The festivals, with the exception of the Sabbaths, had partly
an agrarian, partly an historical, signification, relating to the
divine guidance of the nation. There were fifty-nine in aU
through the year, and they were all accompanied by special
public sacrifices: seven of these ftast-days were solemnised by
abstinence from work, viz. the first and seventh dav of un-
leavened bread, the day of pentecost, the seventh new moon, the
day of atonement, and the first and last day of the feast of
tabernacles; but the day of atonement alone resembled the
Sabbath in the prohibition of every kind of work, while the rest
enjoined on the other days did not exclude the more necessary
business and employments, such as the preparation of food. On
the days intervening between the longer feasts, all kinds of
work were allowed. Three feasts, the pasch, pentecost, and the
feast of tabernacles, were pilgrimage festivals, when it was in-
cumbent on all the males of the land to repair to the temple.
The birthday of the nation was the pasch or feast of the pass-
over, solemnised in memory of their deliverance out of Egypt,
and the sparing of the firstborn of the Hebrews during the last
plague the Egyptians were smitten with. On the evening of the
fourteenth day of the spring month, the first of the year, the
whole nation had to kill the victim for sacrifice, to sprinkle its
blood, and to observe the sacrificial meal by eating the lamb
which was slain. In this, then, all alike had priestly rights^ as
already Philo brings out.^ The lamb was slain in the court of

> Deut xxiii. 22. « Numbers xxx. 4 sq. » De Vit Mos. 3.
874 THE LAW.
