weeks' "joy of harvest," and the spring festival no longer puzzles us by the place it holds in the cycle of the three yearly festivities. But what is the state of the case as regards the _pesah_? The meaning of the name is not clear; as we have seen, the word first occurs in Deuteronomy, and there also the time of the celebration is restricted to the evening and night of the first day of _maccoth_, from sunset until the following morning. In point of fact, the _pesah_ points back to the sacrifice of the firstlings (Exodus xxxiv. 18 seq., xiii. 12 seq.; Deuteronomy xv. 19 seq., xvi. 1 seq.), and it is principally upon this that the historical character of the whole festivity hinges. It is because Jehovah smote the first-born of Egypt and spared those of Israel that the latter thenceforward are held sacred to Him. Such is the representation given not merely in the Priestly Code but also in Exodus xiii. 11 seq. But in neither of its sources does the Jehovistic tradition know anything of this. "Let my people go, that they may keep a feast unto me in the wilderness with sacrifices and cattle and sheep: "this from the first is the demand made upon Pharaoh, and it is in order to be suitably adorned for this purpose, contemplated by them from the first, that the departing Israelites borrow festal robes and ornaments from the Egyptians. Because Pharaoh refuses to allow the Hebrews to offer to their God the firstlings of cattle that are His due, Jebovah seizes from him the first-born of men. Thus the exodus is not the occasion of the festival, but the festival the occasion, if only a pretended one, of the exodus. If this relationship is inverted in Exodus xiii, it is because that passage is not one of the sources of the Jehovistic tradition, but is part of the redaction, and in fact (as is plain from other reasons with regard to the entire section xiii. 1-16) of a Deuteronomic redaction. From this it follows that the elaboration of the historical motive of the passover is not earlier than Deuteronomy, although perhaps a certain inclination to that way of explaining it appears before then, just as in the case of the _maccoth_ (Exodus xii. 34). What has led to it is evidently the coincidence of the spring festival with the exodus, already accepted by the older tradition, the relation of cause and effect having become inverted in course of time. The only view sanctioned by the nature of the case is that the Israelite custom of offering the firstlings gave rise to the narrative of the slaying of the first-born of Egypt; unless the custom be pre-supposed the story is inexplicable, and the peculiar selection of its victims by the plague is left without a motive. The sacrifice of the first-born, of the male first-born, that is to say--for the females were reared as with us--does not require an historical explanation, but can be accounted for very simply: it is the expression of thankfulness to the Deity for fruitful flocks and herds.