x. 26, though others maintain that the reference in the book of Isaiah

is to the first of the two narratives. It cannot be denied that the history of the war against the Midianites in its present form is confused, and that it is difficult to construct from it a clear and intelligible picture of the course of events. That the compiler of the book of Judges should have made use of more than one narrative, if such existed, is indeed only natural, and what a conscientious historian would be bound to do. But to distinguish minutely the narratives one from the other, much more to analyse them into still smaller fragments, is the work of Sisyphus. It is even more impossible than to distinguish between Rice and Besant in _The Golden Butterfly_ or _Celia’s Arbour_. The historian must leave all such literary trifling to the collectors of lists of words, and content himself with comparing and analysing the facts recorded in the story.[336]

The altar raised by Gideon was dedicated to Yahveh-shalom, ‘the Yahveh of Peace,’ and it was still standing at Ophrah when the narrative relating to it was written.[337] Its name shows that it could hardly have been built before Gideon had returned in peace from the Midianitish war. There was much that had first to be done.

Gideon’s first task was to destroy the symbol of Asherah and the altar of Baal. The revelation made to him had been made in the name of Yahveh, and it was in the name of Yahveh alone that he was about to lead his countrymen to victory. It is true that between Yahveh and Baal the Israelite villager of the day saw but little difference. Yahveh was addressed as Baal or ‘Lord,’[338] and the local altars that were dedicated to Him in most instances did but take the place of the older altars of a Canaanitish Baal. Mixture between Israelites and Canaanites, moreover, had brought with it a mixture in religion. Along with the title, Yahveh had assumed the attributes of a Baal, at all events among the mass of the people. Joash and the villagers, who demanded that Gideon should be put to death for destroying the altar of Baal, doubtless thought that they were zealous for the God of Israel. It was the symbol of Asherah only which was the token of a foreign cult.

Perhaps the answer made by Joash to the charge against his son has been coloured by the theology of the later historian. It breathes rather the spirit of an age when the antagonism between Yahveh and Baal had become acute than that of one who was himself a worshipper of Baal and Asherah, and whose son in the hour of victory made an idol out of the enemy’s spoil. The Baal worshipped by the villagers of Abi-ezer was regarded as Yahveh himself, and hence it was that the offence committed by Gideon against him was an offence committed against the national God, and therefore punishable with death. To set him up as another god in opposition to the God of Israel carries us down to the age of Elijah, when the subjects of Ahab were called upon to choose between the Yahveh who had led them out of Egypt and the Phœnician Baal. It belongs to the same period as the etymological play on the name of Jerubbaal.

There was a special reason why Jerubbaal should thus have come forward to deliver his countrymen from the Midianites. The Bedâwin raiders had slain his brothers in a previous struggle at Mount Tabor (viii. 18-21). Jerubbaal thus had a blood-feud to avenge. He was the last and presumably the youngest of his family, and upon him therefore devolved the duty of revenging his brothers’ death. Moreover, it would appear from the words of the Midianite chiefs that Joash and his sons were not only the heads of their clan, but that they also exercised a sort of kingly authority in Ophrah and its neighbourhood. The history of Abimelech seems to imply that the family of Abi-ezer had succeeded to the power and even the name of the Canaanitish ‘kings’ of Shechem, and that the subsequent ingratitude of the inhabitants of Shechem to the house of Jerubbaal was due to jealousy of the preference displayed by it for Ophrah. Shechem contained a large Canaanitish element which was wanting at Ophrah, where the population was more purely Israelitish. If Joash were thus king of a mixed population, recognised by Canaanites and Israelites alike, we can understand why by the side of the altar of Baal there stood also the symbol of the Canaanitish goddess. The very fact that the sanctuary of Ophrah belonged to him (vi. 25) indicates that he possessed royal prerogatives. Even at Jerusalem the temple of Solomon was as it were the chapel of the kings.[339]

It has been suggested that the Baal whose altar stood on the land of Joash at Ophrah was the Baal-berith or ‘Baal of the Covenant,’ worshipped at Shechem,[340] and that the ‘covenant’ over which the god presided was that made between the Canaanites of Shechem and their Hebrew master. Doubtless the two elements in the population would have interpreted the name in a different way. For the Hebrews the ‘Baal of the Covenant’ would have been Yahveh; for the Canaanites he would have been the local sun-god. But there is nothing to prove that the attributes of the Baals of Ophrah and Shechem were the same, or that they were adored under the same form. Indeed, the fact that the altar erected by Jerubbaal at Ophrah was dedicated to the ‘Yahveh of Peace’ tells rather in a contrary direction. Shechem had its Baal-berith, while Ophrah may have had its Baal-shalom. While the one commemorated the covenant that had been entered into between the two parts of the population, the other would have commemorated its ‘peaceful’ settlement. For the Canaanite it was a covenant, for the Hebrew it was peace.

The struggle at Mount Tabor, in which the brothers of Jerubbaal had fallen, laid the fruitful valley of Jezreel at the feet of the Bedâwin plunderers. The plain of Megiddo was now in the hands of the Israelites. The battle on the banks of the Kishon had broken for ever the power of the Canaanites and their ‘chariots of iron,’ and they were now tributary to Manasseh.[341] The Canaanite townsman and the Israelitish peasant were now living in peaceful intermixture, and the torrent of raiders from the desert fell upon both alike. We hear no more of any attempts made by the older population to shake off the Hebrew yoke; it suffers from the Midianite invasion equally with its Hebrew masters, and the family of Joash govern it as much as they govern the Israelites themselves. Jerubbaal is the deliverer of the Canaanite as well as of the Israelite.

From Ophrah he sends messengers throughout Manasseh, as well as to the tribes of Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali, and their fighting-men gather together at his summons. He thus acts like a king, and is obeyed like a king. Though he may not have actually borne the royal title, he was more than a mere ‘judge.’ Barak may have assumed the name and prerogatives of the Canaanitish kings he had conquered, and have passed them on to the family of Ebi-ezer. At any rate the power of Joash must have extended beyond Shechem and Ophrah; all Manasseh obeys the call of his son, and even the more distant northern tribes come at his bidding. The subjugation of the Canaanites had demanded a head to the state, and their union with their conquerors implied an organised community under a common king.

It was, however, with three hundred chosen followers that Jerubbaal made his first attack upon the foe. Encouraged by a dream, he fell upon their camp by night, and his followers, breaking the pitchers they carried with them, and waving torches in their left hands, caused such a panic among the undisciplined hordes of the desert that they fled in all directions.[342] The rout of the enemy was completed by the rest of the Israelitish army, which pursued the Midianites eastward towards the Jordan. Part of them under the shêkhs Oreb and Zeeb made for the ford at Beth-barah, where, however, they were intercepted by the Ephraimites, and their chiefs slain at ‘the rock of Oreb’ and the ‘winepress of Zeeb.’[343]

Meanwhile Jerubbaal was already on the eastern side of the Jordan, following in hot haste a detachment of the Midianites under two other of their shêkhs, Zebah and Zalmunna. His road led past Succoth and Penuel, but their Israelitish inhabitants refused all help, and even bread, to their brethren of Manasseh. It is clear that between Gilead and the western tribes there was now a diversity of interests and feelings, and that the half-nomad Israelites on the eastern side of the Jordan had more sympathy with the heathen of the desert than with the ruler of the organised state on the other side of the river. Perhaps they feared that his arms would next be turned against themselves, and that they too would be forced to become part of a kingdom of Manasseh.

