Even where the primitive custom of sacrificing at the doorway has died out, there sometimes seems to be a survival of it in popular phraseology. Talcott Williams, of Philadelphia, relates an incident of his experiences in Morocco, which illustrates this. He says: “As I was riding through the Soko at Tangier on a morning in June, 1889, a servant stopped me, and said: ‘Four men, from near Azila (a town on the seacoast of Morocco, about thirty miles away), are waiting for you at the gate of the house of Mr. Perdicarus, and they have killed a sheep.’ ‘What have they killed a sheep for?’ said I. ‘Oh!’ said the servant, ‘I don’t mean that they have actually killed a sheep, but they are sitting at the gate, asking for your help, and expect you to aid them in their trouble, because they have heard that you have influence with the American consul, and are a man of importance in your own country, and we call that “killing a sheep.”’ I think he added ‘at the gate,’ but my memory is not perfectly clear at this point. I rode on to the house of my friend, where I was stopping, and found there the kinsman of a sheikh, who had been imprisoned by the American consul. They seized my horse’s bridle, and, with the usual Oriental signs of respect, refused to let me dismount until I had heard them and their plea for help.
“I was told by my own servant and the other Orientals there, that this plea ‘at the gate,’ accompanied as it was by the readiness to ‘kill a sheep,’ was one which no man in Morocco would dream of disregarding. I made some inquiry on the subject afterwards, and found that the habit of sitting at the gate waiting for a man of supposed influence or authority, while absent, to return to his house, often actually accompanied, though less frequently at present, by the slaughter of a sheep, whose blood is poured across the road over which he must pass, was a form used only in cases of dire necessity, and one to which a man with whom other pleas would avail nothing, felt compelled to give attention. I am glad to add that in my own case this ancient rite was not without its fruits to those who had used it.”[164]
See the Bible references to this idea. Moses stood “in the gate of the camp,” at a crisis hour in Israel’s history, when he would execute judgment in the Lord’s cause.[165] All Israel was aroused to do judgment against the sinning Benjamites because of the appeal of the dying woman who fell at the door of the house, “with her hands upon the threshold.”[166] Boaz “went up to the gate,” to meet the elders there, when he would covenant to do justice by Ruth and the kinsman of Naomi.[167] Absalom sat in “the way of the gate” when he would show favor to those who came there with their appeals for justice.[168] And when Absalom was dead, David as king was again sitting in the gate.[169] Zedekiah, the king of Judah, was sitting in the gate of Benjamin when Ebed-melech appealed to him in behalf of Jeremiah.[170] Daniel’s post of honor in Babylon was “in the gate of the king,” as a judge in the king’s name.[171]