על עשרת הדברות ל׳On the Decalogue 30
א׳
1[158] The fourth, which treats of the seventh day, must be regarded as nothing less than a gathering under one head of the feasts and the purifications ordained for each feast, the proper lustrations and the acceptable prayers and flawless sacrifices with which the ritual was carried out.
ב׳
2[159] By the seventh I mean both the seventh which includes the most creative of numbers, six, and that which does not include it but takes precedence of it and resembles the unit. Both these are employed by him in reckoning the feast-times. The unit is taken in the case of the holy-month-day which they announce with trumpets, and the fast-day on which abstinence from food and drink is commanded, and the day called by the Hebrews in their own tongue the Pasch on which the whole people sacrifice, every member of them, without waiting for their priests, because the law has granted to the whole nation for one special day in every year the right of priesthood and of performing the sacrifices themselves.
ג׳
3[160] Also the day on which a sheaf is brought as a thanksgiving for fertility and for the produce of the lowlands as shown in the full corn in the ear; then by reckoning seven sevens after this the fiftieth day, when it is the custom to bring loaves the nature of which is properly described by their title of “loaves of the first-products,” as they are the sample of the crops and fruits produced by civilized cultivation which God has assigned for his nourishment to man, the most civilized of living things.
ד׳
4[161] To seven he gives the chief feasts prolonged for many days, two feasts, that is, for the two equinoxes, each lasting for seven days, the first in the spring to celebrate the ripeness of the sown crops, the second in the autumn for the ingathering of all the tree-fruits; also seven days were naturally assigned to the seven months of each equinox, so that each month may have, as a special privilege, one festal day consecrated to cheerfulness and enjoyment of leisure.
ה׳
5[162] Other laws, too, come under the same head, admirable enactments exhorting men to gentleness and fellowship and simplicity and equality. Some of them deal with the hebdomadal year, as it is called, in which the land is ordered to be left entirely idle without any sowing or ploughing or purging or pruning of trees or any other operation of husbandry.
ו׳
6[163] For when both the lowlands and the uplands have been worked for six years to bring forth fruits and pay their annual tribute, he thought well to give them a rest to serve as a breathing-space in which they might enjoy the freedom of undirected nature.
ז׳
7[164] And there are other laws about the fiftieth year which is marked not only by the course of action just related, but also by the restoration of inheritance to the families which originally possessed them, a very necessary procedure abounding in humanity and justice.