But if they had hoped that the Midianites would have freed them from all fears upon this score they were doomed to disappointment. Once more ‘the sword of Yahveh and of Gideon’ prevailed, and Zebah and Zalmunna were slain. The claims of the blood-feud were satisfied, and Jerubbaal now returned to his old home. Condign vengeance was taken on ‘the elders’ of Succoth and ‘the men’ of Penuel. The first were scourged with the thorns of the wilderness, the others were put to death, and their tower, which guarded the approach from the desert, was razed to the ground.

Now, however, Jerubbaal had to meet with more formidable adversaries. The house of Joseph was divided against itself, and the Ephraimites resented his conduct in acting independently of the elder tribe.[344] In the earlier days of the occupation of Palestine it had been Ephraim which took the leading part; Joshua, who first opened the path into Canaan, had been an Ephraimite, and Mount Ephraim had been the first stronghold of Israel on the western side of the Jordan. In the time of Barak Ephraim had still been the dominant tribe, at least such is the impression we gather from the Song of Deborah; but it had begun to live on its past glories rather than on its present achievements. The Benjamites had definitely separated from it, and become a separate tribe, and Issachar, Zebulon, and Naphtali had carried on the war against Jabin and Sisera. Manasseh, however, had not yet appeared on the political scene; its place was taken by Machir, whose territory lay in Gilead, not to the west of the Jordan. But between the age of Barak and that of Jerubbaal a change had occurred. The Canaanitish towns, which the victory on the banks of the Kishon had laid at the feet of the northern tribes, passed into the possession of the younger branch of the house of Joseph, and Issachar had to be content that Shechem also should become a part of its territory.[345] Manasseh grew at the expense of its neighbours. It is possible that the clan of the Abi-ezrites at Ophrah had, by their conquest of Shechem, paved the way for the rise of Manasseh; if so, the dominant position they occupied in the tribe would become intelligible. Ophrah would have been the first home and gathering-place of the tribe. The treaty with Shechem, which united that city with Ophrah, may have been the beginning of Manasseh’s rise to power.

But Ephraim could ill brook the growing ascendency of the younger tribe. Manasseh had become wealthy from the tribute levied on its Canaanitish subjects; it had united itself with the older inhabitants of the land, and had borrowed their habits and their culture, and therewith their idolatries as well. The mountaineers of Ephraim, on the other hand, had retained much of the roughness and the virtues of the first invaders of Palestine. They were still warlike and hardy; they held the fortress of the Israelitish possessions in Canaan; and Shiloh, with its Aaronic priesthood, its traditions of the Mosaic law, and its purer worship of Yahveh was in their midst. Jerubbaal was forced to temporise with them. He pointed out that the destruction of the main body of the Midianites at the fords of the Jordan was a greater achievement than his own successful pursuit of the remaining bands. He had slain Zebah and Zalmunna in revenge for the death of his brothers; the slaughter of Oreb and Zeeb had been for the sake of all Israel. ‘Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer?’

Jerubbaal was fitted to rule, for he possessed statecraft as well as military ability. His statecraft was shown not only in his answer to the Ephraimites, but also in his refusal to accept the title of king. It was pressed upon him, we are told, by ‘the men of Israel’—that is to say, by the northern tribes. Whether his father had actually borne the title we cannot say, though it would seem from the subsequent history of Abimelech, as well as from the words of Zebah and Zalmunna (viii. 18), that he must have done so. But at any rate he had exercised the authority of a king, like his son Jerubbaal, at the outset of the Midianite war, and it may be that among the Canaanites of Shechem he had also the name of king. Jerubbaal, however, if we are to regard the passage as historical, rejected the crown offered him by the Israelites, declaring that their king was Yahveh alone.

That the passage is historical seems to admit of little doubt. Jerubbaal’s words were in harmony with the feelings of the time among the stricter adherents of Yahveh, as we learn from the language of Samuel when the people demanded of him a king. How different were the feelings of the compiler of the book of Judges may be gathered from the words with which it ends. Moreover, Jerubbaal’s refusal of the royal title was politic. He had already realised that he had powerful enemies in Ephraim, who viewed his success and claims to power with suspicion and hostility, and he also knew that it was in Ephraim and among the priesthood of Shiloh that the belief in the theocratic government of Israel was strongest. As in Assyria, in Midian, and in Sheba, so too in Israel, the high priest preceded the king; it was not until the need for a single head and a leader in war became too urgent to be resisted that the national God made way for a national king.[346]

Phœnician tradition remembered that Jerubbaal was a priest of Yahveh, not that he was a king.[347] It was as a priest that he exacted from the people the golden earrings they had won from the Midianites in order that he might make with them an image of his God. The Hebrew text has substituted for the image the ephod which accompanied it.[348] But the ephod was the linen garment of the priest, which he wore when ministering, and with the help of which the future was divined.[349] It was not the vestment but the image, in whose service the vestment was used, that Jerubbaal set up in Ophrah, and after which ‘all Israel went a whoring.’ Like his father, Jerubbaal saw no idolatry where it was Yahveh of Israel who was represented by the idol. The religious beliefs and practices of Canaan had entered deeply into the soul of Israel; at Shiloh alone was no image of its God.

High priest among the Israelites, king among his Canaanitish subjects, Jerubbaal lived long in his father’s home at Ophrah. He acted like a king, even if he did not take the royal title. Like Solomon, he had ‘many wives,’ and like Solomon also, he built a sanctuary attached to his own house.[350] The Bedâwin spoilers came no more: there was now a strong hand ruling over the northern tribes of Israel, checking all tendency to disunion, and building up an organised community.

But the kingdom of Jerubbaal contained within it those seeds of dissolution which have brought about the fall of so many Oriental monarchies. They spring up, not among the people, but in the family of the ruler. Polygamy brings with it a curse, and the king is hardly dead before the children of his numerous wives are murdering and fighting with one another. Even during his lifetime the palace is honeycombed with the intrigues of the harîm, which break out into open war as soon as he has passed away. The family of Jerubbaal was no exception to the rule. Abimelech, the son of his concubine, a Canaanitess of Shechem,[351] conspired with his mother’s kinsmen in Shechem, and taking seventy shekels of silver from the temple of Baal-berith, hired with them a band of mercenaries, who fell upon the other sons of Jerubbaal at Ophrah and murdered them all save one. Alone of the ‘seventy’ brethren of Abimelech, Jotham, the youngest, hid himself and escaped. The rest were slaughtered like oxen on a block of stone. Abimelech then returned to Shechem, and there under the sacred terebinth, which stood by the consecrated ‘pillar’ or Beth-el of the city, he was anointed king. The garrison of the Millo, or fortress, of Shechem took part in the ceremony.

