man’s hands and can be regulated by him.  Yet even under the older monarchy the previous festivals must also have already existed as well (Isaiah xxix. 1).  The peculiarity of the feast of tabernacles would then reduce itself to this, that it was the only general festival at Jerusalem and Bethel; local celebrations “at all threshing floors “—­i.e., on all high places—­are not thereby excluded (Host ix. 1).  But the Jehovistic legislation makes no distinction of local and central, for it ignores the great temples throughout. 1 Possibly,

************************************** 1.  Exodus xx. 24-26 looks almost like a protest against the arrangements of the temple of Solomon,—­especially ver. 26. **************************************

also, it to some extent systematises the hitherto somewhat vaguer custom; the transition from the aparchai to a feast was perhaps in practice still somewhat incomplete.  In the paucity of positive data one is justified, however, in speaking of a substantial agreement, inasmuch as in the two cases the idea of the festivals is the same.  Very instructive in this respect are two sections of Hosea (chaps. ii. and ix.), which on this account deserve to be fully gone into.  In the first of these Israel is figured as a woman who receives her maintenance from her husband, that is, from the Deity; this is the basis of the covenant relationship.  But she falls into error as to the giver of her meat and drink and clothing, supposing them to come from the idols, and not from Jehovah.  “She hath said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.  Doth she then not know that it is I (Jehovah) who have given her the corn and the wine and the oil, and silver in abundance, and gold—­out of which she maketh false gods?  Therefore will I take back again my corn in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax that should cover her nakedness; and now will I discover her shame before the eyes of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand.  And I will bring all her mirth to an end, her festival days, her new moons and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.  And I will destroy her vines and her fig-trees whereof she saith, ’They are my hire, that my lovers have given me,’ and I will make them a wilderness, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.  Thus will I visit upon her the days of the false gods, wherein she burnt fat offerings to them and decked herself with her rings and her jewels, and went after her lovers and forget me, saith the Lord.  Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and there I will assign her her vineyards:  then shall she be docile as in her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.  Thereafter I betroth thee unto me anew for ever, in righteousness and in judgment, in loving kindness and in mercies.  In that day, saith the Lord, will I answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the corn and the wine and the oil, and these shall answer Jezreel” (ii. 7-24 [5-22]).  The blessing of the land is here the end of religion, and that quite generally,—­alike of the false heathenish and of the true Israelitish. 1