Part 110

"Remnants of the Canaanites remained everywhere among and between the Israelites. Beside the Benjamites the Jebusites (a tribe of the Amorites) maintained themselves, and at Gibeon, Kirjath-jearim, Chephirah, and Beeroth were the Hivites, who had made peace with the Israelites. In the land of Ephraim, the Canaanites held their ground at Geser and Bethel, until the latter—it was an important city—was stormed by the Ephraimites. Among the tribe of Manasseh the Canaanites were settled at Beth Shean, Dan, Taanach, Jibleam, Megiddo and their districts, and in the northern tribes the Canaanites were still more numerous. It was not till long after the immigration of the Hebrews that they were made in part tributary. The land of the Israelites beyond the Jordan, where the tribe of Manasseh possessed the north, Gad the centre, and Reuben the south as far as the Arnon, was exposed to the attacks of the Ammonites and Moabites, and the migratory tribes of the Syrian desert, and must have had the greater attraction for them, as better pastures were to be found in the heights of Gilead, and the valleys there were more fruitful. To the west only the tribe of Ephraim reached the sea, and became master of a harbourless strip of coast. The remaining part of the coast and all the harbours remained in the hands of the powerful cities of the Philistines and the Phenicians. No attempt was made to conquer these, although border-conflicts took place between the tribes of Judah, Dan, and Asher, and Philistines and Sidonians. Such an attempt could only have been made if the Israelites had remained united, and even then the powers of the Israelites would hardly have sufficed to overthrow the walls of Gaza, Ascalon, and Ashdod, of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus. Yet the invasion of the Israelites was not without results for the cities of the coast: it forced a large part of the population to assemble in them, and we shall see … how rapid and powerful is the growth of the strength and importance of Tyre in the time immediately following the incursion of the Israelites, i. e., immediately after the middle of the thirteenth century. {1899} As the population and in consequence the power of the cities on the coast increased, owing to the collection of the ancient population on the shore of the sea, those cities became all the more dangerous neighbours for the Israelites. It was a misfortune for the new territory which the Israelites had won by the sword that it was without the protection of natural boundaries on the north and east, that the cities of the Philistines and Phenicians barred it towards the sea, and in the interior remnants of the Canaanites still maintained their place. Yet it was a far more serious danger for the immigrants that they were without unity, connection, or guidance, for they had already given up these before the conflict was ended. Undoubtedly a vigorous leadership in the war of conquest against the Canaanites might have established a military monarchy which would have provided better for the maintenance of the borders and the security of the land than was done in its absence. But the isolated defence made by the Canaanites permitted the attacking party also to isolate themselves. The new masters of the land lived, like the Canaanites before and among them, in separate cantons; the mountain land which they possessed was much broken up, and without any natural centre, and though there were dangerous neighbours, there was no single concentrated aggressive power in the neighbourhood, now that Egypt remained in her borders. The cities of the Philistines formed a federation merely, though a federation far more strongly organised than the tribes of the Israelites. Under these circumstances political unity was not an immediately pressing question among the Israelites."

_M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 2, chapter 11 (volume 1)._

_H. Ewald, History of Israel, book 2, section 2, C._

JEWS: Israel under the Judges. The wars of the Period. Conquest of Gilead and Bashan. Founding of the kingdom.

"The office which gives its name to the period [between the death of Joshua and the rise of Samuel] well describes it. It was occasional, irregular, uncertain, yet gradually tending to fixedness and perpetuity. Its title is itself expressive. The Ruler was not regal, but he was more than the mere head of a tribe, or the mere judge of special cases. We have to seek for the origin of the name, not amongst the Sheykhs of the Arabian desert, but amongst the civilised settlements of Phœnicia. 'Shophet,' 'Shophetim,' the Hebrew word which we translate 'Judge,' is the same as we find in the 'Suffes,' 'Suffetes,' of the Carthaginian rulers at the time of the Punic wars. As afterwards the office of 'king' was taken from the nations round about, so now, if not the office, at least the name of 'judge' or 'shophet' seems to have been drawn from the Canaanitish cities, with which for the first time Israel came into contact. … Finally the two offices which, in the earlier years of this period, had remained distinct—the High Priest and the Judge—were united in the person of Eli."

