and the vintage was not till the seventh. It is described with great accuracy by the sacred penman of the 2d book of Chronicles. There, we are told, that when the Israelites brought in the first-fruits of their corn, wine, and oil, and honey, and of all the increase of the field, and laid them by heaps, that in the third month they began to lay the foundation of the heaps, and finished them in the seventh month; and that when Hezekiah and the princes came and saw the heaps, they blessed the LORD and his people. The corn was fit to present to the LORD about the end of May or beginning of June; the wine and oil, or raisins and ripa olives, not till the end of September, or perhaps the beginning of October."

It appears the more awkward, to talk of the bringing in sheaves of corn at the same time the wine-presses were at work, because it is well-known that the people of these countries immediately tread out their corn, after they have cut or plucked it up, and put it in proper repositories. There is no such thing among them as with us, where sheaves of corn inay be often seen many months after they are reaped, and are sometimes removed from one place to another. At the same time, they that know any thing of the Hebrew, know that the

f Ch. xxxi. 5

However, it is to be acknowledged, that they have now a sort of corn in those countries, and in Judea, which is not ripe till the end of the summer, which caused Rauwolff to say it was harvest-time when he arrived at Joppa, which was on the 13th of September. Ray's Trav. p. 226, 229.

word náremoth, which they have translated sheaves, is the very word that is translated heaps in that passage of Chronicles, and which signifies heaps of raisins, figs, pomegranates, as well as of corn threshed out.

So when the words of Nehemiah are to be understood as signifying, "In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine-presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in parcels of grapes for that purpose in baskets, which they had laden on asses, and also jars of wine pressed elsewhere, dried grapes and figs, and all manner of burthens of victuals, which they sold on the Sabbath" the squeezing the grapes for wine, and drying them for raisins, being it seems, at least frequently, attended to at one and the same time. So when Dr. Chandler set out from Smyrna to visit Greece, in the end of August, the vintage was just begun, the black grapes being spread on the ground in beds, exposed to the Sun to dry for raisins; while in another part, the juice was expressed for wine, a man, with feet and legs bare, treading the fruit in a kind of cistern, with a hole or vent near the bottom, and a vessel beneath it to receive the liquor."

If the same custom obtained in Judea then, which it seems is practised in Greece now, and that the vintage was just then finishing, Nehemiah must have been particularly galled, for it seems they finish their vintage with dancing, and therefore I presume with songs, and probably music. For speaking of the Greek

Trav. in Greece, p. 2.

dances, of which some are supposed of very remote antiquity, and one in particular, called the Crane, he says, "the peasants perform it yearly in the street of the French convent, at the conclusion of the vintage; joining hands, and preceding their mules and their asses, which are laden with grapes in panniers, in a very curved and intricate figure; the leader waving a handkerchief, which has been imagined to denote the clew given by Ariadne."

Singing seems to have been practised by the Jews in their vineyards, and shouting when they trod the grapes, from what we read, Is. xvi. 10: but whether dancing too, and whether they carried their profanation of the Sabbath this length, in the time of Nehemiah, we are not informed.

Some may have supposed, that the words of Jeremiah, ch. xxxi. 4, 5, refer to the joy expressed by the Jews in the time of viutage: Again, I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shall go forth in the dances of them that make merry. Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and eat them as common things. Vines and dancing are

here joined together.

i P. 134.

Where he and his companions lodged at that time.

The dance being supposed to have been invented by Thesseus, upon his escape from the labyrinth.

But I must think it most probable, that the Prophet refers here to such excursions of joy as these mentioned by Dr. Shaw: "There are several Turkish or Moorish youths, and no small part likewise of the unmarried soldiers, who attend their concubines, with wine and music, into the fields; or else make themselves merry at the tavern; a practice, indeed, expressly prohibited by their religion, but what the necessity of the times, and the uncontroulable passions of the transgressors, oblige these governments to dispense with."

The Jewish religion did not forbid wine: and the going forth of them that make merry, seems more to resemble these excursions in Barbary; than the bringing home the last gatherings of their vintage with music and dancing. Nor were vineyards and such excursions totally unconnected together, since their shadiness made them extremely proper for the reception of these parties of pleasure.

The dances of the daughters of Shiloh, mentioned Judges xxi. though performed in the neighbourhood of the vineyards there," seem however to have been of a very different kind a particular religious solemnity ob-. served by that town.

For Ist. It appears to have been celebrated by the virgins of Shiloh exclusively, they alone

m P. 234.

n Ver. 21.

• From both the sorts of festivity I have been discoursing about: the public rejoicings of the vintage, and the more private excursions of the young into the country.

dancing, and being at the same time unattended by the men; not to mention the supposed solitude of the vineyards at the time of this festival, whereas at the time of vintage they would have been crowded with people.

2d. It was a religious solemnity, for it is expressly called a Feast of the LORD, (of JEHOVAH,) verse 19.

3d. It seems to have been particular to the inhabitants of that town, for there appears to be no reason assignable for the mentioning Shiloh only, if it had been a feast common to all Israel. The word an chag indeed is used to express the three great annual feasts of the Jews, but not them only, as appears from Exod. xxxii. 5, and 1 Kings xii. 32. The use of the verb in 1 Sam. xxx. 16, shows it expresses any kind of rejoicing."

4th. As there were some voluntary annual solemnities observed by Israel, some of the mournful kind, as that for the daughter of Jephthah, Judges xi. 40; others of the joyous sort, as the days of Purim, Esther ix. 20—28; this dancing solemnity seems to have been one of these voluntary joyous appointments, but peculiar to Shiloh.

But it is doubtful whether it was a perfectly innocent Observation, founded in some remarkable mercy that had been granted to Shiloh, such as might have been established by the

P Behold they were spread abroad upon all the earth, eating and drinking, am vechogegeem, and dancingi. e. as they were wont to do on their great annual festivals. EDIT.