The report of Abimelech’s usurpation was brought to Jotham. He left his place of concealment, and, standing on the top of Mount Gerizim, upbraided the men of Shechem with ingratitude towards Jerubbaal. He clothed his words in one of those parables of which the East is the home. ‘The trees went forth,’ he told them, once on a time, ‘to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive-tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive-tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said unto the fig-tree, Come thou and reign over us. But the fig-tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou and reign over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.’

The moral of the parable was so obvious that it did not need Jotham’s explanation to make it clear. He had been bold in venturing near his enemies, and as soon as he had finished speaking, he fled to a place of safety. Beer, ‘the well,’ where he found a refuge, may have been the place of that name in the extreme north of Naphtali.[352] Here at least he would have been secure from pursuit.

The usurpation of Abimelech was the revolt of the older Canaanitish population against their Israelitish masters. It marked the successful rising of the native element. Ophrah has to make way for Shechem, and ‘the men of Hamor the father of Shechem’ take the place of the children of Jacob. Yet the deliverance from the Midianites wrought by Jerubbaal had been achieved as much for the benefit of the Canaanitish part of the population as for the Israelites themselves. The murder of his sons and the destruction of his family was a poor requital for all that he had done for them. Jotham was justified in prophesying that their own god Baal-berith would avenge the broken ‘covenant,’ and that Abimelech and his Shechemite conspirators would fall by one another’s hand.

Before three years were ended the prophecy was fulfilled. The ‘god’ of Shechem ‘sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the Shechemites,’ who began a plot against his rule. Abimelech had withdrawn from the city and was living at the otherwise unknown Arumah, the garrison and government of Shechem being placed under the command of a certain Zebul.[353] Perhaps the king had already begun to be suspicious of his subjects; perhaps his retirement to another town had aroused their jealousy. However it may have been, the Shechemites openly set at naught his authority. Bands of brigands left the city and infested the neighbouring mountains, where they robbed all who passed that way. They were soon joined by another band of bandits, under the leadership of Gaal the son of Jobaal.[354] Under him the disaffection towards Abimelech came to a head, and Gaal proposed that the citizens should revolt against Abimelech and Zebul. Zebul, however, while professing to be upon their side, sent messengers to Abimelech and urged him to march against Shechem before it was too late. Abimelech gave heed to the message, and Gaal’s forces were defeated outside the city, and driven back within its gates. Abimelech then pretended to retire to Arumah, and the citizens accordingly once more went out to their work in the fields. But the royal troops were really lying in ambush, divided into three companies, two of which fell upon the fellahin in the fields and massacred them; while the third, with Abimelech himself at their head, rushed into the city through the open gate. All day long the battle raged in the streets; then the survivors fled to the ‘crypt’ of the temple of Baal-berith which adjoined the Millo or fort.[355] By the orders of Abimelech brushwood was brought from the neighbouring Mount Zalmon, piled up over the entrance to the crypt and set on fire. All who were inside, men and women, to the number of about a thousand, perished in the flames. Shechem itself was razed to the ground, and its site sown with salt. For a time the old Canaanitish city disappeared from the soil of Palestine.

The destined punishment had now fallen upon Shechem; it was not long before it fell also upon its destroyer. The town of Thebez had shared in the revolt of Shechem, and Abimelech’s next action was to besiege it. The town itself offered little resistance, but there was a ‘strong tower’ within it, to which its defenders fled for refuge. Abimelech again had recourse to fire. But while the wood was being laid against the gate of the tower, a woman on the parapet above threw a broken millstone upon his head and shattered his skull. The king felt himself dying, and besought his armour-bearer to thrust a sword through his body, lest it might be said that he had been slain by the hand of a woman. But the request was made in vain, and future generations remembered that the last king of Shechem, the murderer of his brethren, had perished ignominiously by a woman’s hands.[356] With Abimelech the sovereignty of the house of Joash seems to have come to an end. We hear no more of Jotham, or of any other attempt to found a monarchy among the northern tribes. The first endeavour to organise Israel into a state had but little success. Once more the old elements of disorder and disunion reigned supreme. The tribes stood further and further apart from each other, and mutual jealousies led to intestine wars. The influence of Ephraim and of the sanctuary of Shiloh grew daily less, and the power of the northern tribes waned at the same time. The Israelites on the eastern side of Jordan began to forget that they had brethren on its western bank; Reuben is lost among the Bedâwin of Moab, and Gilead and Ephraim engage in interfraternal war. Meanwhile a new tribe is rising in the south. Judah has absorbed Simeon and the Kenizzites of Hebron; the few relics of Dan which have been left in the neighbourhood of Zorah have become Jews in all but name, and the Kenites and the Jerahmeelites, and the other foreign settlers in the Negeb have followed the example of the Kenizzites. A common enemy and a common danger has thus forced them together.

The enemy were the Philistines. In the early days of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan the Philistines had already made the raids inland which had been checked, if not suppressed, by Shamgar ben-Anath. For a time they had remained quiet in their five cities of the coast. But fresh immigrants from Krete or other Ægean lands introduced new blood and warlike energy. Once more their armed bands marched forth to plunder and destroy. This time they are no longer contented with mere raids; they now aim at conquest. Hardly have the Canaanites been subjugated after long generations of struggle, when the Israelites are called upon to meet a new foe. It is a foe, moreover, which is not enervated by centuries of luxury and culture, not accustomed to foreign rule or divided within itself, but a hardy nation of pirates whose whole life has been passed in fighting, and in seizing the possessions of others.

The first brunt of the Philistine attack was borne by Judah. But it was not long before the armies of the Philistines made their way northwards, and even penetrated into the fastnesses of Mount Ephraim.[357] Of all this, however, the record has been lost. The compiler of the book of Judges failed to find it in the fragmentary annals of the past, and has been compelled to fill up the interval between the fall of the kingdom of Manasseh and the supremacy of the Philistines in Palestine with notices of judges and events whose exact place in Hebrew history was uncertain.

It is here, accordingly, that we have the names of the so-called lesser Judges, of whom little more was known than the names. Two of them, Tola the son of Puah, and Elon, belonged to Issachar and Zebulon; and it is somewhat singular that while the book of Numbers makes Tola and Puah the heads of families in Issachar, it makes Elon the head of a family in Zebulon.[358] Of Tola we are told that he lived and died at Shamir in Mount Ephraim, which at that time therefore must have been in the hands of Issachar, and that he judged Israel twenty-three years. The account of Elon is equally laconic; he judged Israel ten years, and was buried at Aijalon in Zebulon. Another judge in Zebulon was Ibzan of Beth-lehem,[359] who was judge for seven years only, but of whom it was recorded that he had thirty sons and thirty. daughters. A similar record has been handed down of another of these minor judges, Abdon the son of Hillel. He, it is said, had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy colts. Abdon was judge for eight years, and ‘was buried at Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the mount of the Amalekites.’ This statement seems to push back the date of Abdon to an early period when Benjamin had not yet separated from the ‘House of Joseph,’ and ‘the land of Ephraim’ accordingly extended southwards into the Amalekite region. It would be of the same age as that of the Song of Deborah.

