and offered burnt-offerings, and brought peaceofferings, and the people SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK." Which Which passage St. Paul makes use of, being about to dehort the Corinthians from eating things sacrificed to idols, 1 Cor. x. "Neither be ye idolaters, as some of them were, as it is written, The people SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK:" for this was no common eating, but the eating of those sacrifices which had been offered up to the golden calf.

The 1st of Samuel i. 3. it is said of Elkanah, that "he went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh : and when the time was come, that he offered, he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and daughters, PORTIONS; and unto Hannah he gave a double PORTION;" that is, portions to eat of those sacrifices that had been offered up to God, as R. David Kimchi notes. And in the ninth chapter of the same book, when Saul was seeking Samuel, going towards the city he met some maidens, that told him Samuel was come to the city, for there was a sacrifice for the people that day in the high place: "As soon (say they) as you come into the city, you shall find him before he go up to the high place TO EAT; for the people will not EAT until he come, because he doth bless the sacrifice." Where, though the word bamah properly signifies a high place, or place of sacrifice, whence the Greek word Bouos is thought to be derived; yet it is here rendered by the Targum, as often elsewhere, no, domus accubitus, a house of feasting;-because feasting and sacrificing were such general concomitants of one another.

So again, in the 16th chapter, Samuel went to Bethlehem to anoint David: "I am come (saith he) to sacrifice to the Lord: sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice." But when he understood, that Jesse's youngest son was absent, he saith to Jesse, "Send and fetch him, for we will not SIT DOWN until he come."

4

Ver. xi.

So I understand that of the Sichemites, according to the judgment of the Jewish doctors, Judg. ix. 27. "They went into the house of their god, and did EAT and DRINK, and cursed Abimelech;" that is, they went into the house of their god to sacrifice, and did eat and drink of the sacrifice: which perhaps was the reason of the name, by which they called their god, whom they thus worshipped, Beritн, which signifies a covenant, because they worshipped him by this federal rite of eating of his sacrifices; of which more hereafter.

Thus likewise the Hebrew scholiasts expound that in the 16th chapter of the same book, verse 23, concerning the Philistines, when they had put out Samson's eyes; "They met together to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to REJOICE;" that is, in feasting upon the sacrifices.

Hence it is, that the idolatry of the Jews, in worshipping other gods, is so often described synecdochically under the notion of feasting: Isa. lvii. 7. "Upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou SET THY BED, and thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice." *For in those ancient times they were not wont to sit at feasts, but lie * Of Saba, see down on beds or couches. (Ezek. xxiii.) Plinianis Ex"You sent for men from far, Sabeans ercitat. p. 497.

Salmasius in

et 500.

66

!

from the wilderness (i. e. idolatrous priests from Arabia), and lo they came, for whom thou didst wash thyself, and satest upon a stately bed, with a table prepared before thee." (Amos ii. 8.) They laid themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar;" i. e. laid themselves down to eat of the sacrifice, that was offered on the altar. And, in Ezek. xviii. 11, eating upon the mountains seems to be put for sacrificing upon the mountains, because it was a constant appendix to it. "He that hath not done any of these things, but hath even eaten upon the mountains,"

i. e. hath worshipped idols כטוריא פלח לטעותא

upon the mountains;-so the Targum renders it. Lastly, St. Paul makes eating of the sacrifice a general appendix of the altar, (Heb. xii. 10.) "We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat that serve the tabernacle."

I will observe this one thing more, because it is not commonly understood, that all the while the Jews were in the wilderness, they were to eat no meat at all at their private tables but that whereof they had first sacrificed to God at the tabernacle. For this is clearly the meaning of that place, Lev. xvii. 4, 5." Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, that killeth a lamb, or a goat, or an ox, within the camp, or without the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle, to offer an offering to the Lord, blood shall be imputed to him. And so Nachmonides there glosses, according to the mind of the ancient Rabbins,

i. e. Behold, God מתחלה צוה שכל מה שהם אובלים שלמים

commanded at first, that all, which the Israelites did eat, should be peace-offerings.—Which command was afterward dispensed with, when they

came into the land, and their dwellings were become remote from the tabernacle, so that they could not come up every day to sacrifice. Deut. xii. 12. "If the place, which the Lord thy God hath chosen be too far from thee; then thou shalt kill of the herd and of the flock, and thou shalt eat within thy gates whatsoever thy soul lusteth after." Only now there were, instead thereof, three constant and set times appointed in the year, in which every male was to come up and see God at his tabernacle, and eat and drink before him; and the sacrifice, that was then offered, was wont to be called by them, лby, a sacrifice of seeing.

Thus I have sufficiently declared the Jewish rite of joining feasting with sacrificing; and it will not be now amiss, if we add, as a mantissa to that discourse, something of the custom of the Heathens also in the like kind, the rather because we may make some use of it afterward. And it was so general amongst them in their idolatrous sacrifices, that Isaac Abarbanel, a learned Jew,

בזמים קדמינים בל מי : observed it in Pirush Hattorah In those .שהוא עושה עבודת אלילים מוד היהעושה עליה מכרה

ancient times, whosoever sacrificed to idols, made a feast upon the sacrifice. And the original of it amongst them was so ancient, that it is ascribed by their own authors to Prometheus, as Salmasius, in his Solino-Plinian Exercitations, notes, P. 129. a.

"Hunc sacrificii morem a Prometheo

originem duxisse volunt, quo partem hostiæ in ignem conjicere soliti sunt, partem ad suum victum abuti. Which Prometheus, although, according to Eusebius's Chronicon, and our ordinary chronologers, his time would fall near

VOL. IV.

Note that

the islands of

commonly used

Lib. i. de Idol.

about the 3028th year of the Julian period, which was long after Noah; yet it is certain, that he lived much sooner, near about Noah's time, in that he is made to be the son of Japhet, which was Noah's son, from whom the Europeans descended, (Gen. x. 5.) called therefore by "the poet Täpeti genus. For there is no the nations-is great heed to be given to the chronology in Scripture as of human writers concerning this age of a proper name the world, which Censorinus from Varro to express Europe by. calls Mulkov, the fabulous time or age.Although I rather subscribe to the judgment of the learned Vossius, that this Prometheus was no other than Noah himself, the father of Japhet, and not his son, because the other things do so well agree to him; and we may easily allow the Heathens such a mistake as that is, in a matter of so remote antiquity: and then, if this be true, the whole world received this rite of feasting upon sacrifice, at first, together with that of sacrifice, at the same time. Instances of this custom are so frequent and obvious in Heathen authors, that Homer alone were able to furnish us sufficiently.

.

In the á of the Iliads, he brings in a description of a hecatomb-sacrifice, which Agamemnon prepared for Apollo by his priest Chryses, and a feast that followed immediately after it. In ẞ' the same Agamemnon offers up an ox to Jupiter, and inviteth divers of the Grecian captains to partake of it. Iny of the Odyssees, Nestor makes a magnificent sacrifice to Neptune of eighty-two bullocks, with a feast upon it, on the shore. In

Alcinous offers up a bullock unto Jupiter, and then immediately follows,