_Dean Stanley, Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, lecture 13._

"The first war mentioned in the days of the Judges is with the Syrians, at a time when the Israelites, or a northern portion of them, were held in servitude for eight years by a king whose name, Cushan-rish-athaim, which may be translated the 'Most Wicked Negress,' seems to place him in the region of imaginary tradition rather than of history. … The next war mentioned was an invasion by the Moabites, who, being joined with a body of Ammonites, and Amalakites, harassed the Israelites of the neighbourhood of Gilgal and Jericho. … After a servitude of 18 years under the Moabites, Ehud, a Benjamite, found an opportunity of stabbing Eglon, the king of Moab; and shortly afterwards the Benjamites were relieved by a body of their neighbours from the hill country of Ephraim. The Israelites then defeated the Moabites, and seized the fords of the Jordan to stop their retreat, and slew them all to a man. While this war was going on on one side of the land, the Philistines from the south were harassing those of the Israelites who were nearest to their country. … The history then carries us back to the northern Israelites, and we hear of their struggle with the Canaanites of that part of the country which was afterwards called Galilee. These people were under a king named Jabin, who had 900 chariots of iron, and they cruelly oppressed the men of Naphtali and Zebulun, who were at that time the most northerly of the Israelites. After a suffering of 20 years, the two tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, under the leadership of Barak, rallied against their oppressors, and called to their help their stronger neighbours, the men of Ephraim. The tribe of Ephraim was the most settled portion of the Israelites, and they had adopted some form of government, while the other tribes were stragglers scattered over the land, every man doing what was right in his own eyes. The Ephraimites were at that time governed, or, in their own language, judged, by a brave woman of the name of Deborah, who led her followers, together with some of the Benjamites, to the assistance of Barak, the leader of Zebulun and Naphtali; and, at the foot of Mount Tabor, near the brook Kishon, their united forces defeated Sisern, the general of the Canaanites. Sisera fled, and was murdered by Jael, a woman in whose tent he had sought for refuge. … The next war that we are told of is an invasion by the Midianites and Amalakites and Children of the East. They crossed the Jordan to attack the men of Manasseh, who were at the same time struggling with the Amorites, the natives who dwelt amongst them. Gideon, the leader of Manasseh, called together the fighting men of his own tribe, together with those of Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali. The men of Gilead, who had come over to help him, seem to have deserted him. Gideon, however, routed his enemies, and then he summoned the Ephraimites to guard the fords of the Jordan, and to cut off the fugitives. … This victory of Gideon, or Jerubbaal, as he was also named, marked him out as a man fit to be the ruler of Israel, and to save them from the troubles that arose from the want of a single head to lead them against the enemies that surrounded them and dwelt among them. Accordingly, he obtained the rank of chief of all the northern Israelites. Gideon had dwelt at Ophrah, in the land of Manasseh; but his son Abimelech, who succeeded him in his high post, was born in Shechem, in the land of Ephraim, and had thus gained the friendship of some of that tribe. Abimelech put to death all but one of his brethren, the other sons of Gideon, and got himself made king at Shechem; and he was the first who bore that title among the Israelites. {1900} But his thus violently seizing upon the power was the cause of a long civil war between Ephraim and Manasseh, which ended in the death of the usurper Abimelech, and the transfer of the chieftainship to another tribe. Tola, a man of Issachar, was then made Judge, or ruler of the northern tribes. … After Tola, says the historian, Jair of Gilead judged Israel. … Jair and his successors may have ruled in the east at the same time that Deborah and Gideon and their successors were ruling or struggling against their oppressors in the west. Jephtha of Gilead is the next great captain mentioned. … The Ammonites, who dwelt in the more desert country to the east of Gilead, had made a serious incursion on the Israelites on both sides of the Jordan; and the men of Gilead, in their distress, sent for Jephtha, who was then living at Tob, in Syria, whither he had fled from a quarrel with his brethren. … It seems that the Ammonites invaded Gilead on the plea that they had possessed that land before the Israelites arrived there, to which Jephtha answered that the Israelites had dispossessed the Amorites under Sihon, king of Heshbon, and that the Ammonites had not dwelt in that part of the country. In stating the argument, the historian gives a history of their arrival on the banks of the Jordan. On coming out of Lower Egypt, they crossed the desert to the Red Sea, and then came to Kadesh. From thence they asked leave of the Edomites and Moabites to pass through their territory; but, being refused, they went round Moab till they came to the northern bank of the river Arnon, an eastern tributary of the Jordan. There they were attacked by Sihon, king of the Amorites; and on defeating him they seized his territory, which lay between the Arnon and the Jabbok. There the Israelites had dwelt quietly for 300 years, without fighting against either the Moabites or the Ammonites, who were both too strong to be attacked. This is a most interesting narrative, both for what it tells and for what it omits, as compared with the longer narrative in the Pentateuch. … It omits all mention of the delivery of the Law, or of the Ark, or of any supernatural events as having happened on the march, and of the fighting with Og, king of Bashan. Og, or Gog, as it is spelled by other writers, was the name of the monarch whose imaginary castles, seen upon the mountains in the distance, the traveller thought it not wise to approach. They were at the limits of all geographical knowledge. At this early time this fabulous king held Mount Bashan; in Ezekiel's time he had retreated to the shores of the Caspian Sea; and ten centuries later the Arabic travellers were stopped by him at the foot of the Altai Mountains, in Central Asia. His withdrawing before the advance of geographical explorers proves his unreal character. He is not mentioned in this earlier account of the Israelites settling in the land of the Amorites; it is only in the more modern narrative in the Book of Numbers that he is attacked and defeated in battle, and only in the yet more modern Book of Deuteronomy that we learn about his iron bedstead of nine cubits in length."

