SABBEUS

SACRAMENTS

year, which would be a sabbatical fallow, the year of jubilee, and the following year, when tillage would be resumed. Here also we find elaborate directions for the redemption of land in the jubilee year. They may be thus summarized: (1) No landed property may be sold, but only the usufruct of its produce up to the next jubilee, and the price must be calculated by the distance from that period. (2) A kinsman may redeem land thus mortgaged, or (the meaning may possibly be) exercise a right of pre-emption upon it. (3) The mort- gager may redeem at the selling price, less the yearly proportion for the time elapsed since the sale. (4) House property in walled towns (not in villages) may be sold outright, and is redeemable only during one year. Such property was presumably regarded as human and arti-ficial, whilst all land was essentially the property of Jehovah. (5) The Levitical possessions were redeemable at any time, and did not come under the jubilee provisions. (6) Nothing is said in Lev. as to the remission of debts, but there is a general prohibition of usury. (7) In Lv 27ie-a a field devoted to Jehovah must be valued at once at a fixed rate, and might be redeemed at this price, plus a fine of 20 per cent., up to the year of jubilee. If not redeemed by then it became sacred property: no redemption of it was thereafter possible.

2. Purposes of the Sabbatical rules. — The purposes underlying the ordinances above catalogued may be classified under 4 heads: but it is practically Impossible to assign any certain priority of time to any one of the classes, (a) The periodical fallow. This is a very common provision in agriculture, and the seven years' period is still observed in Syria. Since the fallow year was not at first everywhere simultaneous, the earlier historical books are silent about it ; and indeed it cannot have been generally observed. For the 70 years' cap-tivity and desolation of the land was regarded as makiHg up for the unobserved Sabbaths of the land (2 Ch 362', cf. Lv 26»- «). The reference in Neh 10" may be to the periodical fallow or to the remission of debts. But 1 Mac 6*'- 53 shows that the fallow year was observed later. (6) The emandpaiion of slaves (cf. Jer 348- ■). Such a provision must have been very difiicult to enforce, and we find no other possible reference to it. (c) The remission or suspension of debts. The only reference is the dubious one in Neh 10". (d) The re-demption of real property. The kind of tenure here implied is not uncommonly found In other countries, and Jer 32'<'-. Ru 4, Ezk 7" show that something akin to it did exist in Palestine (cf. also Ezk 46"). But that it was in no sense universal may be inferred from Isaiah's and Micah's denunciations of land-grabbing; on the other hand, 1 K 21"- ' furnishes an instance of the in-alienability of land. C!f. Leviticus, p. 543''.

In general we have no sign that the sabbatical and jubilee provisions were ever strictly observed in Biblical times. Their principles of rest and redemption, though never practised as a piece of social politics, were preached as ideals, and may have had some effect in discouraging slave-owning, land-grabbing, and usury, and in encourag-ing a more merciful view of the relations between Jew and Jew. Thus Is 61'-' is steeped in the jubilee phrase-ology, and Christ adopted this passage to explain His own mission (Lk 4'"*). A. W. F. Blunt.

SABBEUS (1 Es 9'') = Shemaiab, Ezr 10".

SABI (1 Es 528) = Shobai, Ezr 2«, Neh 7«.

SABIAS (1 Es l») = Hashabiah, 2 Ch 35>.

SABIE. — 'The children of Pochereth-hazzebaim,' Ezr 2'', Neh 7", appear as 'the sons of Phacereth, the sons of Sable' in 1 Es S**.

SABTA, SABTAH. -In the genealogical list of Gn 10' a son of Cush, named between Havilah and other Arabian districts. It was probably a region on or near the east coast of Arabia, but in spite of several conjectures it has not been identified with any historical tribe or

country. The relationship with Cush is to be accounted for on the ground that the Cushites were held to have extended across the Red Sea from Nubia north-eastward over the great peninsula. J. F. McCurdy.

SABTECA. — The youngest son of Cush according to Gn 10'. The only identification at all plausible has been made with Samydake on the E. side of the Persian Gulf. But this is improbable, since that region did not come within the Cushite domain, as judged by the names of the other sons of Cush. Possibly Sabteca is a mis-writing for Sabtah (wh. see). J. F. McCuedy.

SACAB .—1 . The father of Ahiam ( 1 Ch 1 1« = 2 S 23» Sharar). 2. A family of gatekeepers (1 Ch 26<).

SACKBUT.— See Music, etc., § 4 (c).

SACKCLOTH.— The sackcloth of OT was a coarse dark cloth made on the loom from the hair of goats and camels. In the extant literature it is almost always associated with mourning for the dead (Gn 37**, 2 S 3'' and oft.): and especially with the public expression of humiliation and penitence in view of some national misfortune, present or impending (1 K 21", Neh 9', Jon 3' etc.). For other tokens of grief and penitence, associated with the donning of sackcloth, such as ashes or dust on the head, and the rending of garments (this being a later substitute for their entire removal), see MouHNiNG Customs. In such cases the person or persons concerned are generally said to ' gird ' themselves with sackcloth, or to have sackcloth about their loins, from which it is evident that the sackcloth was worn in the form of a loincloth or waistcloth, tied in the ancient manner in a knot in front (cf. Is 20^ 'loose the sackcloth,' lit. ' untie the knot '). It was worn by women as well as by men (Is 32", Jth 9'). The putting of it upon cattle, however, as mentioned in Jon 3* and Jth 4i", and even upon an altar (4"), is, from the nature of the passages cited, rather a literary than a historical extravagance.

In this custom most modern scholars recognize an illustration of conservatism in religious practice. The waistcloth is known to have been the oldest article of dress among the Semites (see Dhess, § 2), and as such it appears to have been retained in mourning customs and in humiliation before God, and perhaps in the exercise of the cultus, long after it had ceased to be the only garment of the people. The ihram or waistcloth still worn by the Moslem pilgrims during their devotions at the sacred shrine at Mecca, has often been cited as a modern parallel. A. R. S. Kennedy.

SACRAMENTS.— 1. The term.— Although applied by common consent to certain institutions of the NT, the word 'sacrament' (Lat. sacramentum) is not a Scrip-tural one. In classical Lat. sacramentum (fr. sacrare, 'to consecrate') is used esp. in two senses: (a) passively, as a legal term, to denote a sum of money deposited by the parties to a suit, which was forfeited by the loser and appropriated to sacred uses; (6) actively, as a military term, to denote the oath taken by newly enlisted soldiers. When it came to be applied to Christian uses, the word retained the suggestions of both of those earlier employments. A sacrament was something set apart for sacred purposes; it was also, in certain cases, of the nature of a vow of self-consecra-tion, resembling the oath of the Roman soldier (cf. Tertullian: 'We were called to the warfare of the living God in our very response to the sacramental words,' ad Mart. ill.). But the application and history of the word in the Christian Church were determined chiefly by the fact that in the Old Lat. and Vulg. VSS it was repeatedly employed imysterium, however, being employed more frequently) to render the Gr. mystirion, 'a mystery.' [Thus Vulg. tr. St. Paul's 'This mystery is great' (Eph 5^") by 'Sacramentum hoc magnum est ' ; — a rendering that had not a little to do with the subsequent erection of marriage into a sacrament.] This identification of the idea of a sacrament with that

809