Chapters from the Biblical Law.
587
prevails in the office of the register of wills. The original will is filed on record and is not open for public inspection, except under or der of the court, whereas a copy of it, duly pre pared, is placed on record in the will books and is open for the inspection of all the world. There is some evidence from recent discoveries in Babylonia that the latter method is the one alluded to in this case. Babylonian explorers have found legal doc uments executed in duplicate on clay tablets, one of which was inclosed within the other. In other words, a tablet was first prepared and then a case was made for it, and on the outside of the case a copy of the inclosed tab let was inscribed; the case was then sealed, and both copies, one within the other, were filed away among the records. This method would account for what follows in our case, in which Jeremiah says, "And I took the deed of the purchase, both that which was sealed and that which was open, and I gave the deed of purchase unto Baruch, the son of Neriyah, in the presence of Hanamel, my kinsman; and in the presence of the witnesses who had signed the deed of purchase; and in the presence of all the Judaeans who were sitting in the court of the prison." This public delivery of the document thus thrice attested in the presence of the seller, the sub scribing witnesses, and the witnesses stand ing round about, was accompanied by the following charge :
the documents were placed was merely the receptacle in the recording office in which the documents were preserved. The object of recording them was as stated by Jeremiah, that they might last many clays, for it was presumed by him that, even in the trouble some times which were then impending, docu ments thus preserved in the public record office were safer than if they had remained in the possession of any individual; and, as was stated at the beginning of this article, this was the point of the whole transaction. This was the lesson that Jeremiah sought to inculcate, to wit, that in spite of the approach ing doom of the state, the ordinary affairs of life would continue as theretofore, that houses and fields and vineyards would continue to be bought and sold, and eventually, order would again be brought out of anarchy, and a stable government be re-established. This transaction took place in the court of the prison in the city of Jerusalem, and it is to be presumed that the record office to which allusion is made, was in the same city. Mod ern explorations in Jerusalem have not yet brought to light this public record office, and there can hardly be any doubt that some where clown in the subsoil of the present city of Jerusalem there lie buried the record chambers of the ancient kingdom and com monwealth of the Jews, and it is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when explora tions may be made on Mount Zion which And I charged Baruch in their presence as will yield invaluable treasure to the archeolofollows, " Take these deeds, this deed of pur gist, the student of the Bible and the histo chase, both the sealed and the open deed and rian. place them on record, in order that they may last many days, for thus hath said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, ' yet again shall there be bought houses, fields and vineyards in this land.'"
In his charge to Baruch, the words of the Biblical text are, " Take these deeds .... and place them in an earthen vessel." This is a literal translation of the Hebrew text. I have translated it however, " place them on record " because the earthen vessel in which
VIII. THE SALE OF ESAU'S BIRTHRIGHT.
Ancient Hebrew tradition recognized the kinship existing between the various Semitic tribes dwelling north of the Arabian Desert, and in -various legendary accounts, we find attempts to discover the origin of this rela tionship. To this class of legends may be assigned those found in the Book of Genesis,