_S. Sharpe, History of the Hebrew Nation, pages 4-9._

"At the close of the period of the Judges the greater part of the Israelites had quite lost their pastoral habits. They were an agricultural people living in cities and villages, and their oldest civil laws I are framed for this kind of life. All the new arts which this complete change of habit implies they must have derived from the Canaanites, and as they learned the ways of agricultural life they could hardly fail to acquire many of the characteristics of their teachers. To make the transformation complete only one thing was lacking —that Israel should also accept the religion of the aborigines. The history and the prophets alike testify that to a great extent they actually did this. Canaanite sanctuaries became Hebrew holy places, and the vileness of Canaanite nature-worship polluted the Hebrew festivals. For a time it seemed that Jehovah, the ancestral God of Israel, who brought their fathers up out of the house of bondage and gave them their goodly land, would be forgotten or transformed into a Canaanite Baal. If this change had been completed Israel would have left no name in the world's history; but Providence had other things in store for the people of Jehovah. Henceforth the real significance of Israel's fortunes lies in the preservation and development of the national faith, and the history of the tribes of Jacob is rightly set forth in the Bible as the history of that divine discipline by which Jehovah maintained a people for Himself amidst the seductions of Canaanite worship and the ever-new backslidings of Israel. … In the end Jehovah was still the God of Israel, and had become the God of Israel's land. Canaan was His heritage, not the heritage of the Baalim, and the Canaanite worship appears henceforth, not as a direct rival to the worship of Jehovah, but as a disturbing element corrupting the national faith, while unable to supplant it altogether. This, of course, in virtue of the close connection between religion and national feeling, means that Israel had now risen above the danger of absorption in the Canaanites, and felt itself to be a nation in the true sense of the word. We learn from the books of Samuel how this great advance was ultimately and permanently secured. The earlier wars recorded in the book of Judges had brought about no complete or lasting unity among the Hebrew tribes. But at length a new enemy arose, more formidable than any whom they had previously encountered. The Philistines from Caphtor, who, like the Israelites, had entered Canaan as emigrants, but coming most probably by sea had displaced the aboriginal Avvim in the rich coastlands beneath the mountains of Judah (Deuteronomy ii. 23; Amos ix. 7), pressed into the heart of the country, and broke the old strength of Ephraim in the battle of Ebenezer. This victory cut the Hebrew settlements in two, and threatened the independence of all the tribes. The common danger drew Israel together."

