cipation of the stranger in the triennial tithe
(Deut. xiv. 28, 29; xxvi. 12, 13).

^ Deut. xv. 12-18.

The regulations in regard to divine worship had not as yet been drawn
up in that spirit of hair-splitting minuteness which, later on, became
a characteristic of Hebrew legislation. Only three great festivals are
mentioned in the Book of the Law. The Passover was celebrated in the
month of Abib, when the grain is in the ear, and had already come to be
regarded as commemorative of the Exodus; but the other two, the Feast
of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles, were merely associated with the
agricultural seasons, and took place, the former seven weeks after the
beginning of the harvest, the latter after the last of the crops had
been housed.* The claim of the priest to a share in the victim and in
the offerings made on various occasions is maintained, and the lawgiver
allows him to draw a similar benefit from the annual and triennial
tithes which he imposes on corn and wine and on the firstborn of cattle,
the produce of this tithe being devoted to a sort of family festival
celebrated in the Holy Place.** The priest was thus placed on the same
footing as the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, and his
influence was but little greater than it had been in the early days of
the monarchy. It was to the prophet and not to the priest that the duty
belonged of directing the public conscience in all those cases for which
the law had made no provision. "I will put My words into his mouth (said
Jahveh), and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto My words
which he shall speak in My name, I will require it of him. But the
prophet which shall speak a word presumptuously in My name, which I have
not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other
gods, that same prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How
shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?--when a prophet
speaketh in the name of Jahveh, if the thing follow not, nor come to
pass, that is the thing which Jahveh hath not spoken: the prophet hath
spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him."

* Deut. xvi. 1-17.

** Deut. xviii. 1-8; as to the share in the triennial tithe,
cf. Deut. xiv. 28, 29; xxvi. 12, 13.

When the reading of the law had ended, Josiah implored the people to
make a covenant with Jahveh; that