polated his text, where he wrote Mvunv, Mneves, they wrote Mwony, Moses, and having made this emendation, Moses' law being a written law, forced upon them another; and induced them, where he used theword ayganlos unwritten, to imagine he meant Tyga pois or written, and to cite him, not as he really wrote, but as they falsely judged he had intended. Whereas, 2. Diodorus really meant to remark, that' Mneves was the first person who taught the Egyptians the use of laws; but they were vous aygalo, unwritten laws. The early kings instructed their people by verbal edicts; and Diodorus in the passage cited, intimates, that this most ancient Egyptian legislator had formed his people in this manner, before the use of written laws was introduced into the world; and he imagines that he had feigned Mercury or Hermes to have given him' what he spake to them, in order to his words having weight among his people; that they might think a divine sentence to be in the lips of their king, and that his mouth transgressed not in the judgments which he delivered to them.

k

There are some particulars commanded in the law of Moses, which it is evident that Moses, at the time when he enjoined them, knew might be fatal to the

* Προσποιηθήναι δ' αυτω τον Ερμην δεδωκέναι τάτας The word daneva here signifies, to dictate to the mind what is to be spoken, as in Mark xiii. 11.

* Προς την υπεροχην και δυναμιν των ευρείν λεγομένων της νόμες αποβληψαντα τον όχλον μάλλον υπακέσασθαι διαλαβονίας Dio 1 Prov, xvi. 10..

dor. ubi. sup.

welfare of his people; if God did not interpose, and by an especial providence preserve them from what the obeying such commands tended evidently to bring upon them. Of this sort is the law he gave them, for all their males to appear three times in a year before the LORD; and the command not to sow or till any of

m

their lands, or dress their vineyards, or gather any fruit of them every seventh year;" and if, as some of the learned calculate, the year of Jubilee was a different year from the seventh Sabbatical year," then after

m Exod. xxiii, 17. xxxiv. 23.

"Ibid. xxiii. 10, 11. Levit. xxv. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

• The learned have been much divided about the year of Jubilee, whether it was to be kept in the forty-ninth year, which taken inclusively may be called the fiftieth; or whether forty-nine years were to run out, and then the next or fiftieth year was to be the year of Jubilee. Vid. Cleric Comment. in Levit. xxv. Petav. Rationar. Tempor. part. 2. c. 7. And we have so few, and such imperfect accounts of the practice of the Jews, in their observance of this or their Sabbatical years, that it may be difficult to offer any thing certain upon this subject. The most learned Dean Prideaux thought the text Levit. xxv. 8-12. to be in favour of the Jubilee year's being the next to the forty-ninth or seventh Sabbatical year: Preface to vol. I. of his Connect. the words of the text are, Thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement-And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year

seven times seven years, on every fiftieth year, they were to have their lands and vineyards lie undressed

A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you, ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it-Levit. xxv. 8-.11. We may perhaps come at the true meaning of this text, if we take it, 1. to direct the Israelites to observe at their due intervals seven Sabbatical years. 2. To remark that a course of seven such years, with the six years of tillage belonging to each of them duly observed, were to make up the full amount of forty-nine years, the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years, or, to render the Hebrew text verbatim, the days of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. The meaning of which remark will appear, if we allow the text, 3. to suggest to them, that they were to begin the Jubilee year on the tenth day of the seventh month of the forty-ninth, or seventh Sabbatical year; Thou shalt cause the trumpet of the Jubilee, to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month. The observance of each Sabbatical year was, I imagine, to begin as soon as the sixth year's crop could be got off the ground in the begin ning of the seventh year; for the harvest in Canaan fell in the first month. See and compare Joshua iii. 15. with 1 Chron. xii. 15. And when the Israelites had counted the seven times seven years, so as to be in observance of their seventh sabbath year, then on the tenth day of the seventh month, they were to begin a year of Jubilee, only remem. bering, that they were not to reckon the sabbath year they were then keeping, to end upon commencing the Jubilee; for the seven Sabbaths of years were to contain the days of forty-nine years, which they would not have amounted to,

and uncultivated two years together." The first of these laws obliged them to leave their cities and habitations exposed and without defence to any invaders, who might at such times make incursions upon them; for at these three times in every year, all their males were to come up from all parts of the country into the place where

if the seventh Sabbath year was to have been thought finished, on the tenth day of the seventh month, upon begin. ning the Jubilee. 4. As, according to this account, the year of Jubilee did not begin and end with the Sabbatical year; but commenced some months later, and extended a like space of time longer; so it was evidently not any one of the years contained in the seven Sabbaths of years, though it was in part concurrent with the last of them. Accordingly, it is properly stiled in the text a fiftieth year, as not being any one of the forty-nine before-mentioned. If what has been offered may be admitted, then, 5. Though the Jubilee-year began and ended some months later than. a Sabbatical year; yet, as the season for seed-time did not come on in Canaan before the fifteenth day of the seventh month was over, (Sec Levit. xxili. 39.) the Jubilee year ending as it began, on the tenth day of this seventh month, did not command a year's neglect of harvest and tillage, other than what the Sabbath-year in part concurrent with it enjoined. Only, perhaps, the year of Jubilee obliged them to defer preparing their lands some months longer than a Sabbatical year, not attended with a Jubilee, required; causing them hereby to end every forty-ninth or seventh Sabbatical year, with, as I might say, a greater solemnity.

» Levit. xxv. 8-12.

the tabernacle was fixed, before the temple was built, and afterwards to the temple at Jerusalem. The se cond must, ordinarily speaking, have brought upon them many inconveniences, as it required them to lose at once a whole year's produce of all their country. And if the jubilee year was to be kept, as is above hinted, and they were not to sow nor reap in the fiftieth year, when the year immediately foregoing had been a Sabbath year; this, one would think, must have distressed them with the extremities of a famine. Moses had a full sense, that all these evils might attend the observance of these laws. He was well apprized that, as Canaan was an inland country, and his Is, raelites were to be surrounded with, and open to many foreign nations, it could never be thought agreeable to good policy, three times a year to draw all the males from the frontiers of the land; for what would this be less, than to give every enemy they had, so many remarkable and well-known opportunities to enter their coasts without fear of resistance, and to plunder or take possession of them, as they pleased? And can it be conceived, that any state or kingdom could be long flourishing, which should be bound by law to expose itself in this manner? But against these fears Moses assured his people, that God would protect them; and sets before them God's promise. I will cast out

Deut. xvi. 1 Sam. i. 3.

We find a sore famine in Samaria in Elijah's time, from ́unseasonable weather for three years together, 1 Kings xvii. xviii.