It is a well known fact with respect to Judæa, that the seasons of rain, and of fair weather, in that country were fixed and determinate: each had its proper commencement, and each its proper termination; and there was a definite interval between them. No allusion occurs in the sacred writers except to two such periods of rain; at opposite quarters of the year, and called respectively the former and the latter rain. From the passage of Joel, quoted below 5, which is to this effect, He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain, in the first month-it appears that the latter rain was that which fell in the spring, in or about the first month of the sacred year, Abib or Nisan, answering partly to April and partly to March with us. The same thing is implied by Jerome in his commentary upon Amosh: Quæ locusta venit in principio imbris serotini, quando cuncta virent et parturit omnis ager, et diversarum arborum flores in sui generis poma rumpuntur: for this is a description of the month Adar among the Jews. This, then, is the rain alluded to by Solomon i; For lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Amos iv. 7, it is said, And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest; which harvest being necessarily the wheat harvest, the season whereof was Pentecost, the period of the rain, three months prior to that, is at least the close of the last, or the beginning of the first month in

g Lev. xxvi. 4. Deut. xi. 14. xxviii. 12. Job xxix. 23. Prov. xvi. 15. Jerem. iii. 3. v. 24. Hos. vi. 3. Joel ii. 23. Zech. x. 1. James v. 7.

iii. 1432. ad principium.

i Canticles ii. 11—13.

hOperum

the sacred year. Jerome's commentary in locum is to this effect, Significat autem vernum tempus extremi mensis Aprilis, a quo usque ad messem frumenti, tres menses supersunt; Maius, Junius, Julius ; which, however, is not altogether a correct statement; for wheat harvest in Judæa, no more than in Egypt, was ever later than the beginning of June*. Now as the period of barley

i Operum iii. 1401, ad principium. H. N. xviii. 59. ii. 47. xi. 15. xvii. 30. §. 2.

harvest coincided with the anniversary of the Passover, and the effect of the latter rains, as indeed of the rainy season in general, when over, was necessarily to swell the Jordan; hence it is stated in the book of Joshua", Jordan overfloweth all his banks, all the time of harvest, that is of barley-harvest *; for the river was crossed on the tenth of Nisan". By the time of barley-harvest, that is, before the middle of Nisan, which in a rectified year answered to the middle of April, the vernal rains would almost always be over: and sometimes by the middle of March. There is a case in point, mentioned by Josephus, when the Jordan was impassable on account of the rain, on or about the fourth of Dystrus; which corresponded in that year to February 25.o

After the cessation of the last or the spring rains, the continuance of fine weather until the periodic recurrence of the first or the autumnal rains; that is, all through the vernal and summer quarters; is equally well attested. Σπάνιον δὲ, εἴ ποτε, τὸ κλίμα τοῦτο θέρους verai. Nunquam enim in fine mensis Junii, sive in mense Julio, in his provinciis, maximeque in Judæa, pluvias vidimus 9. Hence, at the inauguration of Saul, which 1 Sam. xii. 17 proves to have taken place about the feast of Pentecost, or in the akun of wheat-harvest, thunder and rain were so strange a phenomenon, as justly to be appealed to in token of the displeasure of God.

Nor is this all. The interval between the latter and the former rains seems to have been in general the interval between the autumnal and the vernal equinox;

* So likewise is it said to do by the Pseudo-Aristeas, apud

o Bell. Jud. iv. vii. 3. 5.

m Ch. iii. 15. xlix. 19. Ant. xviii. viii. 6.

Josephum, vol.. ii. (Havercampii.)

n Ch. iv. 19. Vide also 1 Chron. xii. 15. Jerem. xii. 5. p Bell. Jud. iii. vii. 12. Vide also q Hieronymus, Operum iii. 140г. ad principium.

that is, about six months. The one were over about the Passover, and the other set in shortly after the Scenopegia". The duration of the dearth in the time of Elijah, though not specified in the Old Testament, further than as almost three years, is twice specified in the News, and each time as a dearth of three years and six months in length; which is to be accounted for in this manner. The strictly preternatural period of the drought both began and terminated, as was to be expected, with the ordinary season of the first rain; that is, the autumnal quarter of the year: and lasted just three years in all. The six months, in addition to that, were, consequently, the ordinary interval between the latter and the former rain: which, though they did certainly aggravate the whole duration, and the consequent effects of the drought, could not by themselves be considered unnatural or extraordinary.

That this explanation is correct appears from Josephus ; who cites Menander, the Tyrian historian, in testimony to a drought in the reign of Ithobal, the Ethbaal of Scripture and father of Jezebel; which extended from Hyperberetæus or Tisri in one year, to the same month in the next. And hence we may better appreciate the maternal piety of Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, and concubine of Saul, which is instanced, 2 Sam. xxi. 9, 10. For these seven men were put to death in the first days of barley-harvest, that is, so early as the sixteenth of Nisan; and her watching over their bodies, which lasted until water dropped upon them out of heaven, must have continued past the same time in the month of Tisri. The Mishna places the recurrence of the autumnal rains, one year with another, about the end of the first

r Cf. Ezra x. 9—13. xiii. 2.

s Luke iv. 25. James v. 17.

t Ant. Jud. viii.

week in Marches van; a fortnight after the close of the feast of Tabernacles * ".

Now the natural phenomena, mentioned by our Saviour, are referred to as indicating not merely certain natural consequences in general, but certain stated and regular consequences in particular. Γίνεται οὕτω, ΟΙ kai yívetaι, is subjoined to each. The natural effects, γίνεται, supposed to be of this regular kind, are these two, rain and kavσwv; which may well be understood of dry, and hot or sultry weather. The appearance, which indicated the former, was the rising of the cloud from the west; as that, which prognosticated the latter, was the beginning of the south wind to blow.

Now the very terms, in which the first of these symptoms is alluded to—ὅταν ἴδητε τὴν νεφέλην ἀνατέλ λουσαν ἀπὸ δυσμών-authorize the following conclusions respecting it. First, it was some well known and remarkable cloud; secondly, it was never observed in any quarter but the west: and we have seen that it was the harbinger of rain. The west in Judæa is the region of the Mediterranean sea; this cloud from the west, therefore, was necessarily a cloud from that sea. The cloud itself, the quarter where it first appeared, and

* The result of Mr. Harmer's observations on this subject in general is, that rain might fall in Judæa so early as the end of September; but that the rainy season as such could not be said to be set in before the beginning of November.

Josephus supplies a case in point when it appears to have so begun. The remarkable storm of rain and wind, which is there described, being not

u ii. 357.3. VOL. III.

many days later than the arrival of John of Gischala at Jerusalem, nor that arrival than the end of the month Tisri, must have coincided with about the middle of Marchesvan; and have been consequently the setting in of the autumnal rains. See also a similar instance in Diodorus Siculus w, of a storm encountered περὶ πλειάδος δύσιν, when Demetrius Poliorcetes was sailing with a fleet to invade Egypt.

v Bell. Jud. iv. iv. 5.
C

w xx. 74.