_W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, lecture 1._

JEWS: The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

"No one appeared again in the character at once of judge and warrior, to protect the people by force of arms. It was the Levite Samuel, a prophet dedicated to God even before his birth, who recalled them to the consciousness of religious feeling. He succeeded in removing the emblems of Baal and Astarte from the heights, and in paving the way for renewed faith in Jehovah. … It was the feeling of the people that they could only carry on the war upon the system employed by all their neighbors. {1901} They demanded a king—a request very intelligible under existing circumstances, but one which nevertheless involved a wide and significant departure from the impulses which had hitherto moved the Jewish community and the forms in which it had shaped itself. … The Israelites demanded a king, not only to go before them and fight their battles, but also to judge them. They no longer looked for their preservation to the occasional efforts of the prophetic order and the ephemeral existence of heroic leaders. … The argument by which Samuel, as the narrative records, seeks to deter the people from their purpose, is that the king will encroach upon the freedom of private life which they have hitherto enjoyed, employing their sons and daughters in his service, whether in the palace or in war, exacting tithes, taking the best part of the land for himself, and regarding all as his bondsmen. In this freedom of tribal and family life lay the essence of the Mosaic constitution. But the danger that all may be lost is so pressing that the people insist upon their own will in opposition to the prophet. Nevertheless, without the prophet nothing can be done, and it is he who selects from the youth of the country the man who is to enjoy the new dignity in Israel. … At first the proceeding had but a doubtful result. Many despised a young man sprung from the smallest family of the smallest tribe of Israel, as one who could give them no real assistance. In order to make effective the conception of the kingly office thus assigned to him, it was necessary in the first place that he should gain for himself a personal reputation. A king of the Ammonites, a tribe in affinity to Israel, laid siege to Jabesh in Gilead, and burdened the proffered surrender of the place with the condition that he should put out the right eyes of the inhabitants. … Saul, the son of Kish, a Benjamite, designated by the prophet as king, but not as yet recognized as such, was engaged, as Gideon before him, in his rustic labors, when he learned the situation through the lamentations of the people. … Seized with the idea of his mission, Saul cuts in pieces a yoke of oxen, and sends the portions to the twelve tribes with the threat, 'Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.' … Thus urged, … Israel combines like one man; Jabesh is rescued and Saul acknowledged as king. … With the recognition of the king, however, and the progress of his good-fortune, a new and disturbing element appears. A contest breaks out between him and the prophet, in which we recognize not so much opposition as jealousy between the two powers. … On the one side was the independent power of monarchy, which looks to the requirements of the moment, on the other the prophet's tenacious and unreserved adherence to tradition. … The relations between the tribes have also some bearing on the question. Hitherto Ephraim had led the van, and jealously insisted on its prerogative. Saul was of Benjamin, a tribe nearly related to Ephraim by descent. He had made the men of his own tribe captains, and had given them vineyards. On the other hand, the prophet chose Saul's successor from the tribe of Judah. This successor was David, the son of Jesse. … In the opposition which now begins we have on the one side the prophet and his anointed, who aim at maintaining the religious authority in all its aspects, on the other the champion and deliverer of the nation, who, abandoned by the faithful, turns for aid to the powers of darkness and seeks knowledge of the future through witchcraft. Saul is the first tragic personage in the history of the world. David took refuge with the Philistines. Among them he lived as an independent military chieftain, and was joined not only by opponents of the king, but by others, ready for any service, or, in the language of the original, 'men armed with bows, who could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow.' … In any serious war against the Israelites, such as actually broke out, the Sarim of the Philistines would not have tolerated him amongst them. David preferred to engage in a second attack upon the Amalekites, the common enemy of Philistines and Jews. At this juncture Israel was defeated by the Philistines. The king's sons were slain; Saul, in danger of falling into the enemy's hands, slew himself. Meanwhile David with his freebooters had defeated the Amalekites, and torn from their grasp the spoil they had accumulated, which was now distributed in Judah. Soon after, the death of Saul is announced. … David, conscious of being the rightful successor of Saul—for on him too, long ere this, the unction had been bestowed—betook himself to Hebron, the seat of the ancient Canaanitish kings, which had subsequently been given up to the priests and made one of the cities of refuge. It was in the province of Judah; and there, the tribe of Judah assisting at the ceremony, David was once more anointed. This tribe alone, however, acknowledged him; the others, especially Ephraim and Benjamin, attached themselves to Ishbosheth, the surviving son of Saul. … The first passage of arms between the two hosts took place between twelve of the tribe of Benjamin and twelve of David's men-at-arms. It led, however, to no result; it was a mutual slaughter, so complete as to leave no survivor. But in the more serious struggle which succeeded this the troops of David, trained as they were in warlike undertakings of great daring as well as variety, won the victory over Ishbosheth; and as the unanointed king could not rely upon the complete obedience of his commander-in-chief, who considered himself as important as his master, David, step by step, won the upper hand. … The Benjamites had been the heart and soul of the opposition which David experienced. Nevertheless, the first action which he undertook as acknowledged king of all the tribes redounded specially to their advantage, whilst it was at the same time a task of the utmost importance for the whole Israelitish commonwealth. Although Joshua had conquered the Amorites, one of their strongholds, Jebus, still remained unsubdued, and the Benjamites had exerted all their strength against it in vain. It was to this point that David next directed his victorious arms. Having conquered the place, he transferred the seat of his kingdom thither without delay [see JERUSALEM]. This seat is Jerusalem; the word Zion has the same meaning as Jebus."

_L. von Ranke, Universal History: The Oldest Historical Groups of Nations, chapter 2._

{1902}

"After Saul's death it was at first only in Judah, where David maintained his government, that a new Kingdom of Israel could be established at all, so disastrous were the consequences of the great Philistine victory. The Philistines, who must have already conquered the central territory, now occupied that to the north, also, while the inhabitants of the cities of the great plain of Jezreel and of the western bank of the Jordan, fled, we are very distinctly informed, across the river."

_H. Ewald, History of Israel, book 3._