unto Caleb," &c. Doubtless, the translators had before their eyes the identical letters which compare our present Hebrew text of the passage (comp. Josh. xvii. 16, 18), only the scriptio continua □bbinaan misled them; but how came the notion of a proper name, Rechab, to suggest itself, except from the notoriety of the fact that Caleb, whose history is under consideration, was connected with one Rechab? The mistranslation is the more curious, as they felt no difficulty as to the sense of the same words in iv. 3, although the translators of the passage in Joshua do seem to have been puzzled by the expression 5 which they render ἵππος ἐπίλεκτος και σίδηρος in v. 16, and drop in v. 18.

Now, supposing the 'Payaß of S. Matthew to be this Rechab the Kenite,-what may be the import of the mention of the name in the genealogy of our Saviour? May it not relate to that promise made by Moses to Hobab the Kenite (Numb. x. 32), “And it shall be if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, that what goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee:" which was eminently fulfilled in that his posterity was drawn into the lineage of the Messiah? We may also remember the blessing pronounced upon the Rechabites by Jeremiah, "Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever." Besides, as the mention of Ruth the Moabitess, and the wife of Uriah the Hittite, so may this of Rechab the Kenite, point to the mystery of the calling of the Gentiles'.

Theophylact among the ancients, and several of the modern commentators, were induced by the chronological difficulty and by the difference of orthography, to

question the identity of 'Paxaß and 'Paaß the harlot. I am not aware that any have suggested the explanation proposed in the text.

SECTION IV.

ON SABBATICAL AND JUBILEAN YEARS.

272. THE chronological construction left it doubtful whether the year of David's accession is 1056 or 1057 B. C., and consequently the year of the Exode, 1586 or 1587 B. c. Unquestionably, the economical symmetry described in the Introduction is sufficient to countervail this slight amount of ambiguity; and the facts of the like kind which yet remain to be described will leave no doubt remaining. But antecedently to any consideration of this nature, there is a fact of chronology which decisively points to the same conclusion; I mean the order of years sabbatical and jubilean. For if we know in what year from the Exode the cycle of these years began, and what rule it followed; and lastly, if any years in the æra B. C. and A. D. are historically known to have been such, then we obtain a numerical character of the year of the Exode, in virtue of which that event must be assigned only to one or other of a certain series of years. Thus, if the cycle be supposed sabbatical only, i. e. a septenary order as uninterrupted as the cycle of the week-days, and if a given year, B. C. m, be known to have been sabbatical, then the numeral of the first year of the cycle must be of the form (m + 7 n) B. c. : and if the epoch be known to lie p years after the Exode, the numeral of the year of the Exode must be of the form (m + 7n+p) B.C. For example, it is on record that a sabbatical year began in the autumn of B. c. 163: then, on this supposition (which is Mr. Greswell's), the first year of the sabbatical cycle, if it lie between 1600 and 1500 B. c. may be the year 163 + 191 × 7 = 1500 B. C., or some one of the years 1507, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, 77, 84, 91, 1598. And if we suppose the cycle to have begun (say) 40 years after the Exode, the year of the Exode must be either 1540, or 1547, 54, 61, &c. In itself, therefore, the criterion thus afforded is of a limiting nature; it will not give the preeise year, but it will determine between any two consecutive years between which, on other grounds, the choice is given.

273. The ordinance of the sabbatical year was delivered "When ye

to Moses in Sinai, and is related Levit. xxv.

...

come into the land it shall keep a sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy fields, &c. . . . but the seventh shall be a year of rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord: thy field thou shalt not sow, &c. seven such sabbaths of years shalt thou count, seven years seven times told, and there shall be to thee of these year-sabbaths forty and nine. Then on the 10th day of the 7th month, on the Day of Atonement, thou shalt blow the trumpet through all the land, shalt hallow the year of the 50 years (i. e. the 50th year), and proclaim to all inhabitants of the land, 'This is the year of jubilee (or trumpets), wherein ye shall all be restored each to his own possessions and to his own family,' And this jubilee shall be to you the year of the 50 years. In this year ye shall not sow, &c."

