ere is, therefore, no contradiction between the command
in Exod. xii., to make Abib, the month of the Passover, the first month,
and the references elsewhere in Exodus to the Feast of Ingathering as
being in "the end of the year." It was at the end of the agricultural
year; it was also at the end of the period of feasts. So, if a workman
is engaged for a day's work, he comes in the morning, and goes home in
the evening, and expects to be paid as he leaves; no one would ask him
to complete the twenty-four hours before payment and dismissal. It is
the end of his day; though, like the men in the parable of the Labourers
in the Vineyard, he has only worked twelve hours out of the twenty-four.
In the same way the Feast of Tabernacles, though in the seventh month,
was in "the end of the year," both from the point of view of the farmer
and of the ordinances of the sacred festivals.

The method employed in very early times in Assyria and Babylonia for
determining the first month of the year was a simple and effective one,
the principle of which may be explained thus: If we watch for the
appearance of the new moon in spring time, and, as we see it setting in
the west, notice some bright star near it, then 12 months later we
should see the two together again; but with this difference, that the
moon and star would be seen together, not on the first, but on the
second evening of the month. For since 12 lunar months fall short of a
solar year by 11 days, the moon on the first evening would be about 11
degrees short of her former position. But as she moves about 13 degrees
in 24 hours, the next evening she would practically be back in her old
place. In the second year, therefore, moon and star would set together
on the second evening of the first month; and in like manner they would
set together on the third evening in the third year; and, roughly
speaking, on the fourth evening of the fourth year. But this last
conjunction would mean that they would also set together on the first
evening of the next month, which would thus be indicated as the true
first month of the year. Thus when moon and star set together on the
third evening of a month, thirteen months later they would set together
on the first evening of a month. Thus the setting together of moon and
star would not only mark which was to be first month of the year, but if
they set together on the first evening it would show that the year then
beginning was to be an ordinary one