Gilead also had its judges, though the names of only two of them have been preserved. One was Jair, who ruled as judge for twenty-two years, and who ‘had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass-colts, and they had thirty cities which are called the villages of Jair.’ We hear something more of this Jair in the Pentateuch. He had taken the villages which were called after his name, and must have lived not long after the Israelitish conquest of Bashan.[360] He belongs, therefore, to the earliest period of Israelitish history in Canaan, and may have been a contemporary of Joshua himself.

The second judge left a more famous record behind him. This was Jephthah, who delivered Gilead from its bondage to the Ammonites. His father’s name was doubtful, his mother was a harlot, and ‘the elders’ of Gilead accordingly expelled him from what he claimed to be his father’s house.[361] He fled to the desert land of Tob,[362] and there gathering a band of bandits around him, lived on the spoils of brigandage. He soon became known, like David in later days, for his skill and courage in deeds of arms. For eighteen years the Ammonite domination had lasted, and the Gileadites sighed for independence. But it was long before a champion could be found. At last the fame of the bandit captain in Tob reached the ears of the Israelitish elders, and they begged him to come to their help. Jephthah taunted them with their conduct towards him, but feelings of patriotism finally prevailed, and he agreed to lead his followers against the national enemy if the Gileadites would promise to make him their ‘head.’ The representatives of the people had no choice but to agree to his terms, and the struggle for independence began. It ended in the deliverance of the Israelites; the Ammonites were again driven from the land which had once been theirs, and Gilead was free.[363]

The rejoicings over the victory, however, were clouded by the rash vow of the Israelitish chieftain. Before marching forth to attack the Ammonites, Jephthah had vowed to sacrifice as a burnt-offering to Yahveh whatever first came out of his house at Mizpeh to meet him should he return ‘in peace.’ It was his own daughter, his only child, who thus came forth to meet him, and to celebrate his victory with timbrels and dances. The spirit of the Gileadites was very far removed from that which had taught Abraham a newer and better way; the Canaanite belief was strong in them that their firstborn could be claimed by their God; and none questioned that Yahveh Himself had selected the victim and led her forth from the house to welcome the conqueror. The vow had to be fulfilled; Yahveh had claimed that which was nearest and dearest to the Gileadite chief in return for the victory He had given him. All Jephthah could do was to grant his daughter’s request that she might wander for two months in the mountains with her comrades, bewailing ‘her virginity,’ before the day of sacrifice arrived.

The memory of the sacrifice was never forgotten. It became a custom in Israel, we are told, for the Israelitish maidens year by year to ‘lament’ for four whole days the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. It has been maintained that this custom was the origin of the story, and that the lamentation was not for the daughter of a Hebrew judge, but for some mountain goddess who corresponded with the Phœnician god Adonis. As the maidens of Phœnicia once each year mourned the death of Adonis, so the maidens of Gilead bewailed the untimely death of a virgin goddess. But the theory is part of that reconstruction of ancient Israelitish history, one of the postulates of which is that a custom has never arisen out of a historical incident. The historian, on the other hand, finds in the story evidences of its truth. There is no trace elsewhere of such a goddess as the story demands, or of an anniversary of lamentation in her honour, while the account of the vow and its fulfilment is in thorough harmony with the beliefs and customs of the time. It is wholly contrary to the spirit of later Israel as well as to the feelings of those who adhered faithfully to the Mosaic Law. If the story were an invention, it must have originated either in the days when human sacrifice was still practised, or else in the later period when it was regarded with abhorrence. In either case, its invention would be inconceivable. In the earlier period there would have been no reason to invent what actually took place; in the later period, the character of a judge and deliverer of Israel would never have been needlessly blackened. Moreover, the belief that the first thing met with on leaving or entering a house is unlucky and devoted to the gods, is a belief which is probably as old as humanity. It still survives in our own folklore, and testifies to a time when he who first left the protection of the hearth and threshold could be claimed by the powers of the other world.

Jephthah’s term of office as ruler of Gilead was only six years. He seems to have been already advanced in years when he was called upon to oppose the Ammonites. But his rule was signalised by a war with Ephraim. The ever-increasing dissensions between the tribes on the eastern and western sides of the Jordan came openly to a head, and the elder and younger branches of the house of Joseph engaged in a struggle to the death. Ephraim, it seems, still claimed predominance, and asserted its right to interfere in the concerns of its eastern brethren. ‘Ye Gileadites,’ it was said, ‘are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites and among the Manassites.’ But the ‘fugitives’ soon proved that they were the stronger of the two. The Ephraimites invaded Gilead, but were compelled to retreat. Before they could reach the Jordan Jephthah had seized the fords across it, and the retreat of the Ephraimites was cut off. A terrible massacre took place; whoever said _sibboleth_ for _shibboleth_, ‘river-channel,’ was thereby known to belong to the western bank, and was at once put to death. Altogether 42,000 men of Ephraim perished, and the power of the tribe was broken. Jephthah, however, did not follow up his success; that would have brought upon him the hostility of the other western tribes, and he seems to have returned to Gilead. There he died and was buried in one of its cities, the name of which was not stated in the sources used by the compiler of the book of Judges.[364]

The date of Jephthah it is impossible to fix. That the author of the book of Judges was ignorant of it would appear from his making Jephthah follow immediately after Jair. But it is clear that he believed it to have been towards the close of the period of the Judges. This, too, would agree with the fact that it corresponded with the fall of the power of Ephraim. In the time of Jerubbaal, the Ephraimites were still strong enough to command the respect of the conqueror of the Midianites; when the light once more breaks upon the history of central Israel we find the Philistines in possession of the passes that led into Mount Ephraim, and threatening Shiloh itself. The destruction of the Ephraimite forces at the fords of the Jordan can best explain the Philistine success.

With the period of the Philistine supremacy the history of the Judges comes to an end. That supremacy forced Israel to the conviction that they must either submit to the organised authority of a king or cease to be a nation at all. The kingdom of Israel was born amid the struggle with the Philistines; and though the first king perished in the conflict, his successor succeeded in founding an empire.

The Philistine wars lasted for many years. They began with raids on the Israelitish territory immediately adjoining that of the Philistines. Perhaps the conquest of the plain at the foot of the mountains of Judah first roused their hostility against Judah; at all events, it brought them into contact with the conquering tribe. A desultory warfare was carried on for some years; then the plans of the Philistines became more definite, and they aimed at nothing less than the conquest of the whole of Canaan. The sea-robbers had been gradually changed into a nation of soldiers.

Samson, the hero of popular tradition, belongs to the earlier part of the Philistine wars. The last relics of the tribe of Dan in the neighbourhood of Zorah and Eshtaol have not as yet been absorbed by Judah; the Philistines, on the other hand, have gained possession of the whole plain. Between them and the Israelites there is constant intercourse, partly friendly, partly hostile; at one time the two peoples intermarry, visit, and trade with one another; at another time they carry on a guerilla warfare.

