Very dillerent in character from the notice in Ezr 3 18 the account found in Neh 8'''". Here the details are interesting and instructive. The refer- ence to Lv SS""'" is clear. The material gathered by the people is that prescribed in Lv 23" (the wording of the two passages is in some respects ditleieiit ; cf. Ryle's note on Neh 8"). With it they make booths, and set them up in the courts of the temple and in the open spaces of the city, and dwell in them, according to Lv 23*-. Tlie feast was kept seven days, and the 'Clzereth of the eighth day was duly observed.t The writer is aware that a new method of keeping the festival is introduced, one unknown to the people during the rale of judges and kings, and the ceremonial throughout is that enjoined in Leviticus. Itisnot, hcjwever, deUnitely stated whether the numerous .-acrilices prescribed for this festival in Nu 29 were oll'ered on this occasion.
The OT history of the Feast closes here. The eighth day, which is still distinguished from the seven d.ays of Deut., is by the time of the writer of 2 Mac 10° reckoned as part of the Feast, .loscphus (Ant. in. x. 4) speaks of keeping a festival of eight days, and also mentions the custom of bearing the lulnb, consisting of a mj'rtle, willow, and palm branch in the right hand, and the ethrvg or citron in the left. For this and other ceremonies oliserved at the feast see Jos. Ant. XIII. xiii. 5 ; the Talmudic treatise, Suk/cah ; Ederslieim, Li/c and Times of Jeswi the Messiah, ii. Hi), 1.57 ; and tlie references on p. 861 of art. Feasts; and the NT references in the sj'iiopsis.
On one point is stress laid in all the accounts : that the ingathering whicli the fea.st commemorates is general ('when thou gatherest in thy labours out of tlie field,' Ex 23"; ' the fruits of the land,' Lv 23"; 'from thy threshing-fioor and from thy winevat,' Dt 16"). The Feasts of Unleavened Bread {ynnzzCth) and of Weeks or Harvest marked certain stages in the work of ingathering, but the autuiim festival, the last of the yearly cycle, was the thanksgiving for the combined pnjduce of tlie whole jear. As the vintage and olive harvests
• The doubts rained oa to the historical charact«r of this •ectiou do not matiirially affect the stateiiienL here nirule.
t The difference l)ctwecn keeping; tlie feNtival witii utid with* out the additional ci^hlh day i» illustrated by coinpiirinif the •ccounln o( the dedication of Solomon's temple In KinK8 and Chroniclca. In 1 K 8'>1 it says, ' on the eighth day he stnt them •way,' i.f. on the '.i'^nd of the month ; but kl 2 Ch "f^io it says, Mn the eiirhth day they maile a solemn assembly (d^erfth) . '. . and on the three and twentieth day of the seventh month he sent the people away. . . . ' The Chronicler describes the feast as kept aoconlini: to the rule of Leviticus ; the writer of Kings assuLiies that the rule of Ileut. was followed.
had just been gathered, the worshippers might think chiefly of these rich gifts, yet tlie injunctions above quoted bade them take a wider view, and thank God for all His good gifts. It is also to be noted that in the autumn festival no special olFer- ing of the fruits of the earth is enjoined corre- sponding to the sheaf of the wave-oliering (Lv 23'"''') at Passover, and the two wave-loaves with sacrilice at Pentecost (23"'-''"). Yet in otlier respects the Feast of Tabernacles is specially dis- tinguished from other feasts. In Deut. it is the only one of the three at which the Israelite must dwell at Jerusalem for seven days, and in Numbers the sacrifices prescribed for this festival are ia excess of those for any other (for details see p. 801''). Its pre-eminence is asserted by Josephus (Ant. VIII. iv. 1 — it was ^opr-i; <T<t>65pa irapb. roh 'E^paioii ayiwTdTT] koI fieyl(rT7j). In the OT it is sometimes called 'the Feast,' xar' iioxv" '■ 1 1*^ S--** (=2 Ch 5' 7"), Ezk 45=», Neh 8"; cf. Lv 23=» (H), 1 K 12^2 (Driver, Deut. 197). But it was also the festival which in early times was common to Israel and to the heathen round about them. May it be that the wider view of the autumn festival and the avoidance of any special oti'ering of the fruits of the ground at this season were designed in order to make a distinction between their own festival and that of their neighbours, and possibly to avoid excesses which attended the heathen celebrations, — to impress upon the Israel- ite, when he appeared before the Lord his God, that he was present at a harvest thanksgiving rather than at a vintage carnival?
A. T. Chapman. TABITHA.— See DcmcAS.
TABLE.— A word used in several senses, either in sing, or plural, 108 times in the OT and 20 times in the NT. In the former when singular it is usually (56 times) the tr. of ]n''z' shulhAn (LXX Tpaireia, Vulg. men^a). ' Table ' is used with the following meanings. 1. A flat-topped stand, upon which victuals were set durui" meals, and around which people squatted or reclined. Such stands were usually small ; in ancient Egypt they were rarely more than a foot in height. Lepsius repre- sents a table of this kind heapeil with meat, bread, and fruit, with two persons sitting by it (Denkm. ii. 52). In the Middle and New Empire stands are sometimes represented as frameworks of laths bearing jars and other vessels on the top, and with an undershelf for the solid food. Such tallies are named vth or wtn or tbhu. In Assyrian con- tracts, temple tables are called .ialhu. 'I'lie tables used by the fellahin of Palestine are mostly roiiiul, and rarely more than 12 inches high. Probably the ancient domestic tables were also round, as Goodwin and Zornius have inferteil from such expressions as ' round about the table.' The table in the propliet's chamber (2 K 4'°) was proba'Oy a stand of this kind. It is possible that the shulhttn may have been originallv a mat or something spread under the food platter, as can be often seen at present among the fell.iliin ; but it must sometimes have been sufliciently liigh to allow of portions of food liropping from it. The seventy kings who gleaned their meat under Adonibezek'a table (Jg 1') may have been fed from the leavings of the royal meals ; but the boast is luobably an Oriental exaggeration, and the number a copyist's mistake. I'osidonius tells of the king of the I'arthians throwing food to persons sitting around him (Athemrus, iv. 38). The Greek traprza wag usually four-footed, hence perh. the name (Eustath. Comm. adOdyss. \. Ill); nevertheless it was some- times called trijwns (Ath. ii. 32), a usage ridiculed by Aristophanes in an extant fragment of Tel- messes. Homer represents each guest as ha "ing ■