The numerical definition of the jubilee is plain: it is the 50th or 7 × 7 + 1st year, just as the day of Pentecost is the 7 x 71st day from the 2nd day of unleavened bread. The jubilean period, each and every such period, contains just 50 years reckoned from a fixed epoch, the 10th day of the 7th month.

§ 274. It is surprising that any careful reader should have misunderstood these very plain expressions; yet such is the fact. It appears from the Talmud Erichin, fol. 12, 2. 13, 1. 32, 2. 33, 1. (cited by Ideler, 1. 503), that a certain rabbi Jehuda was the first to maintain, contrary to the established opinion and the plain sense of the words, that the jubilean period consists of 49 years, the jubilee-year being (as he said) itself the 49th, and identical with the 7th sabbatical year. His opinion, Ideler informs us, was subsequently adopted by the Gaonim, certain learned Rabbins, who lived after the completion of the Talmud, and expounded it in the academies over which they presided. Maimonides, however, rejects this view as a novelty: "The 49th year," says he, " is the sh'mittah. (or sabbatical year), the 50th is the jubilee, the 51st is the 1st of the new sh❜mittah." Equally express is Josephus: "Every seven years a remission (äveσts) is granted to the land, as is to man every seven days. The same is the case after the seventh week of years, and this makes 50 years in all, taûta πεντήκοντα μέν ἐστιν ἔτη τὰ πάντα. The 50th year is by the Hebrews called 'Iwßnλos." Ant. iii. 12. 3. In modern

times the hypothesis of the Gaonim has been revived by Frank and Gatterer, who, as I learn from Ideler, have endeavoured to shew that the jubilean period of 49 years forms a very exact luni-solar cycle, and is the key to the entire Scripture Chronology.

§ 275. The epoch from which the sabbatical cycle is reckoned, though not expressed in Scripture, may be inferred with so high a degree of probability as scarcely to admit of a doubt. The law in question was to take effect from the time that they were come into the land, i. e. either from the year in which they entered the land, namely, from the 10th Tisri preceding the passage over Jordan, or from the year in which they entered upon possession of the land: if the former, then from 10 Tisri, 1547: if the latter, the chronology of Joshua will give us the time. It was in 1540 that Caleb and Judah first took possession of their inheritance (§ 264), "and the land rested from war:" just seven years, be it observed, from the other epoch. So far, then, as six out of every seven sabbatical years are concerned, it will make no difference which of the two epochs we assume; the only difference will be in the place of the 7th sh'mittah and the jubilee.

And since each century contains two complete jubilees, the sabbatic and jubilean years will in each century be the same:

In the nature of the case, the latter hypothesis, i. e. the epoch 1540, is the more probable, inasmuch as the ordinance would take effect rather from the conquest of the land than from the year of Moses' death.

§ 276. There is no reason to suppose that the sabbatical and jubilean reckoning, however the due observance of the ordinance may have been neglected, was ever lost, any more than that of the weekly sabbath. When a sabbatical or jubilean year was kept, it was doubtless kept in its proper place.

Before the destruction of the Temple, the history contains no direct and indubitable notice of sabbatical years; but under the second Temple, in the Maccabean times and later, several instances occur of the observance of the sabbatical year, not, however, of the jubilee; and, indeed, according to the tradition of the Gaonim, preserved by Maimonides, "only Sh'mittahs were kept, and no Jobel, after the return from Babylon."—The epoch of this new cycle, if we were right in assigning the epoch of the jubilean cycle to the year 1540 (or 1547), will be the year 541; and the sabbatical years thence to A. D. 70 will be as follows:

277. And now we will test this deduction by comparing the several years which are said, in the history, to have been sabbatical.

1. 1 Macc. vi. 20, 49, 53. The 150th year of the era of the Seleucidæ, which began Tisri 163 B. C., was sabbatical. And so it was by our Table.

2. Joseph. Ant. xiii. 8. 1. A sabbatical year occurred soon after the accession of John Hyrcanus. Simon, the father