Of late years it has been the fashion to transform Samson into the hero of a myth.[365] It is true that his name is derived from _Shemesh_, ‘the sun,’ and it cannot be denied that the stories relating to him have come rather from popular tradition than from written records. His hair, in which his strength lay, reminds us of the face of the sun-god engraved on the platform of the Phœnician temple of Rakleh on Mount Hermon, where the flaming rays of the sun take the place of human hair. But it must be remembered that Samson is represented as a Nazarite—a purely Israelitish institution between which and a solar myth there is no connection—and that his strength was dependent on the keeping of the vow which consecrated him to Yahveh as a Nazarite from the day of his birth. With the loss of the hair the vow was broken, the consecration at an end; the strength had been given by Yahveh, and Yahveh took it away. Between this and the fiery locks of the sun-god there is but little connection.

The character of Samson, however, is that of a hero of popular tradition. His utter ignoring of moral principles, his hankering after foreign women, his riddle, his devices for deceiving and slaying his enemies, belong to the tales told by the Easterns at the door of a _café_, or around the camp-fire, rather than to sober history. When we hear that Ramath-lehi was so called from the ‘jawbone’ of an ass which Samson had ‘flung away’ after slaying a thousand men with it, or that Ên-hakkorê received its name from the water which flowed from the bone to quench the hero’s thirst, we find ourselves in the presence of those etymological puns with which the historian has nothing to do.[366]

The compiler of the book of Judges has turned this hero of popular story, this lover of Philistine women, into a Judge of Israel. He was, however, merely a Danite champion, the one hero of Danite tradition, of whom indeed the tribe had little reason to be proud. Even in Judah his achievements gained him no honour. When the Philistines sought to seize him after he had burnt their corn, ‘three thousand men of Judah’ ascended to his place of refuge ‘on the top of the rock Etam’ and handed him over to his enemies. The wiles of a Philistine harlot deprived him of his strength and his eyes, and he ended his days as a fettered slave at Gaza, grinding wheat for his Philistine lords. The glory of his death, however, in the eyes of his fellow-tribesmen redeemed the rest of his life. Called to make sport for his masters in the temple of Dagon, while they feasted in honour of their god, he laid hold of the two central columns on which the building was supported, and brought it down on the assembled crowd. Samson and the Philistines alike were buried under its ruins. And ‘so,’ the chronicler adds, ‘the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’

In the story of Samson we hear for the first and the last time in the book of Judges of ‘the men of Judah.’ It is the first time that they appear in history. Judah produced no Judges, for Othniel was a Kenizzite, and throughout the epoch of the Judges its history is a blank. Nothing can show more clearly how modern a tribe it was as compared with the other tribes of Israel, and how insignificant was the power which it possessed. The original Judah had its home at Beth-lehem, shut in between the Jebusite Jerusalem and the Edomite Hebron, and it was not until it had absorbed and coalesced with the other occupants of its future territory that the Judah of history was born. It is possible that the union was brought about, or at all events completed, by the Philistine wars; at any rate we find no traces of it at an earlier date. Even Lachish had been an Ephraimitic conquest, and in the time of Deborah it must still have been reckoned among the cities of Ephraim.[367]

Ephraim was yet to have a judge, the last of the race. Though the title must be denied to Samson, it must be given to Samuel the seer. In Samuel the judges and the prophets of Israel met together, and the spirit of Yahveh which had marked out the judge now passed over into the prophet.

But the history of Samuel is not contained in the book of Judges. We have to look for it in a new book which records the foundation of the Israelitish kingdom. The books of Samuel take their name from that of the prophet which appears on their first page. They begin, however, with the conjunction ‘And,’ and thus presuppose an earlier volume. They are, in fact, merely the continuation of the book of Judges. Whether or not the same compiler has worked at the two books we cannot tell; that is a question which must be left to the philological critics who have long since settled his character and date, and determined exactly the limits of his work.

There is one fact, however, connected with the compilation of the book of Judges which the historian cannot but notice. The narratives embodied in it differ from one another in tone and character. The religious point of view of the stories of Jephthah or Micah is wholly different from that of the stories of Barak or Jerubbaal. Between the account of the overthrow of the Canaanites on the Kishon and the stories narrated of Samson, there is the contrast between written history and folklore. Each narrative preserves its own individuality, its own point of view, its own reflection of the age and locality to which it belongs.

Here and there, indeed, the pen of the historian who has collected and combined these fragments of the past history of Israel can be clearly traced. The speeches sometimes remind us of those in Thucydides, and exhibit the colouring of a later age. The framework of the narrative, moreover, is the writer’s own; in fact, he shows himself to be more than a compiler; he is a historian as well. But with all this, the narratives he has collected differ as much in character and tone as they do in the events they record.

What more convincing proof can we have of the faithfulness with which he has reproduced his materials? In most cases they have not even passed through the assimilating medium of his own mind; instead of using his privilege as a historian he has given them to us unchanged and unmodified. And yet in many cases they must have shocked both his religious and his patriotic sense. Whatever else he may have been, the author of the book of Judges possessed a historical restraint and honesty which is rare even among the modern writers of Europe. He has given us the older records of his country just as he found them.

They were for the most part written records. The scribes of Zebulon are alluded to in the Song of Deborah, and the notices of the ‘lesser’ Judges have the same annalistic character as the notices of the early kings of Egypt in the fragments of Marretho. The Canaanites of Shechem, from whom Abimelech was sprung, had been acquainted with the art of writing from untold centuries, and the Canaanitish cities which were laid under tribute by Manasseh and the neighbouring tribes contained archive-chambers and libraries where the older literature of the country was stored. It is only in the future territory of Judah that we hear of a Kirjath-Sepher, ‘a town of books,’ being destroyed, and it is just this part of the country whose history in the age of the Judges is a blank. Between Othniel the destroyer of Kirjath-Sepher and David the conqueror and embellisher of Jerusalem, the name of no single Judge or hero has been preserved. Samson belonged to the feeble relics of the tribe of Dan, and the story of his deeds is the one narrative in the book of Judges which betrays an origin in folklore instead of written history.

Footnote 279:

Judg. iii. 3. The ‘Hivites’ of the Hebrew text should probably be corrected into ‘Hittites.’ The Sidonians are mentioned to the exclusion of the Tyrians, as in Gen. x. 15-18. This takes us back to the period before that of David, when Tyre was still a place of small importance, and Sidon was the leading city on the Phœnician coast. Cp., however, 1 Kings xvi. 31.

Footnote 280:

Judg. iii. 6, 7.

Footnote 281:

As Israel was theoretically considered to be divided into twelve tribes, there is no reason for doubting the cypher, even though there were not actually twelve tribes at the time in Canaan, and one of tribes, Benjamin, can hardly have had a piece sent to it. The text carefully avoids saying that the pieces were sent to each of the tribes. In chap. xx. 2, the word ‘all’ is used in that restricted sense to which western students of Oriental history have to accustom themselves, since one at least of the tribes, Benjamin, was absent.

Footnote 282:

The value of modern philological criticism of the Old Testament may be judged from the fact that Stade pronounces the narrative of the war against Benjamin to be unhistorical, because the first king of Israel was a Benjamite! (_Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, p. 161).

