As for the evidence for these various arrangements, those of the Book of the Covenant are presupposed alike by Deuteronomy and by the Priestly Code.  It seems to have been due to the prompting of Deuteronomy that towards the end of the reign of Zedekiah the emancipation of the Hebrew slaves was seriously gone about; the expressions in Jeremiah xxxiv. 14 point to Deuteronomy xv. 12, and not to Exodus xxi. 2.  The injunction not having had practical effect previously, it was in this instance carried through by all parties at the same date:  this was of course inevitable when it was introduced as an extraordinary innovation; perhaps it is in connexion with this that a fixed seventh year grew out of a relative one.  The sabbatical year, according to the legislator’s own declaration, was never observed throughout the whole pre-exilic period; for, according to Leviticus xxvi. 34, 35, the desolation of the land during the exile is to be a compensation made for the previously neglected fallow years:  “Then shall the land pay its Sabbaths as long as it lieth desolate; when ye are in your enemies’ land then shall the land rest and pay its Sabbaths; all the days that it lieth desolate shall it rest, which it rested not in your Sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it.”  The verse is quoted in 2Chronicles xxxvi. 21 as the language of Jeremiah,—­ a correct and unprejudiced indication of its exilic origin.  But as the author of Leviticus xxvi. was also the writer of Leviticus xxv. 1-7, that is to say, the framer of the law of the sabbatic year, the recent date of the latter regulation also follows at once.  The year of jubilee, certainly derived from the Sabbath year, is of still later origin.  Jeremiah (xxxiv. 14) has not the faintest idea that the emancipation of the slaves must according to “law” take place in the fiftieth year.  The name drwr, borne by the jubilee in Leviticus xxv. 10, is applied by him to the seventh year; and this is decisive also for Ezekiel xlvi. 17:  the gift of land bestowed by the prince on one of his servants remains in his possession only until the seventh year.

CHAPTER IV.  THE PRIESTS AND THE LEVITES.

IV.I.

IV.I.1 The problem now to be dealt with is exhibited with peculiar distinctness in one pregnant case with which it will be well to set out.  The Mosaic law, that is to say, the Priestly Code, distinguishes, as is well known, between the twelve secular tribes and Levi, and further within the spiritual tribe itself, between the sons of Aaron and the Levites, simply so called.  The one distinction is made visible in the ordering of the camp in Numbers ii., where Levi forms around the sanctuary a cordon of protection against the immediate contact of the remaining tribes; on the whole, however, it is rather treated as a matter of course, and not brought into special prominence (Numbers xviii. 22).  The other is accentuated with incomparably greater emphasis.  Aaron and