Judas rose up in his place and repeated the last words of that great triumphal chant in which more than a thousand years before Deborah and Barak had celebrated the overthrow of another king who had mightily oppressed the children of Israel. “So let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord, but let them that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.” CHAPTER XXIV. THE SABBATICAL YEAR. A time was now approaching to which the responsible leaders of the people looked forward, for the most part, with great anxiety. This was the Sabbatical year. During a whole twelve months it would not be lawful to carry on any offensive war, or, a far more serious matter, to till the ground. Debate ran high as to whether the Law could be observed in its strictness. There were many who asked, with no little show of reason, “Will it be possible in times so troublous to keep a year of rest? Moses, when he commanded it, thought of a people dwelling quietly in a land from which they had driven out all their enemies. As things are now, these enemies are about us, and even in the very midst of us. And then the harvest? Will it suffice to feed the people, already more than twice as numerous as in the previous year, and daily increasing?” The answer of the Chasidim was peremptory. “For what,” they asked, “have we suffered and fought? For what did the martyrs lay down their lives—Eleazar the priest, and the mother and her sons, and Hannah, the wife of Azariah, and others without number? For what did Mattathias wear out the remnant of his years? Was it not for the Law, that it might be kept whole and undefiled? Might we not have lived in peace, and stood high in favour with the King, if we had been content to forsake the law of the Lord our God? And now that He has given us the victory, and delivered us from the hand of the heathen, so that we may serve Him without fear, shall we cast His commandments behind our backs? Were we not few in number, and scarcely armed, and yet did He not give into our hands great armies, well equipped with shield and sword and spear? Were we not well-nigh perishing of hunger among the mountains, and did He not richly supply our needs? Surely the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, and, if He will, He can make that which it bringeth forth of itself to abound even as the fields which the sower has sowed and the reaper has reaped?” And the Chasidim had their way, as zealous men are wont to have it, when they know exactly their own minds and what they want. The Sabbatical year was proclaimed. There was to be no labour, no ploughing or sowing, no tendance of oliveyards and vineyards. The people were to live simply and wholly on the bounty of the earth.