RABBINICAL PRECEPTS CONCERNING THE SABBATH.
THE Scribes had elaborated from the command of Moses a vast array of prohibitions and injunctions, covering the whole of social, individual, and public life, and carried it to the extreme of ridiculous caricature. Lengthened rules were prescribed as to the kinds of knots which might legally be tied on Sabbath. The camel-driver's knot and the sailor's were unlawful, and it was equally illegal to tie or to loose them. A knot which could be untied with one hand might be undone. A shoe or sandal, a woman's cup, a wine or oil-skin, or a flesh-pot might be tied. A pitcher at a spring might be tied to the body-sash, but not with a cord. The quantity of food that might be carried on Sabbath from one place to another was duly settled. It must be less in bulk than a dried fig; if of honey, only as much as would anoint a wound; if water, as much as would make eye-salve; if paper, as much as would be put in a phylactery; if ink, as much as would form two letters. To kindle or extinguish a fire on the Sabbath was a great desecration of the day, nor was even sickness allowed to violate Rabbinical rules. It was forbidden to give an emetic on Sabbath—to set a broken bone, or put back a dislocated joint, though some Rabbis, more liberal, held that whatever endangered life made the Sabbath law void, "for the commands were given to Israel only that they might live by them." One who was buried under ruins on Sabbath, might be dug for and taken out, if alive, but if dead, he was to be left where he was till the Sabbath was over. The holy day began with sunset on Friday, and ended with the sunset of Saturday, but as the disappearance of the sun was the only mark of the time, its commencement was different on a hill-top and in a valley. If it were cloudy, the hens going to roost was the signal. The beginning and close of the Sabbath were announced by a trumpet from the Temple, and in the different towns. From the decline of the sun on Friday, to its setting, was Sabbath eve, and no work which would continue into the hours of the Sabbath, could be done in this interval. All food must be prepared, all vessels washed, and all lights kindled before sunset. The money girdle must be taken off, and all tools laid aside. "On Friday, before the beginning of the Sabbath," said one law, "no one must go out of his house with a needle or a pen, lest he forget to lay them aside before the Sabbath opens. Every one must also search his pockets at that time, to see that there is nothing left in them with which it is forbidden to go out on the Sabbath." The refinements of Rabbinical casuistry were, indeed, endless. To wear one kind of sandals was carrying a burden, while to wear another kind was not. One might carry a burden on his shoulder, but it must not be slung between two. It was unlawful to go out with wooden sandals or shoes which had nails in the soles, or with a shoe and a slipper, unless one foot were hurt. It was unlawful for any one to carry a loaf on the public street, but if two carried it, it was not unlawful. Even in hell the lost had rest from their torments on its sacred hours, and the waters of Bethesda might be troubled on other days, but were still and unmoved on this. In an insincere age such excessive strictness led to constant evasions by Pharisees and Sadducees alike. To escape the restrictions which limited a journey on Sabbath to 2,000 cubits from a town or city, they carried food on Friday evening to a spot that distance beyond the walls, and assumed, by a fiction, that this made that spot also their dwelling. They could thus on the Sabbath walk the full distance to it, and an equal distance beyond it, this journey being only the legal distance from the fictitious place of residence! To make it lawful to eat together on the Sabbath the Rabbis put chains across the two ends of a street, in which the members of a special fraternity lived, and called it a single dwelling! The priests and Rabbis, thus secretly indulgent to themselves, but austerely strict before the world, found an opportunity in the cure at Bethesda for parading their hollow puritanism, and at the same time raising a charge against Jesus, for the man had been healed on the Sabbath, and had been told to carry his sleeping-mat with him to his home. This was enough. Met in the street carrying his pallet, by one of these purists, he had been reprimanded for doing so as contrary to the law, and had shielded himself by the command of him who had miraculously cured him. It was not till some time after, when Jesus had come upon him in the temple, that he knew the name of his benefactor, for Jesus had hurried away from the pool, after curing him, to avoid exciting the multitude round. The above from Geikie's "Life of Christ," pp. 448-450, shows some of the many senseless restrictions which had been placed upon the Sabbath law in the time of Christ. Instead of being the blessing designed, they had made it a burden. As stated by another:— "Jesus answered their accusations by declaring, 'My father worketh hitherto, and I work.' All days are God's in which to carry out his great plans for the human race. If the Jews' interpretation of the law was correct, then Jehovah was at fault, whose work had upheld and quickened creation since first he laid the foundations of the earth. Should God forbid the sun to do its office upon the Sabbath, cut off its genial rays from warming the earth and nourishing vegetation? Must the system of worlds stand still through that holy day? Should he command the babbling brooks to stay their course from watering the fields and forests, and bid the advancing and receding waves to still their ceaseless ebbing and flowing? Must the wheat and corn stop growing, and the ripening cluster defer its purple bloom for a single day? Must the waving trees and the delicate flowers put forth no bud nor blossom on the Sabbath? "Jesus sought to impress upon the narrow minds of the Jews a sense of the folly of their view of the Sabbath. Heaven's work never ceases for a moment, and men should never rest from doing good. The Sabbath law forbids labor on the sanctified rest-day of the Lord. The toil that gains a livelihood must cease; no labor for worldly pleasure or profit is lawful upon the Lord's day; but the work of Christ in healing the sick did honor to the holy Sabbath."