Footnote 283:

Judg. xviii. 12, 13, where it is said to be ‘behind’ or west of Kirjath-jearim. In xiii. 25 the Camp of Dan is placed between Zorah and Eshtaol, which were west of Kirjath-jearim. See G. A. Smith, _Historical Geography of the Holy Land_, pp. 220, 221.

Footnote 284:

We hear on other occasions of a regiment of six hundred men among the Israelites (Judg. xx. 47; 1 Sam. xiii. 15, xxiii. 13), and it would seem, therefore, that in the division of the troops a memory of the culture of Babylonia was preserved. Six hundred men represented the Babylonian _ner_.

Footnote 285:

Judg. xviii. 30. ‘The captivity of the land’ is of course that described in 2 Kings xv. 29, and shows that the compilation of the Book of Judges must be subsequent to the conquest of Northern and Eastern Israel by Tiglath-pileser.

Footnote 286:

Kennicott, _Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum_, i. p. 509. ‘Moses’ is also the reading of the Vulgate and a few Greek MSS.

Footnote 287:

See 1 Kings viii. 9. The addition of the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 4) is due to a misunderstanding of Ex. xvi. 33, 34, and Numb. xvii. 10.

Footnote 288:

The identity of Mitanni and Nahrina is stated in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters (W. and A. 23) from Mitanni, a hieratic docket attached to it stating that it came from Nahrina. In one place, however (W. and A. 79. 13, 14), the Phœnician governor Rib-Hadad seems to distinguish between ‘the king of Mittani and the king of Nahrina,’ though the passage may also be translated, ‘the king of Mittani, that is, the king of Nahrina.’ Ilu-rabi-Khur of Gebal (W. and A. 91. 32) writes the name Narima, and says that the king of Narima in alliance with the king of the Hittites was destroying the Egyptian cities of Northern Syria.

Footnote 289:

W. and A. 104. 32-35. Comp. Numb. xxiv. 24, where Assyria and Eber take the place of Babylonia and Nahrima. The translation given above is from a corrected copy of the cuneiform text.

Footnote 290:

See _Records of the Past_, new ser., vi. pp. 28, 29, 34, 45.

Footnote 291:

Brugsch, _Egypt under the Pharaohs_ (Eng. tr.), ii. p. 151; _Records of the Past_, new ser., vi. pp. 31-45.

Footnote 292:

_Records of the Past_, new ser., vi. pp. 38-41. As only the _qau_ or ‘district’ of Shalam is mentioned, it is possible that the city itself was not captured by the Egyptian troops. Hebron is written _Khibur_, _i.e._ the city of the ‘Khabiri.’

Footnote 293:

Was the campaign of Ramses III. the mysterious ‘hornet’ sent before the children of Israel to destroy the populations of Canaan (Exod. xxiii. 28, Deut. vii. 20, Josh. xxiv. 12)? At any rate, this is more probable than the suggestion that _tsir’âh_, rendered ‘hornet,’ is a variant of _tsâra’ath_, ‘plague.’

Footnote 294:

The name has been Hebraised, and perhaps corrupted, so that it is difficult to suggest what could have been its Mitannian original. The Khusarsathaim of the Septuagint, however, reminds us of the name of Dusratta or Tuisratta, the Mitannian king who corresponded with the Pharaoh Amenophis IV.

Footnote 295:

Livy, xxviii. 37, xxx. 7.

Footnote 296:

The Welsh laws allowed a stranger to acquire proprietary rights in the fourth generation, and to become a tribesman in the ninth (Seebohm, in the _Transactions_ of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1895-96, pp. 12 _sqq._).

Footnote 297:

This is expressly stated in the Song of Deborah: the Reubenites could not come to the help of their brethren, for they had become a body of scattered and nomad shepherds (Judg. v. 15, 16).

Footnote 298:

See Judg. xx. 16.

Footnote 299:

_P’sîlîm_, mistranslated ‘quarries’ in the Authorised Version. They were the sacred stones, believed to be inspired with divinity, which formed the Gilgal or ‘Circle.’ Modern critics have raised unnecessary difficulties about the geography of the narrative, and conjectured that the name of the capital of Eglon has dropped out of the text in Judg. iii. 15 (see Budde: _Die Bücher Richter und Samuelis_, p. 99). The Biblical writer makes it plain that Eglon was at Gilgal, not at Jericho as his would-be critics assert.

Footnote 300:

Caphtor is written Kptar in hieroglyphics at Kom-Ombo (on the wall of the southern corridor of the temple), where it heads a list of geographical names, and is followed by those of Persia and Susa (Sayce: _The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, 3rd edition, p. 173). The name of the Zakkal, formerly read Zakkar or Zakkur, and identified with the Teukrians, has been pointed out by Professor Hommel in a Babylonian inscription of the fifteenth century B.C. (W. A. I. iv. 34, No. 2, ll. 2, 6). Here it is called the city of Zaqqalu, and we may gather from a papyrus in the possession of M. Golénischeff that it was situated on the coast of Canaan not far from Dor.

Footnote 301:

A reminiscence of the event is probably preserved in Justin, xviii. 3, where we read that in the year before the fall of Troy, ‘the king of the Ascalonians’ destroyed Sidon, whose inhabitants fled in their ships and founded Tyre. The date would harmonise with that of the reign of Ramses III. Lydian history related that Askalos, the son of Hymenæos, and brother of Tantalos, had been sent by the Lydian king Akiamos in command of an army to the south of Palestine, and had there founded Askalon (Steph. Byz. _s.v._ Ἀσκάλων), and according to Xanthos the Lydian historian, the goddess Derketô was drowned in the lake of Askalon by the Lydian Mopsos (Athen. _Deipn._ viii. 37, p. 346). In these legends we have a tradition of the fact that the Philistines and their allies came from the coast of Asia Minor and the Greek Seas.

Footnote 302:

Josh. xiii. 2, 3; Judg. iii. 1-3. The statement in Judg. i. 18 was true only theoretically; it was not true in fact until the reign of David.

Footnote 303:

Stephanus Byzantinus _s.v._ Ἰόνιον, where it is also said that Gaza was termed Ionê. According to Kastôr the thalassocratia or ‘sea-rule’ of Minôs lasted until B.C. 1180, when it passed into the hands of the Lydians. By the latter may be meant the expedition sent to the south of Palestine by the Lydian king Akiamos.

Footnote 304:

Sayce, _Races of the Old Testament_, pp. 126, 127, and pl. i.

Footnote 305:

Deut. ii. 23. Avim is merely a descriptive title signifying ‘the people of the ruins.’

Footnote 306:

See my _Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments_, pp. 325-327. It is possible that some of the Semitic deities had been adopted by the Philistines before they left Krete, if indeed they came from that island. At all events it has been supposed that certain Canaanitish divinities were adored there, more especially Ashtoreth, under the title of Diktynna. The presence of Semites in the island seems indicated by the name of the river Iardanos or Jordan.

Footnote 307:

In the age of Deborah, however, it would seem that the seaport of Joppa was still in the possession of the Danites (Judg. v. 17). But cp. Josh. xix. 46.

