Chapter VII. The Same Concerning the Religious Polity of Moses

[PHILO IUD.] ‘Is there then among that people any of these customs or anything like them, anything seemingly mild and gentle, admitting solicitations of justice, and pretexts, and delays, and assessments, and subsequent mitigations of penalties? Nothing; but all is simple and clear. If thou commit sodomy or adultery, if thou violate a child, not to speak of a boy, but even a girl, in like manner if thou prostitute thyself, if even at an unsuitable age thou have suffered, or seem, or intend to suffer, anything disgraceful, the penalty is death.

‘If thou outrage either a slave or a free man, if thou keep him in bonds, if thou take him away and sell him, if thou steal either common things or sacred, if thou be guilty of blasphemy, not only by deed but even by a chance word, against God Himself I may not even say (God forgive me for the very thought of such a thing), but against father or mother or thine own benefactor, again it is death, and that no common or ordinary death; but he who has only spoken blasphemy must be stoned to death, as though for blasphemous deeds he could not have been worse.

‘There were other laws again, such as, that wives should be ruled by their husbands, not from any motive of insult, but with a view to obedience in all things: that parents should rule their children, for safety and greater care: that every one should be master of his own possessions, unless at least he had invoked God’s name upon them, or gave them up as to God. But if it should happen that he so promised merely by a word, he is no longer allowed to lay hand or finger upon them, but is to be at once excluded from all.

‘Speak not of plundering what belongs to the gods, nor of stealing what others have offered; but even in regard to his own property, if, as I said, a word has fallen from him unawares, yet having spoken it, he must be deprived of all: but if he repents or tries to correct what he has said, even his life is to be taken from him.

‘Also in the case of others over whom a man has authority, there is the same principle. If a man declare a wife’s aliment to be consecrated, he must cease to support her: if a father does so to a son, or a ruler to his subject, the effect is the same. A release also of what had been consecrated was the most perfect and complete, when the High Priest absolved, for under God he had the right to receive it: but next to this, the absolution granted by those who in each case have greater authority is allowed to declare that God is propitiated, so that it is not compulsory to undertake the consecration.

‘There are countless other rules besides these, all that either rest upon unwritten customs and usages, or are contained in the laws themselves. Let no man himself do what he hates to have done to him: let him not take up what he did not lay down, neither from garden, wine-press, nor threshing-floor: let him not steal from a heap anything whatever, great or small; let him not begrudge fire to one that asks it; not shut up running waters; but to beggars and cripples collecting food, give it. as a pious offering to God.

‘Hinder not a corpse from burial, but help them to cast on more earth, enough at least for natural piety: disturb not at all the graves or monuments of the departed: add not bonds nor any further trouble to him who is in distress: destroy not the generative power of men by excision, nor of women by abortive drugs and other contrivances. Deal not with animals contrary to the way which either God or a lawgiver has enjoined: destroy not seed: enslave not thy offspring. Substitute not an unjust balance, nor a short measure, nor false coin: betray not the secrets of friends in a quarrel. What place then, in God’s name, can we give to those famous Buzygia?

‘But look at other precepts besides these. Separate not parents from children, not even if they are thy captives; nor wife from husband, even if thou art their master by lawful purchase. These, doubtless, are very grave and important commandments: but there are others of a trifling and ordinary character.[1] Rifle not the bird’s nest under thy roof: reject not the supplication of animals which flee as it were sometimes for protection: abstain from any harm that may be even less than these. You may say that these are matters of no importance; but at all events the law which governs them is important, and is the cause of very careful observance; the warnings also are important, and the imprecations of utter destruction, and God’s oversight of such matters, and His presence as an avenger in every place.’

Then after a few sentences he says:

‘Are you not surprised that during a whole day, perchance, or rather not one day only, but many, and these not following one another in immediate succession, but after intervals of as many as seven days (while the custom of the ordinary days always prevailed as is natural), they yet should not have transgressed one of these commandments? Does not this (you may ask) result merely from their practice of self-restraint, so that they are equally strong to work actively in any labour, and to cease from their work if necessary? Certainly not. But the Lawgiver thought it was necessary, even though at the cost of some great and extraordinary pains, that they should not only be able equally to do or leave undone all other things, but that they should be moreover well acquainted with their ancestral laws and customs.

‘What then did he do on these seventh days? He required them to assemble in the same place, and to sit down one with another in reverent and orderly manner, and listen to the laws, in order that none might be ignorant of them.

‘And so in fact they do always meet together and sit down one with another, most of them in silence, except when it is customary to add a word of good omen to what is being read. But some priest who is present, or one of the old men, reads to them the holy laws, and explains each separately till nearly eventide: and after that they are allowed to depart with a knowledge of their holy laws, and with great improvement in piety.

‘Do you not think this is more necessary for them than the most urgent business? So then they do not come to oracular interpreters with questions about what they should do or not do, nor do they of themselves act recklessly from ignorance of the laws; but whomsoever of them you accost and interrogate about the national customs, he can tell you readily and easily; and each seems qualified to impart a knowledge of the laws, husband to wife, and father to children, and master to servants.

‘Moreover it is easy to speak concerning the seventh year in like manner, though not perhaps quite the same. For they do not themselves abstain from work, as on those seventh days, but they leave their land fallow until the time comes again, for the sake of productiveness. For they think that it is much better after having had a rest, and that then it may be tilled for the next year, without having been exhausted by the continuance of cultivation.

‘The same thing you may see conducing to strength in our bodies; since it is not with a view to health only that physicians prescribe intervals of rest and certain relaxations from work: for what is always continuous and monotonous, especially in the case of labour, seems to be hurtful.

‘And this is a proof of it: for if any one were to promise to cultivate the land itself for them much more this seventh year than before, and to yield up all the fruits entirely to them, they would by no means accept it. For they think that they not only themselves need to rest from their labours (though even if they did so, it would be nothing strange), but that their land needs to get some relaxation and repose for a fresh beginning of care and cultivation afterwards.

‘Else what was there, on God’s part, to hinder them in the past year from letting the land beforehand, and collecting from those who cultivated it their tribute of the (seventh) year’s produce?

But, as I said, they will in no wise accept anything of this kind, from care, as I think, for the land.

‘And of their humanity, the following is in truth a great proof. For since they themselves rest from their work in that year, they think that they ought not to collect or store up the fruits that are produced, as not accruing to them from their own labours: but inasmuch as it is God who has provided for them these fruits, which the land produces of its own accord, they think it right that any who choose or are in want, travellers and others, should enjoy them with impunity.

‘Now on these points you have heard enough. For as to their Law having already established these rules for the seventh-day sabbaths you are not likely to question me, having probably often heard of this before from many physicians, and physiologists, and philosophers, what kind of influence it has upon the nature of all things, and especially upon the nature of man. This is the account of the seventh day.’

So far Philo. A similar account to his is given also by Josephus, in the second Book of his work On the Antiquity of the Jews,where he too writes in the following manner: