3d month, and lasted seven days. Deut. xvi.
10, 11. The Feast of Tabernacles, which commenced on the 15th of the 7th
month, and lasted eight days. Deut. xvi. 13, 15; Lev. xxiii. 34-39. As
all met in one place, much time would be spent on the journey. Cumbered
caravans move slowly. After their arrival, a day or two would be
requisite for divers preparations before the celebration, besides some
time at the close of it, in preparations for return. If we assign three
weeks to each festival--including the time spent on the journeys, and
the delays before and after the celebration, together with the _festival
week_, it will be a small allowance for the cessation of their regular
labor. As there were three festivals in the year, the main body of the
servants would be absent from their stated employments at least _nine
weeks annually_, which would amount in forty-two years, subtracting the
sabbaths, to six years and eighty-four days.

4. _The new moons_. The Jewish year had twelve; Josephus says that the
Jews always kept _two_ days for the new moon. See Calmet on the Jewish
Calendar, and Horne's Introduction; also 1 Sam. xx, 18, 19, 27. This, in
forty-two years, would be two years 280 days.

5. _The feast of trumpets_. On the first day of the seventh month, and
of the civil year. Lev. xxiii. 24, 25.

6. _The atonement day_. On the tenth of the seventh month Lev. xxiii.
27.

These two feasts would consume not less than sixty-five days not
reckoned above.

Thus it appears that those who continued servants during the period
between the jubilees, were by law released from their labor,
TWENTY-THREE YEARS AND SIXTY-FOUR DAYS, OUT OF FIFTY YEARS, and those
who remained a less time, in nearly the same proportion. In this
calculation, besides making a donation of all the _fractions_ to the
objector, we have left out those numerous _local_ festivals to which
frequent allusion is made, Judg. xxi. 19; 1 Sam. ix. 12. 22. etc., and
the various _family_ festivals, such as at the weaning of children; at
marriages; at sheep shearings; at circumcisions; at the making of
covenants, &c., to which reference is often made, as in 1 Sam, xx. 6.
28, 29. Neither have we included the festivals instituted at a later
period of the Jewish history--the feast of Purim, Esth. ix. 28, 29; and
of the Dedication, which lasted eight days. John x. 22; 1 Mac. iv. 59.

Finally, the Mosaic system secured to servants, an amount of time which,
if distributed, wo