**6. Animal Husbandry Rituals (Firstborns and** *Pesah.* **)**

In the biblical account of history, the conflict between farmers and shepherds goes back to the first brothers in human history, with Abel as the shepherd and Cain as the farmer. The conflict story is connected to the very different lifestyle that farmers and shepherds lived. Farmers were entirely sedentary, tilling the same plots of ground year after year. Although some shepherds were sedentary, others would travel with their flocks, taking them to different pastures depending on the season (Borowski 1998, pp. 40–45). Even so, the two cultures did not live entirely independently of each other, as semi-nomads relied on grains grown by farmers while the farmers were in need of meat, skins, milk, and wool from the shepherds.

The book of Genesis depicts Israel's ancestors consistently as shepherds, and Exodus depicts Moses as a shepherd, thus showing that the biblical authors were conscious of animal husbandry as being an important and even respected part of their culture. It would be surprising, therefore, if among the festivals and rituals of ancient Israel, we did not find some that were specifically the province of shepherds. Moreover, whereas large flocks of sheep and goats would generally be kept by wandering shepherds, cows and bulls were kept by farmers, and they would have had rituals of their own relevant to these animals (Knauf and Guillaume 2016, pp. 57–59).

The Covenant Collection has a doublet of laws having to do with offering first produce and firstborns to YHWH, in chps. 22 and 23 respectively:

Exod 22:28 You shall not put off the skimming of the first yield of your vats.<sup>30</sup> You shall give Me the first-born among your sons. <sup>29</sup> You shall do the same with your cattle and your flocks: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to Me.

Exod 23:19 The choice first produce of your soil you shall bring to the house of YHWH your God. Do not allow the kid to grow fat on its mother's milk.31

The laws here emphasize that the first of many products go to YHWH, ostensibly as sacrifices: wine, sons, cattle and flocks, produce (wheat?), and flocks again. These verses may derive from a unit separated by the splicing in of other laws. The main idea of these laws was to bring the "firsts" to YHWH immediately, and this is emphasized in both iterations of the animal law. In most cases, the animals would have been born in the winter and weaned in the spring, but the verse insists that the firstborn should be offered almost immediately, without waiting for weaning.

That the first of these laws is about wine production fits with what we saw about the Ugaritic calendar, which began preparation for the autumn new year celebration in the month of new wine, though from the Gezer calendar, we might infer that the grape gathering season was in early summer. Perhaps the first wine is a little later than first "grape juice," or perhaps the wine offering was supposed to come in the summer and not the autumn.

We will skip for a moment the offering of firstborn sons, which would not be a yearly ritual, of course, as it would only occur once per mother. Nor would it be limited to a given season, since human births happen any time of the year.

As for bringing the first born of animals, sheep and goats give birth between December and February (Borowski 1998, pp. 52, 82 n17; Hirsch 1933, p. 59). If the firstborn animals are to be brought before they are weaned, this means midwinter. Cows go into heat periodically, and their sexual cycle is not seasonal, so a firstborn calf can be born at any time of the year.

<sup>30</sup> This is the NJPS translation. The Septuagint (LXX) understood the first word (˃תְ אָ לֵ מְ ( as referring to harvest produce and the second word (˃עֲ מְ דִ ( as referring to the first wine. Nevertheless, the use of the first word in Num 18:27 and Deut 22:9 in the context of vineyards and wine production implies that this term is also connected to wine. The phrase may simply be a hendiadys here (*HALOT* 2121). (Köhler and Baumgartner [1967–1995] 1994–2000).

<sup>31</sup> This appears to be the original meaning of the obscure phrase אמּוֹ בִ לֵ חֲ בּ י ַ דִגּ לְ שֵּׁ בַ ת אְ ֹל,usually translated as "do not cook a kid in its mother's milk." For an alternative translation, see (Schorch 2010).

First produce, assuming this is a reference to wheat, would be cut in the spring as discussed above. In fact, this rule overlaps with the festival of *Qa¯s.îr* which celebrates the bringing of the first cut of wheat. This overlap suggests a radical possibility hinted at above:

The three festivals, *Mas.s. <sup>ô</sup>t*, *Qa¯s.îr*, and *<sup>ʾ</sup>Asîp ¯* are not original to this text, but were added. Originally, the rule was not about festivals but simply that each Israelite male must appear at his local altar three times a year with the appropriate offerings. This is implied not only by the overlap but also by the fact that *Mas.s. ôt* and *Qas¯.îr* themselves overlap, i.e., they come about in the same season.

This suggestion solves a number of textual problems. For instance, 23:15 and 23:17 say the same thing in different words. This is best explained as a *Wiederaufnahme* (resumptive repetition), often a sign that a supplement was added into the text.<sup>32</sup> Second, the festivals of *Mas.s. <sup>ô</sup><sup>t</sup>* and *Qa¯s.îr* are separated by a phrase that seems unrelated to the *Mas.s. ôt* festival but closely related to the general statement in the previous verse. Here is how I would reconstruct what happened with this text—I use two indentations to show two levels of editing and underlining to show the *Wiederaufname* (Exod 23:14–17):

Three times a year you shall hold a festival for Me:

The Feast of *Mas.s. ôt* (Unleavened Bread)

you shall observe, eating unleavened bread for seven days as I have commanded you at the set time in the *H. odeš ¯* (New Moon) of *<sup>ʾ</sup>Abîb ¯* (Green Ears),

for in it you went forth from Egypt;

and none shall appear before Me empty-handed;<sup>33</sup>

and the Feast of the *Qa¯s.îr* (Harvest), of the first produce of your work, of what you sow in the field; and the Feast of *ʾAsîp ¯* (Ingathering) at the end of the year, when you gather in the results of your work from the field.

Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Sovereign, YHWH.

The original did not specify a time or a name, since it was understood that the person should come to his local altar when his produce or animal was ready for sacrifice. I suggest that in this pre-redacted version of the "three festival" law, we have a competing set of rituals, which a later scribe reinterpreted to be a reference to "famous" communal festivals, and chose three agricultural ones, even though two (*Mas.s. ôt* and *Qa¯s.îr*) were related to the same event (first cut of wheat) and would be celebrated at the same time.

Part of the ritual for each of these appearances at the altar seems to have been an animal sacrifice, which may have been the original meaning of the phrase "none shall appear before me empty-handed."34 The same "rush" we see in the laws of the first produce or firstborn can be seen with the sacrifice, which is the import of v. 18:

Exod 23:18 You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with anything leavened; and the fat of My festal offering shall not be left lying until morning.

The existence of altar rituals unconnected to the pilgrimage festivals fits with what we know from other biblical texts that there were festivals that existed that are not mentioned in the Pentateuchal law codes. Shilo, for instance, had its own festival (Judg 21:19, 1 Sam 1:3, 2:19) and the account of how maidens weep yearly over Jephthah's daughter (Judg 11:40) explains an existing festival. And these

<sup>32</sup> Exodus 34 lacks the opening of this pericope, possibly because the author of the Ritual Decalogue saw the redundancy and removed it. He also has the phrase "don't see my face empty-handed" after the description of the firstborn offering which he adds here.

<sup>33</sup> Perhaps the scribe put the *Mas.s. <sup>ô</sup><sup>t</sup>* text before this phrase since it is the one festival that comes with no produce, since it is an apotropaic ritual and not an offering ritual. Alternatively, it could just have been an error.

<sup>34</sup> This may also be the import of the Cain and Abel story—YHWH does not accept sacrifices of vegetation only.

are just examples that happened to be noted in biblical verses. Moreover, individual families may have had their own family festivals.