Footnote 308:

Winckler and Abel, _Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen_, iii. 143. 37, 43. Anatum or Anat, the son of Sin-abu-su, is also a witness to the sale of some property in a deed dated in the reign of the Babylonian king Samsu-iluna, the son of Khammurabi or Amraphel, and published by Mr. Pinches, _Inscribed Babylonian Tablets in the Collection of Sir H. Peek_, iii. p. 61.

Footnote 309:

See Judg. i. 27. Beth-shean, the Scythopolis of classical geography, is the modern Beisân.

Footnote 310:

Twenty is half the indeterminate number forty, and merely denotes that the exact number of years, though unknown, was less than a generation.

Footnote 311:

Judg. v. 15. Literally the words are: ‘Issachar [is] like Barak.’ The Heb. _kên_ is the Assyrian _kêmi_, ‘like,’ and is used in the same way as _kida_ in modern Egyptian Arabic. It is criticism run wild to assert with Budde, Wellhausen, and others, that Deborah also is described as belonging to Issachar.

Footnote 312:

Pindar, _Pyth._ iv. 106; _Lactant._ i. 22; _Etym. Mag._ s.v. ἐσσην.

Footnote 313:

Gen. xxxv. 8, where the name of the terebinth, Allon-Bachuth, ‘the terebinth of weeping,’ is derived from the lamentations over the death of the nurse. A different origin of the name, however, seems to be indicated in Hos. xii. 4.

Footnote 314:

Rimmon, one of the chief Assyrian gods, was also entitled Barqu, ‘the lightning,’ and it is possible that the name had migrated westward along with that of Rimmon. Noam, whose name enters into that of Abinoam, the father of Barak, seems to have been a Phœnician god, whose consort was Naamah.

Footnote 315:

‘Forty thousand’ represents the highest unit, one thousand, in the division of the army, multiplied by the indeterminate number forty.

Footnote 316:

‘The Hittites of Kadesh,’ according to the reading of Lucian’s recension of the Septuagint, 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, in place of the corrupt and unmeaning Tahtim-hodshi of the Massoretic text. See Hitzig, _Z. D. M. G._, ix. pp. 763 _sqq._; Wellhausen, _T. B. S._, p. 221.

Footnote 317:

It has been generally assumed to have been near the Kishon, on account of Judges iv. 16. But the inference is not certain, partly because we do not know how far the pursuit may have extended, partly because Oriental expressions cannot be interpreted with the mathematical exactitude of western language. The name of Harosheth means probably ‘[the town of] metal-working,’ or ‘the smithy.’

Footnote 318:

Being a poem, it was probably handed down orally at first. This would account for variant readings like ‘also the clouds dropped,’ by the side of ‘also the heavens dropped,’ in _v._ 4; or ‘in the days of Jael,’ by the side of ‘in the days of Shamgar ben-Anath,’ in _v._ 6. The name of Jael, however, may have been a marginal gloss like _sârîd_, ‘a remnant,’ possibly, in _v._ 13. The song was almost certainly written from the outset in the letters of the so-called Phœnician alphabet, and not in cuneiform characters. Had it been written in cuneiform there would have been a confusion between _aleph_, _hê_ and _’ayin_, which cannot be detected in it. At the same time, the use of the preposition _bě_ in _vv._ 2 and 15 (_b’ Isrâel_, _b’ Issachar_) could be explained from the cuneiform syllabary, in which the character _pi_ (used for _bi_ in the Tel el-Amarna tablets) also has the value of _yi_. The omission of the article, which is a characteristic of the Song, reminds us that in Canaanite or Phœnician the definite article of Hebrew did not exist.

Footnote 319:

A variant reading gave ‘clouds’ instead of ‘heavens.’

Footnote 320:

Probably a marginal gloss.

Footnote 321:

This line also is corrupt, but there is a reference to it again in verse 11, ‘The people of Yahveh went down to the gates.’

Footnote 322:

_I.e._ on the road.

Footnote 323:

_Dabbĕrî shîr_, with a play on the name of Deborah.

Footnote 324:

The Massoretic text has ‘captives.’

Footnote 325:

The text is here again corrupt. The Septuagint renders it: ‘Then went down the remnant to the strong.’ But _sârîd_, ‘remnant,’ is possibly a marginal gloss derived from the name of the place Sarid in Zebulon (Josh. xix. 10), the meaning being ‘Then the people of Yahveh descended to Sarid to the nobles.’ The second member of the verse shows that the ‘nobles’ are Israelites.

Footnote 326:

The text cannot be right here, though the general meaning of it is clear.

Footnote 327:

The idea is the same as that of the sun and the moon standing still while Joshua defeated the kings at Makkedah (Josh. x. 12-14). Babylonian astrology taught that events in this world were dependent on the motions of the heavenly bodies.

Footnote 328:

Septuagint: ‘My mighty soul has trodden him down.’ The verse seems to be corrupt. Cheyne translates: ‘Step on, my soul, with strength!’

Footnote 329:

The Massoretic punctuation makes it ‘spoil.’ Ewald conjecturally reads _sârâh_, ‘princess,’ for _shâlâl_, ‘spoiling.’ The Septuagint has, equally conjecturally, ‘spoils for his neck.’ The garment referred to is the white towel worn round the neck as a protection from the sun or wind, and called _shaqqa_ in Upper Egypt, or the parti-coloured _milâya_ used for the same purpose in Lower Egypt. Cheyne translates: ‘A coloured stuff, two pieces of embroidery, for my neck, has he taken for a prey.’

Footnote 330:

Judg. vi. 32.

Footnote 331:

1 Sam. xii. 11, 2 Sam. xi. 21 (where ‘Baal’ has been changed into ‘bosheth,’ ‘shame’).

Footnote 332:

Judg. ix. 1.

Footnote 333:

See Kittel, _Geschichte der Hebräer_, ii. p. 73.

Footnote 334:

If a distinction is to be drawn between the names of Gideon and Jerubbaal, it might be conjectured that the first was the name under which the bearer of it was known to the Israelites at Ophrah, the second that whereby he was known to the Canaanites of Shechem. According to Porphyry, Phœnician annals spoke of a priest of Ieuô named Hierombalos, which is clearly Jerubbaal. The Canaanitish kings could also be priests, as we learn from the history of Melchizedek. Baethgen makes Jerubbaal practically identical with Meribbaal (_Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte_, p. 143).

Footnote 335:

The Kadmonites of Gen. xv. 19, where they are coupled with the Kenites and Kenizzites of Southern Palestine: see above, p. 162.

Footnote 336:

Many of the accounts of battles given by Livy are similarly confused, and are doubtless drawn from more than one source, but no one would think of distinguishing the sources, much less of splitting the narrative of the Roman historian into separate documents.

Footnote 337:

Judg. vi. 24.

Footnote 338:

The usage lingered even as late as the time of Hosea (Hos. ii. 16).

Footnote 339:

The name of Abimelech, ‘my father is king,’ cannot be used as an argument, since the ‘king’ referred to in it is the divine king or Moloch, not an earthly ruler.

Footnote 340:

Judg. ix. 4, 46. Cf. viii. 33.

