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.

CHAPTER VI

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MONARCHY

Influence of Shiloh—Samuel and the Philistines—Duplicate Narratives

in the Books of Samuel—Prophet and Seer—Dervish Monasteries—Capture

of the Ark and Destruction of Shiloh—Saul made King—Quarrels with

Samuel—Delivers Israel from the Philistines—Attacks the

Amalekites—David—Two Accounts of his Rise to Power—Jealousy of

Saul—David’s Flight—Massacre of the Priests at Nob—Wanderings of

David—He sells his Services to the King of Gath—Duties of a

Mercenary—Battle of Gilboa and David’s Position—He is made King of

Judah—War with Esh-Baal—Intrigues with Abner—Murder of

Esh-Baal—David revolts from the Philistines and becomes King of

Israel—Capture of Jerusalem, which is made the Capital—Results of

this—Conquest of the Philistines, of Moab, Ammon, Zobah, and

Edom—The Israelitish Empire—Murder of Uriah and Birth of

Solomon—Influence of Nathan—Polygamy and its Effects in the Family

of David—Revolt of Absalom—Of Sheba—Folly and Ingratitude of

David—Saul’s Descendants sacrificed because of a Drought—The Plague

and the Purchase of the Site of the Temple—David’s Officers and last

Instructions—His Character—Chronology—Solomon puts Joab and Others

to Death—His Religious Policy—Queen of Sheba—Trade and

Buildings—Hiram of Tyre—Palace and Temple Built—Tadmor—Zoological

and Botanical Gardens—Discontent in Israel—Impoverishment of the

Country—Jeroboam—Tastes and Character of Solomon.

When Samuel was born, the Hebrew settlement in Palestine had long been a

matter of the past. Little by little Canaan had passed into the

possession of the Israelitish tribes. The older population had at first

been massacred, then laid under tribute and amalgamated with the

newcomers. The tribes themselves had changed much. Some had disappeared,

others had grown at their expense. Ephraim, which from the first days of

the conquest had been the most powerful among them, was now in a state

of decadence, and a new force was rising in the south in the shape of

the mixed tribe of Judah. A few of the Canaanite cities in the interior

still remained independent, like Gezer and Jerusalem, as well as all

those on the Phœnician coast.

The tribes had suffered from want of cohesion. The attempt to found a

monarchy in Manasseh had failed; it was too local and limited, and

served only to arouse the jealousy of the tribes which lay outside it.

It had done little more than bring to light the dissensions and

differences that existed within Israel itself. The bond that connected

the tribes had become continually looser, and the ‘House of Joseph’ was

divided into hostile factions. Benjamin had been decimated by its

brother Israelites under the leadership of Ephraim, and Ephraim had

undergone the same treatment at the hands of its brethren from Gilead.

The conquest of Canaan had brought with it the old Canaanitish spirit of

disunion and discord; the spectacle which the Tel el-Amarna letters

present to us of city arrayed against city is reproduced in the Israel

of the period of the Judges. The common brotherhood, which was still

felt in the age of Deborah, tended to be forgotten. The tribes no longer

come to one another’s aid; they fight with one another instead. The

authority of the Judges become more and more circumscribed, their

jurisdiction more and more confined. The tribes on the east of the

Jordan begin to lead a separate life, and hardly acknowledge that the

tribes to the west are kinsmen at all. The incorporation of the

Canaanite element had weakened the recollection of a common descent, and

at the same time had introduced into Israel a spirit of selfish

isolation. The causes which had brought about the conquest of Canaan by

the Israelites were now working among its conquerors, and it seemed as

if the fate of the Canaanites was to be the fate of the Israelites also.

The sanctuary at Shiloh still existed, but it had lost much of its

influence. It had become little more than the local sanctuary of

Ephraim,[368] and as the power of Ephraim waned the influence of Shiloh

declined as well. Elsewhere rival sanctuaries and rival forms of worship

had arisen. The high-places, whereon the Canaanites had adored Baalim

and Ashtaroth, still continued sacred, and though officially the Baal of

Israel was Yahveh, the mass of the people worshipped the local Baal of

the place in which they lived. Yahveh was scarcely remembered, even in

name: His place was taken by the Baalim and Ashtaroth of Canaan.

Manasseh went ‘a whoring’ after the golden image erected by Jerubbaal in

Ophrah, or after the Canaanitish Baal-berith in Shechem; a rival

priesthood to that of Shiloh served before the idols of Micah at Dan;

and Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in accordance with Canaanitish

beliefs. The Law of Moses was forgotten; each man did that which was

right in his own eyes.

Modern criticism has asked how it is possible that all this could have

been the case if a written Law actually existed. But the question

forgets to take account of the circumstances of the time. A knowledge of

reading and writing was confined to a particular class, that of the

scribes; Israel was divided; intercommunication was difficult, and a Law

which presupposed a camp of nomads continually under the eye of their

legislator, was not adapted to the changed conditions in which the

Israelites found themselves. Moreover, it must be remembered that the

Israelites were for the most part a peasantry living in scattered

villages; the inhabitants of the towns were Canaanites either by race or

marriage. The one were too ignorant, the others too alien, to be

affected by the Mosaic Code.

