mony of several writers, the time when it is performed in Palestine, falls in the month of March. If this be admitted, it fixes the time of the year when Jacob departed from Laban on his return to his father's house, for he left him at the time he went to shear his sheep. In like manner, the sheep of Nabal were shorn in the spring; for among the presents which Abigail made to David, five measures of parched corn are mentioned. But we know, from other passages of Scripture, that they were accustomed to use parched corn when it was full grown, but not ripe; for the people of Israel were commanded in the law not to eat parched corn nor green ears, until the self same day they had made an offering to the Lord."

This time seems to have been spent by the eastern swains, in more than usual hilarity. And it may be inferred from several hints in the Scriptures, that the wealthier proprietors invited their friends and dependants to sumptuous entertainments. Nabal, on that joyous occasion, which the servants of David called a good, or festive day, although a churlish and niggardly man, "held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king;" and on a similar occasion, Absalom treated his friends and relations in the same magnificent style. The modern Arabs are more frugal and parsimonious; yet their hearts, so little accustomed to expand with joyous feelings, acknowledge the powerful influence of increasing wealth, and dispose them to indulge in greater jollity than usual. On these occasions, they perhaps kill a lamb, or a goat, and treat their relations and friends; and at once to testify their respect for their guests, and add to the luxury of

says: "Qui etiam nunc vellunt (oves) ante triduo habent jejunas, quod languidæ minus radices lanæ retinent.". See also Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. viii, cap. 46... b Lev. xxiii, 14. 1 Sam. xxv, 36.

the feast, crown the festive board with new cheese and milk; dates and honey.

Bottles of goat skin, with the hairy side inwards, receive the milk of their flocks: and when they wish to make butter, they put the cream into a goat skin, prepared in the same manner, which they suspend in their tents, and then pressing it to and fro, in one uniform direction, quickly produce a separation of the unctuous from the wheyey part of the fluid. In the Levant, they tread upon the skin with their feet, which produces the same effect. The last method of separating the butter from the milk, perhaps may throw light upon a passage in Job, of some difficulty: "When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil." Commentators have observed, what must be obvious to every reader, that the afflicted patriarch meant to say, he once possessed great abundance of these products; but they have not been able to account for the manner of his expression. The way of a great personage was sometimes swept, sometimes strewed with flowers, sometimes watered; but never, as far as we know, moistened with butter. The feet were sometimes anointed with oil, in which odoriferous substances had been infused; but to them, butter was never applied. It is more natural to suppose, that these words of Job referred to the method of churning their milk, by treading upon large skins full of cream, with their bare feet. It conveys a still more lively idea of the exuberant

d Harmer's Observ. vol. i, p. 194.

e Niebuhr's Arabia, vol. i, p. 211. Bochart. Hieroz. lib. ii, c. 45, p. 480. f Chandler's Trav. p. 2. Shaw's Trav. vol. i, p. 308. See also Varro de Re Rustica, lib. ii, cap. 11. Columella de Re Rust. lib. viii, cap. 11. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxviii, cap. 9. $ Job xxix, 6.

plenty which Job once possessed, if this method was adopted, when they had large quantities of milk to churn. A variety of practice very similar to this, appears to have prevailed in the ancient vineyards. When a small quantity of grapes was to be pressed, it seems to have been done with the hand; for Pharaoh's butler dreamed that he took the grapes and pressed them in this manner into his master's cup. This, it must be admitted, was only a visionary scene; but we must suppose it corresponded with general custom. So, when they meant to churn a small quantity of cream, they suspended it in a skin, from the roof of the tent; and the female part of the family conducted the process. But when the quantity was very large, as it must have been in the extensive dairies of the patriarchs, who possessed such immense flocks and herds, it was put into a number of skins and churned by the feet of men. This, Mr. Harmer considers as no improbable account, and by no means an unnatural explanation of the phrase, "I washed my steps with butter ;" and in the present state of our knowledge, perhaps a more satisfactory one cannot be given. Greece, indeed, lies at a great distance from the land of Uz, and the age when Job flourished is far removed from our times; but as a skin is still the churning vessel used by the Arabs in the Holy land, as well as in Barbary, and consequently, as their customs admit of little or no variation, the use of skins in churning, must belong to a very remote antiquity. And the same reason that might induce the more opulent Greeks, in the time of Chandler, to tread their cream rather than swing it in the tent, or between two poles as the Arabs generally do, might also induce the richer pro

h Harmer's Observ. vol. i, p. 440, 441.

prietors in Asia, who possessed such numerous flocks, to adopt the same custom. The expression, it must be allowed, is highly figurative, but not more so than many others, in which the oriental muse delights. The term washing, when used poetically, is not surely confined to cleansing the feet, by some purifying fluid; for dipping the feet in the blood of the slain, the Psalmist calls washing the feet. Hence, to plunge them into cream or butter, or to sprinkle them profusely with it, may be called washing them in butter, with equal propriety; and walking in it, washing the steps.

The butter is carried to market in the same goat skins in which it is churned. In consequence of this mode of management, it becomes necessary to melt and strain it, in order to separate the impurities; a process by which it acquires a certain rancid taste, disagreeable, for the most part, to strangers, though not to the natives. To this custom of melting the butter, in order to clarify it, Zophar seems to allude, in his description of the state and portion of a wicked man: "He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter." As the flowing of honey from the comb into the vessels in which it is to be kept, may, by a bold figure, be compared to a little river; so may clarified butter, when poured into the jars in which it is preserved for use. The wicked man, says Zophar, shall not see the rivulets, much less the rivers, still less the torrents of honey and butter (as the clause ought to be rendered), which the righteous may hope to possess. In our excellent translation, the beauty of the climax in this instance is lost; for instead of continuing to rise, it sinks in the close, ending with brook, i Shaw's Trav. vol. i, p. 308. J Job xx, 17.

after mentioning rivers and torrents; but in the original, it is equally striking and well conducted.

The method of making butter in the east, illustrates the conduct of Jael, the wife of Heber, described in the book of Judges : " And Sisera said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink, for I am thirsty : and she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him." In the song of Deborah, the statement is repeated: "He asked water, and she gave him milk, she brought forth butter in a lordly dish."k The word (N) hemah, which our translators rendered butter, properly signifies cream; which is undoubtedly the meaning of it in this passage, for Sisera complained of thirst, and asked a little water to quench it, a purpose to which butter is but little adapted. Mr. Harmer indeed urges the same objection to cream, which, he contends, few people would think a very proper beverage for one that was extremely thirsty; and concludes, that it must have been butter-milk which Jael, who had just been churning, gave to Sisera. But the opinion of Dr. Russel is preferable, that the hemah of the Scriptures, is probably the same as the haymak of the Arabs, which is not, as Harmer supposed, simple cream, but cream produced by simmering fresh sheeps' milk for some hours over a slow fire. It could not be butter newly churned, which Jael presented to Sisera, because the Arab butter is apt to be foul, and is commonly passed through a strainer before it is used ; and Russel declares, he never saw butter offered to a stranger, but always haymak; nor did he ever observe the orientals drink butter-milk, but always leban, which is coagulated sour milk, diluted with water. It * Judg. iv, 19, and v, 25. 1 Observ. vol. i, p. 444.