that verse also, as Bochart has abundantly proved, vol.

ii.

p.

334. Compare Judg. viii. 24, 25.

SECT. X.

Division of Time among the Jews.

1. Days; their length; why the evening put before the morning; not peculiar to the Jews. Division of the day into morning, noon, and night; then into 12 hours and 12 hours. Origin of dials; that of Ahaz considered. The clepsydra, or water-clock; Jews had three kinds of days; natural, artificial, prophetical. 2. Weeks; their origin; the seven Hebrew numerals descriptive of the seven days' work of creation; computation by weeks very general. 3. Months, four kinds of; the Jewish feasts and fasts, depended on their months. 4. Years; lunar; solar; periodical; siderial. Jewish division into civil and ecclesiastical: these described. The Hebrew and Syro-Macedonian names of the months. The intercalation of years explained; the translation of feasts depended on this intercalation; their lunary, political, and mixed translations.

1. Days. The Jewish day consisted of 24 hours, and was computed from evening to evening. Hence, in the account of the creation, we are always told that the ❝evening and the morning," or the evening 12 hours, and the morning 12 hours, when joined together, made a complete revolution of the earth round its own axis, or one day yet a question occurs, why the evening was put before the morning, or why their day began at the evening? Some interpreters, by way of solution, have observed, that Moses spoke according to the common method of computing time among the Jews; but this is unsatisfactory, for the question still recurs, what made them do so? Was their method of reckoning time merely arbitrary, or was it occasioned by some fixed specific reason? Two answers may be given to this. The first is, that as all strong feelings are commonly more noticed, and generally expressed before those that are weaker, so our first parents, in relating the history of the creation to their children, might have said that the evening VOL. II. M m

or night, whose effects, when it first appeared, they so much dreaded, and the morning or day which preceded it, when taken together, made the first day, thus introducing that particular form of speech which was afterwards used by their posterity. But there is an objection to this; for although such an answer may be deemed satisfactory, when applied to the time after the creation of our first parents, yet it is not so satisfactory when applied to the time which preceded their creation. The whole six days of creation, for instance, are thus denoted, and by an inspired historian too, who must certainly have spoken according to truth. We ought, therefore, to look back for a reason as old as the day to which it was first applied. The following or second reason is, therefore, submitted. As the modern philosophy, contrary to the vulgar opinion, makes the sun to be at rest, and the true motion of the earth round its own axis to be the very reverse of the apparent motion of the sun, or in the direction of from west to east, so if we suppose that the Divine Being, when giving that diurnal motion to the earth, communicated the impulse to the eastern edge of it, the natural consequence would be, that the part touched would gradually sink into darkness, through all the successive stages of night, for the ensuing twelve hours; and at the end of that time would emerge at the western edge, to go through all the successive stages of day for the twelve hours next following, till it reached the east again, to repeat its former course. On this supposition, the evening twelve hours, or the time that the part where the motion was first communicated remained in darkness, would naturally precede the morning twelve hours, or the time when it was illuminated. I may add, that this manner of computing time, although it began with the Jews, was not confined to them; for the Phoenicians, Athe

nians, Numidians, Germans, Gauls, Druids, Bohemians, and Poles, did the same."

Hours, as equal divisions of the day, were long unknown among the ancients, their primary method of measuring time being by their own shadow, at different times of the day, and dividing the scale into 20 parts, in order to regulate their meals. Thus, when their shadow was of a certain length, they breakfasted; when of a certain length, they dined; and when of a certain length, they supped. The Jews do not appear to have been more ingenious than the other nations in this respect; for their first division of the day was into morning, noon, and night; then into the four day and night watches for the temple; and then into twelve hours during the day, and twelve during the night, all of which numbers are frequently noticed in Scripture. But the question occurs, how these hours became generally known among the Jews and other ancient nations? for that there does exist a certain proportion between the shadow of the human body and the hour of the day is unquestionable; but then that shadow was rather a standard for individuals than for the public, since every man's shadow was his own rule. Nor would a pole of any determinate length, if substituted in place of the human figure, have been any great improvement, because, although it would have been a true dial at the equator, it could only have been a twelve o'clock hourline at every other place. The invention, then, of a dial, on just and general principles, would be accounted by them a valuable improvement; yet every one acquainted with the principles of dialling knows, that these are such as to require considerable acquaintance

• See the authorities quoted by Grotius, De Verit. Relig. Christ. Lib. i. 16, note p. b Mark xiii. 35. Basnage, Book v. ch. 10.

c

with geometry, and that, however easy the rules now appear, they might have been long undiscovered by the ancient philosophers; for it is not the mere drawing certain lines at random, and calling them hours, which forms a dial; these hour-lines must be regulated by the latitude of the place, and the style must also correspond with that latitude. Every latitude, therefore, must have its own dial. It was owing to these and other causes that dials were so long unknown at Rome; for the first that appeared there is mentioned by Pliny, Lib. i. cap. 20, and was fixed upon the temple of Quirinus, by Lucius Papirius the censor, about the 12th year of the war with Pyrrhus. But the first that was of any use to the public, was set up in the forum by Valerius Messala the consul, after the taking of Catana in Sicily, from whence it was brought 30 years after the first had been set up by Papirius, and 260 years before Christ. But this was still an imperfect one, the lines of it not exactly corresponding with the several hours; yet they made use of it for many years, till Q. Marcius Philippus placed another beside it, greatly improved. The Greeks, indeed, had dials earlier, for Anaximander brought one from Chaldea, in the 58th Olympiad,a and before Christ 544. But the Jews were acquainted with them much earlier than either the Greeks or Romans; for the dial of Ahaz, which probably came also from Chaldea about the 3d year of his reign, when he formed an alliance with the king of Assyria, was set up at Jerusalem in the 9th Olympiad, or 740 years before Christ. Thus was there a dial at Jerusalem 196 years before they were known in Greece, and 480 years before they were known at Rome.—With respect to the form of the dial of Ahaz, there have been many conjectures. Parkhurst's,

Herodot, Lib. ii,

which appears to me the most probable, is as follows: "From an attentive examination," says he, "of the two places where it is mentioned, it appears, 1. That the voy Shemesh, or solar light's going backward, Is. xxxviii. 8, is equivalent to the shadow's going backward in 2 Kings xx. 9, 10, 11; for the latter depends on the former, and on a dial the light is exactly defined by the shadow. 2. That the dial, or horological instrument here referred to, was not an horizontal, but probably a vertical dial, on which kind of dial the shadow descends (which is expressed in 2 Kings by "going down") from sunrise till noon. Therefore, 3. That the miracle of the light's or shadow's ( Sheb) going backward, or in the contrary direction to going down, that is, its ascending the dial again, must have been in the afternoon, since it ascends the dial naturally every day in the afternoon. And, therefore, 4. That though we cannot exactly determine how much time was marked by ten degrees (by Moluth,) yet it could not be more than six hours, or the time from sunrising till noon. Hence, 5. That it seems not improbable that each degree might mark half an hour of time, and consequently the 10 degrees, 5 hours, since on this supposition the miracle would be more remarkable." Whether, however, we make the dial vertical, as Parkhurst, or a flight of steps in a stair so contrived, as that the sun, by shining in at a window, could mark the hours on the different steps, or any other probable shape, it is evident that the miracle was not merely a change in the atmosphere, so as to increase its refractive power, and make the degrees appear to go backward on the dial of Ahaz only; for in 2 Chron. xxxii. 31, we find that ambassadors were sent from Babylon to congratulate Hezekiah on his recovery,

• Lex. by.