which He shall choose:  in the feast of unleavened bread, of weeks, and of tabernacles (hag ha-maccoth,—­ shabuoth,—­sukkoth), and they shall not appear before me empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of Jehovah thy God, which He hath given thee” (ver. 13-17).  As regards the essential nature of the two last-named feasts, these passages are at one.  The sukkoth of Deuteronomy and the asiph of the Jehovistic legislation do not coincide in time merely, but are in fact one and the same feast, the autumnal ingathering of the wine and of the oil from the vat and press, and of the corn from the threshing-floor.  The name asiph refers immediately to the vintage and olive-gathering, to which the word sukkoth seems also to relate, being most easily explained from the custom of the whole household, old and young, going out to the vineyard in time of harvest, and there camping out in the open air under the improvised shelter of booths made with branches (Isaiah i. 8). Qacir and shabuoth in like manner are only different names for the same reality, namely, for the feast of the corn-reaping, or, more strictly, the wheat-reaping, which takes place in the beginning of summer.  Thus both festivals have a purely natural occasion.  On the other hand, the spring festival, which always opens the series, has a historical motive assigned to it, the exodus—­most expressly in Deuteronomy—­being given as the event on which it rests.  The cycle nevertheless seems to presuppose and to require the original homogeneity of all its members.  Now the twofold ritual of the pesah and the maccoth points to a twofold character of the feast.  The hag, properly so named, is called not hag ha-pesah, 1 but hag ha-maccoth,

******************************** 1.  The original form of the expression of Exodus xxxiv. 25 has been preserved in Exodus xxiii. 18 (XGGY not XG HPSX).  In Deuteronomy, although PSX is more prominent, it is called XG HMCWT in xvi. 16. ********************************

and it is only the latter that is co-ordinated with the other two haggim; the name pesah indeed does not occur at all until Deuteronomy, although in the law of the two tables the sacrifice of the first-born seems to be brought into connection with the feast of unleavened bread.  It follows that only the maccoth can be taken into account for purposes of comparison with qasir and asiph.  As to the proper significance of maccoth, the Jehovistic legislation does not find it needful to instruct its contemporaries, but it is incidentally disclosed in Deuteronomy.  There the festival of harvest is brought into a definite relation in point of time with that of maccoth; it is to be celebrated seven weeks later.  This is no new ordinance, but one that rests upon old custom, for the name, “feast of weeks,” occurs in a passage so early as Exodus xxxiv. (comp Jeremiah