The Jubilee and the Silver Trumpets

As for adultery, Moses forbade it entirely. He held it a happy thing that men should be sensible in matters of marriage, and that it was good both for cities and for families that children should be known to be legitimate. He also abhorred a man’s lying with his mother as one of the greatest crimes, and in the same way lying with his father’s wife, with aunts, with sisters, and with sons’ wives, all as cases of abominable wickedness. He also forbade a man to lie with his wife while she was unclean from her monthly period, and to have intercourse with animals, and to approve of lying with a male, which is hunting after unlawful pleasures for the sake of beauty. For those guilty of such outrageous behavior he ordained death as the punishment. [a]

As for the priests, he required of them a double degree of purity. He restrained them in the cases above, and in addition he forbade them to marry prostitutes. He also forbade them to marry a slave or a captive, or women who made their living by peddling or by keeping inns, or a woman separated from her husband for any reason whatever. He did not even think it proper for the high priest to marry the widow of a man who had died, though he allowed that to the priests; he permitted him to marry only a virgin, and to keep her. That is why the high priest is not to come near a dead body, although the other priests are not forbidden to come near their brothers, parents, or children when they die; but they are to be without blemish in every respect. He ordered that a priest who had any blemish should indeed have his share among the priests, but he forbade him to go up to the altar or to enter the holy house. He also required them to keep purity not only in their sacred duties but in their daily life, so that it too might be blameless. That is why those who wear the priestly garments are spotless and outstanding for their purity and sobriety; nor are they allowed to drink wine as long as they wear those garments. Moreover, the sacrifices they offer are whole and have no defect whatever. [b]

Moses gave them all these precepts, and they were kept during his own lifetime. But though he was then living in the wilderness, he also made provision for how they might keep the same laws once they had taken the land of Canaan. He gave the land rest from plowing and planting every seventh year, just as he had commanded them to rest from work every seventh day. He ordered that whatever then grew of its own accord out of the earth should belong in common to anyone who wished to use it, making no distinction in this between their own countrymen and foreigners, and none of it was to be stored away. And he ordained that they should do the same after seven times seven years, which comes to fifty years in all. That fiftieth year the Hebrews call the Jubilee. In it debtors are freed from their debts and slaves are set free. These slaves were men of the same stock who had become slaves by breaking some of the laws whose penalty was not death; they were punished instead by this kind of slavery. [e]

This year also restores the land to its former owners, in the following way. When the Jubilee comes (the name means liberty), the man who sold the land and the man who bought it meet and make an estimate: on one side, of the crops gathered; on the other, of the expenses laid out on it. If the crops gathered come to more than the expenses laid out, the seller takes the land back. But if the expenses prove greater than the crops, the present holder receives from the former owner the difference that was lacking, and leaves the land to him. And if the crops received and the expenses laid out prove equal, the present holder gives it up to the former owners. Moses wanted the same law to hold for houses sold in villages, but he made a different law for those sold in a city. If the seller offered the buyer his money back within a year, the buyer was obliged to return the house; but if a whole year had passed, the buyer was to keep what he had bought. This was the body of laws that Moses learned from God while the camp lay under Mount Sinai, and he handed it down in writing to the Hebrews.

When this settling of the laws seemed to be complete, Moses at last thought it right to review the army, judging it proper to put the affairs of war in order. So he instructed the heads of the tribes, except the tribe of Levi, to take an exact count of those able to go to war; for the Levites were holy and free from all such burdens. When the people had been counted, there were found to be six hundred thousand able to go to war, from twenty to fifty years of age, besides three thousand six hundred and fifty. In place of Levi, Moses took Manasseh the son of Joseph among the heads of tribes, and Ephraim in place of Joseph. This was indeed what Jacob himself had asked of Joseph: that he would give him his sons to be his own by adoption, as I related earlier. [g]

When they set up the tabernacle, they placed it in the middle of their camp, with three of the tribes pitching their tents on each side of it, and roads were cut through the middle of these tents. It was like a well-ordered market: everything was there ready for sale in due order, and craftsmen of every kind were in the shops. It looked like nothing so much as a city that was sometimes on the move and sometimes settled. The priests had the first places around the tabernacle; then came the Levites, who, since their whole number was counted from thirty days old, were twenty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty males. As long as the cloud stood over the tabernacle, they thought it right to stay in the same place, supposing that God was dwelling there among them; but when the cloud moved, they set out too. [h]

Moses was also the inventor of the form of their trumpet, which was made of silver. This is its description. It was a little less than 18 inches long. It was made of a narrow tube, somewhat thicker than a flute but wide enough to take the breath of a man’s mouth, and it ended in the shape of a bell, like ordinary trumpets. In the Hebrew language it was called asosra. Two of them were made, and one of them was sounded when they wanted the people to come together in assembly. When the first of them gave a signal, the heads of the tribes were to assemble and consult about the matters that properly belonged to them; but when they gave the signal with both, they called the whole people together. Whenever the tabernacle was moved, it was done in this solemn order. At the first trumpet alarm, those whose tents were on the east side got ready to move. When the second signal was given, those on the south side did the same. Next the tabernacle was taken apart and carried in the middle, with six tribes going before it and six following, and all the Levites attending the tabernacle. When the third signal was given, the part that had their tents toward the west set out; and at the fourth signal those on the north did likewise. They also used these trumpets in their sacred services, when they brought their sacrifices to the altar, on the Sabbaths as well as on the other days. And it was now that Moses offered the sacrifice called the Passover in the Wilderness, the first he had offered since leaving Egypt. [i]