Footnote 341:

See Judg. i. 28.

Footnote 342:

The story of the pitchers and torches is pronounced by modern criticism to be a myth, and has been compared with old Egyptian romances like that which described the capture of Joppa in the reign of Thothmes III. by a stratagem similar to that which we read of in the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. But from the point of view of history alone there is no reason for discrediting the narrative. Bedâwin superstition would fully account for the panic and flight if the camp believed that the spirits of the night had attacked them. Indeed similar panics have been known to arise not only among the Bedâwin of the wilderness, but even among disciplined English soldiers.

Footnote 343:

The names of the chiefs have been said to have been derived from the two places which local tradition associated with their deaths. But though ‘the rock of the Raven’ is a very possible geographical name in the East—there is indeed more than one ‘Raven’s Rock’ in modern Egypt—‘the winepress of the Wolf’ is quite the reverse. Animal names like raven and wolf, on the other hand, were frequently applied in ancient Arabia to individuals and tribes (see W. Robertson Smith in the _Journal of Philology_, ix. 17, 1880, pp. 79-88).

Footnote 344:

In the narrative the quarrel with Ephraim comes before the defeat of Zebah and Zalmunna, but Judg. vii. 25 shows that it is misplaced. Certain critics have maintained that two different versions of the same story lie before us, and that the Oreb and Zeeb of the one version are the Zebah and Zalmunna of the other. This, however, is to exhibit a curious ignorance of Bedâwin organisation and modes of warfare: there would have been more than one raiding band, and the different bands would have been under different shêkhs.

Footnote 345:

See above, p. 270. Of the cities mentioned in Judg. i. 27, Dor, as we learn from the Golénischeff papyrus, had been occupied by the Zakkal, the kinsfolk of the Philistines, and would not have become Israelitish until after the conquest of the latter people. (Cf. 1 Kings iv. 11.) Dor, however, properly belonged to Asher, and Josh. xvii. 11 expressly states that the Canaanitish cities afterwards possessed by Manasseh were originally included in the territories of Issachar and Asher. Issachar could not have lost them until after the time of Barak.

Footnote 346:

Even at Tyre, the title of the supreme Baal, Melek-qiryath (Melkarth), ‘the king of the city,’ shows that at the outset the state had been a theocracy.

Footnote 347:

See above, p. 306. The priestly character of Jerubbaal has been suppressed in the narrative in accordance with the feelings of a later time, when the priesthood was strictly confined to the tribe of Levi. But at an earlier date the anointed king was regarded as invested by Yahveh with priestly functions. Saul and Solomon offered sacrifice, and David’s sons acted as priests (2 Sam. viii. 18).

Footnote 348:

See Judg. xvii. 5; Hos. iii. 4.

Footnote 349:

1 Sam. ii. 18, xxii. 18, xxiii. 9, xxx. 7, 8.

Footnote 350:

Judg. vi. 24, viii. 27.

Footnote 351:

See Judg. ix. 1, 28.

Footnote 352:

2 Sam. xx. 14. The reading of the latter passage, however, is not certain.

Footnote 353:

See Judg. ix. 41. Verse 31 should be translated, Zebul ‘sent messengers unto Abimelech to Arumah.’

Footnote 354:

The name of Jobaal, ‘Yahveh is Baal,’ has been preserved in the Septuagint. Its signification has caused it to be omitted in the Massoretic text where we have only _ben-’ebed_, ‘the son of a slave,’ corresponding to the expression ‘son of a nobody,’ which we meet with in the Assyrian inscriptions.

Footnote 355:

It is here called the _Migdal Shechem_ or ‘Tower of Shechem,’ but seems to have been the same as the _Millo_ of _v._ 6. The fort would have stood in the same relation to Shechem that the ‘stronghold of Zion’ taken by David stood to Jerusalem. It was probably built just outside the walls of the town. We may compare also the ‘Millo’ constructed by Solomon to defend his palace and the temple (1 Kings ix. 15).

Footnote 356:

See 2 Sam. xi. 21.

Footnote 357:

See Judg. x. 11, 12. All records of the wars with the Zidonians and the Maonites have perished. Perhaps Professor Hommel is right in identifying the Maonites with the people of Ma’ân in Southern Arabia, whose power waned before the rise of that of Sheba, and extended to the frontiers of Palestine (_Aufsätze und Abhandlungen sur Kunde der Sprachen, Literaturen und der Geschichte des vorderen Orients_, pp. 2, 47).

Footnote 358:

Numb. xxvi. 23, 26.

Footnote 359:

Had the southern Beth-lehem been meant, it would have been called, as elsewhere in the book of Judges, Beth-lehem-Judah.

Footnote 360:

Numb. xxxii. 41; Deut. iii. 4, 14. In Deut. iii. 4, the ‘cities’ of Argob are described as sixty in number, which in Josh. xiii. 30 are identified with ‘the towns of Jair which are in Bashan.’ This, however, is incorrect, as it was thirty villages and not sixty cities that were conquered by Jair.

Footnote 361:

This must mean that he had claimed a portion of his father’s inheritance from the legitimate sons, and that ‘the elders’ who tried the case decided it against him. In the narrative he is called merely ‘the son of Gilead.’

Footnote 362:

Tubi (No. 22) is one of the places mentioned by Thothmes III. among his conquests in Palestine. It is probably the modern Taiyibeh, the Tôbion of 2 Macc. x. 11, 17.

Footnote 363:

The argument put into the mouth of the Ammonites (Judg. xi. 13), like the answer made by Jephthah, doubtless expressed the feelings on both sides, but the language is that of the historian, as in the case of the speeches in Thucydides. When it is said (_v._ 26) that the Israelites had occupied the district north of the Arnon for three hundred years, the chronology is that of the compiler. Three hundred years are equivalent to ten generations, and the ten generations are made up by counting the names of the judges given in the book of Judges, down to Jephthah, as representing so many successive generations (1. Moses; 2. Joshua; 3. Othniel; 4. Ehud; 5. Shamgar; 6. Barak; 7. Gideon; 8. Abimelech; 9. Tola; 10. Jair. If Moses and Joshua are reckoned as one generation, the numeration would be carried on to Jephthah).

Footnote 364:

The name of Jephthah is a shortened form of Jephthah-el, which we find as the name of a valley on the borders of Asher (Josh. xix. 27).

Footnote 365:

See Steinthal, _The Legend of Samson_, Eng. tr. by Russell Martineau in Goldziher’s _Mythology among the Hebrews_, pp. 392-446.

Footnote 366:

Ramath-lehi is ‘the height of Lehi,’ and has nothing to do with _râmâh_, ‘to throw’; ’Ên-haqqorê is ‘the Spring of the Partridge,’ not ‘of the caller.’

Footnote 367:

It may be gathered from Judg. i. 16, 17, that Simeon preceded Judah in the occupation of the future Judah. When the expedition against Arad and Zephath was formed, the Jews and Kenites were still encamped together at Jericho. The Kenites seem to have remained behind in the newly-won territory of the Negeb, while the Jews established themselves at Beth-lehem.