It results from the very nature of the case that the people come together to offer thanks for Jehovah’s blessing, but no special emphasis is laid upon this.  In the Jehovistic legislation (Exodus xxiii., xxxiv.) the terms have not yet come to be fixed, so that it is hardly possible to speak of a “dies festus” in the strict sense; festal seasons rather than festal days are what we have.  Easter is celebrated in the month Abib, when the corn is in the ear (Exodus ix. 31, 32), Pentecost when the wheat is cut, the autumn festival when the vintage has been completed,—­rather vague and shifting determinations.  Deuteronomy advances a step towards fixing the terms and intervals more accurately, a circumstance very intimately connected with the centralisation of the worship in Jerusalem.  Even here, however, we do not meet with one general festive offering on the part of the community, but only with isolated private offerings by individuals.

In correspondence with this the amount of the gifts is left with considerable vagueness to the good-will of the offerers.  Only the firstlings are definitely demanded.  The redemption allowed in Deuteronomy by means of money which buys a substitute in Jerusalem has no proper meaning for the earlier time; yet even then the offerer may in individual instances have availed himself of liberty of exchange, all the more because even then his gift, as a sacrificial meal, was essentially a benefit to himself (Exodus xxiii. 18; Genesis iv. 4, WMXBLHN).  For the first-fruits of the field Exodus prescribes no measure at all, Deuteromony demands the tithe of corn, wine, and oil, which, however, is not to be understood with mathematical strictness, inasmuch as it is used at sacrificial meals, is not made over to a second party, and thus does not require to be accounted for.  The tithe, as appears from Deuteronomy xxvi., is offered in autumn, that is, at the feast of tabernacles; this is the proper autumn festival of thanksgiving, not only for the wine harvest, but also for that of the threshing-floor (xvi. 13); it demands seven days, which must all be spent in Jerusalem, while in the case of maccoth only one need be spent there.  It is self-evident that there is no restriction to the use of vegetable gifts merely, but sacrifices of flesh are also assumed—­purchased perhaps with the proceeds of the sale of the tithe.  In this way the special character of the feasts, and their connection with the first-fruits peculiar to them, could easily disappear, a thing which seems actually to have occurred in Deuteronomy, and perhaps even earlier.  It is not to be wondered at that much should seem unclear to us which must have been obvious to contemporaries; in Deuteronomy, moreover, almost everything is left to standing custom, and only the one main point insisted on, that the religious worship, and thus also the festivals, must be celebrated only in Jerusalem.  Leaving out of account the passover, which originally had an independent standing,