But besides skins, which were used for the more permanent kinds of writing, tablets of wood
covered with wax, (Luke 11:63) served for the ordinary purposes of life. Several of these were
fastened together and formed volumes. They were written upon with a pointed style, (Job 19:24)
sometimes of iron. (Psalms 45:1; Jeremiah 8:8; 17:1) For harder materials a graver, (Exodus 32:4;
Isaiah 8:1) was employed. For parchment or skins a reed was used. (3 John 1:13) 3 Macc. 5:20.
The ink, (Jeremiah 36:18) literally “black,” like the Greek melan, (2 Corinthians 3:3; 2 John 1:12;
3 John 1:13) was of lampblack dissolved in gall-juice. It was carried in an inkstand which was
suspended at the girdle, (Ezekiel 9:2,3) as is done at the present day in the East. To professional
scribes there are allusions in (Ezra 7:8; Psalms 45:1) 2 Esdr. 14:24.Yarn
The notice of yarn is contained in an extremely obscure passage in (1 Kings 10:28; 2 Chronicles
1:16) The Hebrew Received Text is questionable. Gesenius gives the sense of “number” as applying
equally to the merchants and the horses: “A band of the king’s merchants bought a drove (of horses)
at a price.”
Year
the highest ordinary division of time. Two years were known to, and apparently used by, the
Hebrews.
•A year of 360 days appears to have been in use in Noah’s time.
•The year used by the Hebrews from the time of the exodus may: be said to have been then instituted,
since a current month, Abib, on the 14th day of which the first Passover was kept, was then made
the first month of the year. The essential characteristics of this year can be clearly determined,
though we cannot fix those of any single year. It was essentially solar for the offering of productions
of the earth, first-fruits, harvest produce and ingathered fruits, was fixed to certain days of the
year, two of which were in the periods of great feasts, the third itself a feast reckoned from one
of the former days. But it is certain that the months were lunar, each commencing with a new
moon. There must therefore have been some method of adjustment. The first point to be decided
is how the commencement of each gear was fixed. Probably the Hebrews determined their new
year’s day by the observation of heliacal or other star-risings or settings known to mark the right
time of the solar year. It follows, from the determination of the proper new moon of the first month,
whether by observation of a stellar phenomenon or of the forwardness of the crops, that the method
of intercalation can only have been that in use after the captivity,—the addition of a thirteenth
month whenever the twelfth ended too long before the equinox for the offering of the first-fruits
to be made at the time fixed. The later Jews had two commencements of the year, whence it is
commonly but inaccurately said that they had two years, the sacred year and the civil. We prefer
to speak of the sacred and civil reckonings. The sacred reckoning was that instituted at the exodus,
according to which the first month was Abib; by the civil reckoning the first month was the seventh.
The interval between the two commencements was thus exactly half a year. It has been supposed
that the institution at the time of the exodus was a change of commencement, not the introduction
of a new year, and that thenceforward the year had two beginnings, respectively at about the vernal
and the autumnal equinox. The year was divided into—