n two, _yerach_. Jacob,
when he came to Padan-aram, abode with Laban for "the space of a
month," before his crafty uncle broached the subject of his wages. This
may either merely mean full thirty days, or the term _chodesh_ may
possibly have a special appropriateness, as Laban may have dated Jacob's
service so as to commence from the second new moon after his arrival.
Again, when the people lusted for flesh in the wilderness, saying, "Who
shall give us flesh to eat?" the Lord promised to send them flesh--

"And ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor
five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days, but even a whole
month. . . . And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and
brought quails from the sea."

"He rained flesh also upon them as dust,
And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea."

The "whole month" in this case was evidently a full period of thirty
days, irrespective of the particular phase of the moon when it began and
ended.

Amongst the Babylonians the sign for the word month was xxx, expressing
the usual number of days that it contained, and without doubt amongst
the Hebrews that was the number of days originally assigned to the
month, except when the interval between two actually observed new moons
was found to be twenty-nine. In later times it was learned that the
length for the lunation lay between twenty-nine and thirty days, and
that these lengths for the month must be alternate as a general rule.
But in early times, if a long spell of bad weather prevented direct
observation of the new moon, we cannot suppose that anything less than
thirty days would be assigned to each month.

Such a long spell of bad observing weather did certainly occur on one
occasion in the very early days of astronomy, and we accordingly find
that such was the number of days allotted to several consecutive months,
though the historian was evidently in the habit of observing the new
moon, for _chodesh_ is the word used to express these months of thirty
days.

We are told that--

"In the six hundreth year of Noah's life, in the second month,
the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of
heaven were opened."

And later that--

"After the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were
abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the
seventeenth day of the