Of the last class of ablutions, by which persons declared themselves free from the guilt of a parti cular action, the most remarkable instance is that which occurs in the expiation for an unknown murder, when the elders of the nearest village washed their hands over the expiatory heifer, be headed in the valley, saying ' Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it' (Dent. xxi. 1-9). It has been thought by some that the signal act of Pilate, when he washed his hands in water and declared himself innocent of the blood of Jesus (Matt. xxvii. 24), was a designed adoption of the Jewish custom : but this supposition does not appear necessary, as the custom was also common among the Greeks and Romans.
We have confined this notice to the usages of ablution as a sign of purification sanctioned or demanded by the law itself. Other practices not there indicated appear to have existed at a very early period, or to have grown up in the course of time. From I Sam. xvi. 5, compared with Exod. xix. learn that it was usual for those who presented or provided a sacrifice to purify them selves by ablution: and as this was everywhere a general practice, it may be supposed to have existed in patriarchal times, and, being an established and approved custom, not to have required to be men tioned in the law. There is a passage in the apocryphal book of Judith (xii. 7-9) which has been thought to intimate that the Jews performed ablutions before prayer. But we cannot fairly deduce that meaning from it. It would indeed prove too much if so understood, as Judith bathed in the water, which is more than even the Moslems do before their prayers. Moreover, this authority, if clear, would not be conclusive.
But after the rise of the sect of the Pharisees, the practice of ablution was carried to such excess, from the affectation of excessive purity, that it is repeatedly brought under our notice in the New Testament through the severe animadversions of our Saviour on the consummate hypocrisy involved in this fastidious attention to the external types of moral purity, while the heart was left unclean. All the practices there exposed come under the head of purification from uncleanness ;—the acts involving which were made so numerous that persons of the stricter sect could scarcely move without contracting some involuntary pollution. For this reason they never entered their houses without ablution, from the strong probability that they had unknowingly contracted some defilement in the streets ; and these were peculiarly liable to be defiled ; and as washing the hands (Mark vii.
I-5), because theywere peculiary liable to be defiled; and as unclean hands were held to communi cate uncleanness to all food (excepting fruit) which they touched, it was deemed that there was no security against eating unclean food but by always washing the hands ceremonially before touching any meat. We say ceremonially,' because this article refers only to ceremonial washing. The Israelites, who, like other Orientals, fed with their fingers, washed their hands before meals, for the sake of cleanliness. But these customary washings were distinct from the ceremonial ablutions, as they are now among the Moslems. There were, indeed, distinct names for them. The former was called simply or washing, in which water was poured upon the hands; the latter was called plunging, because the hands were plunged in water (Lightfoot on Mark vii. 4). It was this last, namely, the ceremonial ablution, which the Phari sees judged to be so necessary. When therefore some of that sect remarked that our Lord's disciples ate with unwashen hands' (Mark vii. 2), it is not to be understood literally that they did not at all wash their hands, but that they did not plunge them ceremonially according to their own practice. And this was expected from them only as the disciples of a religious teacher; for these refinements were not practised by the class of people from which the disciples were chiefly drawn. Their wonder was, that Jesus had not inculcated this observance on his followers, and not, as some have fancied, that he had enjoined them to neglect what had been their previous practice.
In at least an equal degree the Pharisees mul tiplied the ceremonial pollutions which required the ablution of inanimate objects—' cups and pots, brazen vessels and tables;' the rules given in the law (Lev. vi. 2S; xi. 32-36 ; xv. 23) being extended to these multiplied contaminations. Articles of earthenware which were of little value were to be broken; and those of metal and wood were to be scoured and rinsed with water. All these matters are fully described by Buxtorf, Lightfoot, Gill, and other writers of the same class, who present many striking illustrations of the passages of Scripture which refer to them. The Mohammedan usages of ablution, which offer many striking analogies, are fully detailed in the third book of the Afirchat ul Afasdbih, and also in D'Ohsson's Tableau, liv. i. chap. i.—J. K.