It is, however, very difficult to ascertain in what this ministry of women consisted. The Hebrew term “Zobeoth”(264) would suggest the thought of a species of religious Amazons, who formed a guard of honour round the Sanctuary. Some commentators think that the ministry consisted in performing religious dances accompanied by various instruments. The Septuagint again speaks “of the women who fasted by the doors of the Tabernacle.” But most of the old Jewish expositors, as well as Onkelos, conceive that the women went to the tent of meeting to pray. Ibn Ezra offers the interesting remark, “And behold, there were women in Israel serving the Lord, who left the vanities of this world, and not being desirous of beautifying themselves any longer, made of their mirrors a free offering, and came to the tabernacle every day to pray and to listen there to the words of the commandments.” When we find that in 1 Sam. i. 12, “Hannah continued to pray before the Lord,” she was only doing there what many of her sisters did before and after her. We may also judge that it was from the number of these noble women, who made religion the aim of their lives, that the “twenty‐two” heroines and prophetesses sprang who form part of the glory of Jewish history. Sometimes it even happened that their husbands derived their religious inspiration from them. Thus the husband of the prophetess Deborah is said to have been an unlettered man. But his wife made him carry to the Sanctuary the candles which she herself had prepared, this being the way in which she encouraged him to seek communion with the righteous. The language in which the husband of the “Great Woman” of Shunem addresses his wife: “Wherefore wilt thou go to him” (the prophet)? “it is neither New Moon nor Sabbath” (2 Kings iv. 23), proves that on Festivals and Sabbaths the women used to attend some kind of worship, performed by the prophet, though we cannot say in what this worship consisted. The New Moon was especially a woman’s holiday, and was so observed even in the Middle Ages, for the women refrained from doing work on that day. The explanation given by the Rabbis is that when the men broke off their golden earrings to supply material for the golden calf, the women refused to contribute their trinkets, for which good behaviour a special day of repose was granted to them. Some Cabbalists even maintain that the original worshippers of the golden calf continue to exist on earth, their souls having successively migrated into various bodies, while their punishment consists in this, that they are ruled over by their wives. Rather interesting as well as complimentary to women is the remark which the Rabbis made with regard to the “Great Woman.” As will be remembered, it is _she_ who says, “I perceive that this (Elisha) is a holy man of God” (2 Kings iv. 19). In allusion to this verse the Talmud says: “From this fact we may infer that woman is quicker in recognising the worth of a stranger than man.”