A Jewish Prayer-Book [pp. 495-506]

A Jewis/ Prayer Book.
go from Germany. The Chinese are there with opium, and
the Dutch, Portuguese, English and Malay with rum, seeking
spices, beautiful birds, gold dust, diamonds. Why not hasten
with the glad tidings, and elevate regions where savages roam,
and where the wilderness is tangled, and seek to make it the
garden of the Lord?
Art. VII.-A JEWISH PRAYER BOOK.
By REV. D. W. FISHER, D.D., Wheeling, West Virginia.
c'1n li3 -Book of Prayers for Israelitish Congregations.*
THE Hebrew words (Olath Tamid) which constitute the title
of this volume, are those with which the sixth verse of the
twenty-eighth chapter of Numbers begins. They are translated, both by the compiler and in our English Bible, a continual burnt-offering. As they stand in the Scriptures, they relate to the daily sacrifice which was required by the Mosaic
ritual. The lamb which was offered every morning and evening, together with a tenth part of an ephah of flour, and a
fourth part of a hira of beaten oil, was to be "a continual
burnt-offering, which was ordained in Mount Sinai for a sweet
savour, a sacrifice made by fire unto the Lord." This whole
verse is placed in both Hebrew and English on the title-page
of this volume. The appropriation of these words, and especially the care which is taken to let it be known that they
are a part of this verse in the Pentateuch, are significant of
the wide departure of the phase of modern Judaism, represented in this book, from that type which formerly prevailed
almost universally among the Israelitish people. They are
here applied, not to the daily sacrifices of the tabernacle and
the temple at Jerusalem, but to a ritual in which such offerings
are assumed to be things which are gone forever, and which
there should be no desire to restore.
This is a book which is well worth the study of Christians.
It is true that there are some purposes for which it would be
vain to search it. It does not, like the Targums, throw any
* Prepared by Dr. D. Einhorn.
l877.]
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