Of children's games there are but few traces. It is given by the prophet Zechariah as a token of the peace and prosperity that should one day bless Jerusalem, that the ' streets of the city .sliall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof ' (Zee 8°). What their games might be the prophet does not say. One of the diversions of Jewisli children, we know from the Talmud, was imitating the doings of their elders ; and Jesus has made us familiar with children playing at marriages and funerals, 'calling one to another, and saying. We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept' (Mt 11", Lk 7"-). The children seem also to have amused themselves with living creatures. 'Wilt thou play with him as w ith a bird ; or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens ? ' is God's remonstrance addressed to Job (Job 41'), where He asks the patri- arch if he could make a plaything of the crocodUe, as the child does of a bird. Dancing was a diver- sion of children as well as of grown-up people (Job 21")- The Talmud speaks of games in which the children played with nuts, and, taking this in con- nexion with the proverbial Latin expression relin- queri: nuces, we may have a reference to it in St. Paul's words, ' When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a man, I put away childish things' (I Co 13")-
Of manly sports among the Jews the traces are likewise few. Archery seems to have been practised as a sport as well as cultivated for the re- quirements of war. The uncertainty of the render- ing in 2 S 1'* does not allow us to use it as evidence, but Job seems to have it in mind when he complains (Job 16'" '*), ' God hath set me up for his mark ; his arrows compass me round about' ; and we tind the same image in La 3'- ' He hath bent his bow, and set ma as a mark for the arrow.' The use of the sling, which played an important part in the military training of the Israelite (Jg 2U", 1 S 17", 1 Ch 12=, 2 Ch 26'''), must have demanded con- siderable practice, especially in the case of the left- handed lienjamites, who ' could sling stones at an hairbreadth and not miss.' A sport which was common among the youths o/ Palestine in the time of Jerome i» described by hira as consisting of raisiufj stories of great weight to the knees, to the shoulders and the head, and above the head, according to their strength, wrestlers being niatelied against each other according to this test. It has been supposed by Ewald and others that ' the burdensome stone ' of Zee 12' is to be explained by the practice thus described by Jerome, being some- thing like the 'putting stone' of Highland games in Scotland ; but the allusion may be dimply to a weight that is too heavy to be borne, and dangerous to those who meddle with it (compare Dn 2-", Mt 21'"). The discus, as we have seen, was introduced with other Grecian exercises by Jason the higli priest in the Maccabtean times (2 Mac 4'''- "). It was a Hat, circular slab of stone, or of wood, or of bronze, of considerable weight. A specimen in the British Museum is said to weigh about 12
pounds. The throwing of the discus was one of the essential exercises of the pentathlic contests. It was thrown from a low platform known as the ;3aX/3is, and the man who threw it the greatest distance was the winner. A skilful athlete, by putting all his weight into the throw, would some- times hurl it more than a hundred feet. The attitude of the player and the manner of holding the discus is seen in Myron's celebrated statue of the oiffKo/SiXos, shown in oooksof Greek antiquities. Their devotion to this sport and the other exercises of the Grecian pentathlon, even to the neglect of the services of the altar, brought great unpopularity to Jason the high priest and his brethren of the priesthood, and Jason has been handed down to us as ' that ungodly man, and no high priest.'
Bunting, as a diversion, was not pursued till the days of Herod, who greatly favoured the introduction of Greek and Roman customs ; and the Talmud gives strong warning against it. The theatre, too, was condemned as sternly by the Talmud as by Tertullian ; and it was a hope of the days of Messiah that the buddings devoted by the Romans to theatrical representations would be turned into seminaries for the study of the law. Josephus (Ant. XV. viii. 1), speaking of the theatre and the amphitheatre built by Herod at Jerusalem, declares both of them to be in direct antagonism to the sentiment of the Jewish people.
Music and song fall to be treated rather in con- nexion with worship, but they were largely culti- vated, as was also the dance, as a source of enjoy- ment. At the vintage nierrj-makings (Jg 9-'' 2P'), at the gatherings of the young men in the city gate (La 5"), at triumphal processions (Jg 11^, IS IS"), at celebrations of victory (Ex 15-"'-), at the accession of kings (1 K l*"), and at domestic rejoicings (Jer SI'', Lk 15^), music and singing, and oftentimes dancing, 'were called in to give expression to the gladness of such occasions.