The word which in these venerable folios is made to express the thing is, in itself, significant. In the Hebrew Scriptures, though the injunctions to charitable acts are many, an exact equivalent to our word ‘charity’ can hardly be said to exist. In only eight instances, and not even then in its modern sense, does the Septuagint translate צדקה‎ (_tzedakah_) into its Greek equivalent, ἑλεημοσὑνη, which would become in English ‘alms,’ or ‘charity.’ The nearest synonyms for ‘charity’ in the Hebrew Scriptures are צדקה‎ (_tzedakah_), well translated as ‘righteousness’ in the Authorised Version, and חסד (_chesed_), which is adequately rendered as ‘mercy, kindness, love.’ The Talmud, in its exhaustive fashion, seems to accentuate the essential difference between these two words. _Tzedakah_ is, to some extent, a class distinction; the rights of the poor make occasion for the righteousness of the rich, and the duties of _tzedakah_ find liberal and elaborate expression in a strict and minute system of tithes and almsgiving.[25] The injunctions of the Pentateuch concerning the poor are worked out by the Talmud into the fullest detail of direction. The Levitical law, ‘When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field’ (Levit. xiv. 9), gives occasion of itself to a considerable quantity of literature. At length, it is enacted how, if brothers divide a field between them, each has to give a ‘corner,’ and how, if a man sell his field in several lots, each purchaser of each separate lot has to leave unreaped his own proportionate ‘corner’ of the harvesting. And not only to leave unreaped, but how, in cases where the ‘corner’ was of a sort hard for the poor to gather, hanging high, as dates, or needing light handling, as grapes, it became the duty of the owner to undertake the ‘reaping’ thereof, and, himself, to make the rightful division; thus guarding against injury to quickly perishable fruits from too eager hands, or danger of a more serious sort to life or limbs, where ladders had to be used by hungry and impatient folks. The exactest rules, too, are formulated as to what constitutes a ‘field’ and what a ‘corner,’ as to what produce is liable to the tax and in what measure. Very curious it is to read long and gravely reasoned arguments as to why mushrooms should be held exempt from the law of the corner, whilst onions must be subject to it, or the weighty _pros_ and _cons_ over what may be fairly considered a ‘fallen grape,’ or a ‘sheaf left through forgetfulness.’ Yet the principle underlying the whole is too clear for prolixity to raise a smile, and the evident anxiety that no smallest loophole shall be left for evading the obligations of property compels respect.