Nevertheless, the Code was preserved at Shiloh. Here there was an

Aaronic priesthood, and the few notices that we possess of the worship

carried on there show that it was in accordance with the Mosaic Law.

Outside Shiloh, among those who still remained true to the faith of

their fathers, the Law was remembered and presumably observed. Of this

the Song of Deborah is a witness. The God of Israel, in whose name Barak

and Deborah went forth against the heathen, is the Yahveh of the

Pentateuch, not the Baal of Canaan. The history of Israel in the age of

the Judges is, religiously as well as politically, the history of

degeneracy, not of development.

In fact, religion and politics cannot be separated one from the other in

the history of the ancient East, least of all in the history of the

Hebrews. The one presupposes the other, and the political decay of the

nation is a sure sign of its religious retrogression. The same causes

which broke up its political unity broke up its religious unity as well.

The knowledge and worship of Yahveh lingered in Ephraim, because in

Ephraim alone the old ideal and spirit of Israel continued to survive.

Ephraim was, as it were, the heart and core of Israel; it had led the

attack upon Palestine, and its blood was purer than that of the other

tribes. It remained more genuinely Israelite, with less admixture of

foreign blood.

After Joshua and Othniel the history of most of the Judges is connected

with that of Ephraim. Ehud is a Benjamite—the Ephraimitic ‘Southerner’;

Shamgar is referred to in the Song of Deborah;[369] Deborah herself

dwelt near ‘Beth-el in Mount Ephraim’; between Ephraim and Jerubbaal,

who reigned on the Ephraimitic frontier, there was smothered hostility,

which burst into open war in the case of Jephthah; Tola was buried in

‘Shamir in Mount Ephraim’; Abdon was an Ephraimite; while Ibzan and Elon

came from adjoining tribes. Jair the Manassite, and Samson from ‘the

camp of Dan,’ are the sole exceptions to the rule. What else can this

mean except that such annals as survived the stormy age of the Judges

were preserved amid the fastnesses of Mount Ephraim? The scribes of

early Israel were not confined to Zebulon, and as in Babylonia or Egypt,

so also in Palestine, the temple was the seat of the library. In the

sanctuary at Shiloh the written records of the country would have found

a safe harbourage along with the tables of the Law and the other

monuments of the Mosaic age.[370]

The lifetime of Samuel separated the age of the Judges from that of the

Kings. It marked the transition from a period of anarchy and disunion to

one of order and organised unity under a single head. But never had the

fortunes of Israel seemed so desperate. Disunited, with its former

leader, Ephraim, disabled and half-exterminated through civil war, it

had become the prey of a foreign enemy. The Philistines were no longer

content with raiding expeditions. They now occupied the districts they

overran, and built forts to secure the passes that led into the very

heart of the Israelitish territory.[371] Their supremacy extended from

one end of Palestine to another, and so gave a name to the country which

it never afterwards lost. The tribes were reduced to a condition of

serfdom; they ceased to be free men who could go forth with arms in

their hands to fight their foes; and were compelled, as in the

subsequent days of Chaldæan domination, to confine themselves to tilling

the soil. The wandering smiths, the Kenite gypsies, were driven from the

land; the Israelite was deprived of all warlike weapons, and was forced

to go to the nearest Philistine post if he wished merely to sharpen his

implements of agriculture. The sons of Jacob had almost ceased to be a

nation.

It was while Samuel was still young that the chief Philistine victories

were gained, and as he grew older the Philistine yoke became heavier and

more severe. In the general wreck, his was the one prominent figure in

Israel. To him the people looked for counsel and help, and saw in him a

prophet of Yahveh. But Samuel was a man of peace, not of war. He could

not lead his people to battle, or check the rising tide of Philistine

success. Other men were wanted for the work, and these were not

forthcoming. Perhaps a time came when Samuel himself was unwilling they

should be found, and that the authority he had possessed should pass to

another. Such, at least, is the impression we derive from his opposition

to the demand of the people that they should have a king.

Samuel possessed, moreover, something more than personal influence. He

was the last representative of the ancient sanctuary at Shiloh. He had

been dedicated to it even before he was born; he had grown up in it

among the last descendants of the earlier high-priests; he had seen the

ark taken from it to fall into the hands of the Philistines; he had also

witnessed, probably, the destruction of the temple itself. All the older

traditions of Mosaic worship gathered about him; he was the living link

in the chain which bound the religious past of Israel with its present.

In his person the doctrines and practices which had been preserved at

Shiloh were handed on to the newer age of the kings.

The Hebrew historian who put together the books of Samuel was no longer

embarrassed, like the compiler of the book of Judges, by a want of

materials. His embarrassment arose from a contrary cause. The documents

before him relating to the history of the seer, to the rise of the

monarchy and the adventures of David, were numerous, and the same event

was sometimes recorded in different forms. He was called upon to

harmonise and combine them together, and he doubtless experienced the

same difficulty in doing so that the Assyriologists at present

experience in reconciling the various accounts they have of the history

of Babylonia in the thirteenth century B.C. That the latter can be

reconciled, if only we knew a little more, we cannot doubt; but for the

present the chronological inconsistencies seem irreconcilable. All that

can be done is to set them side by side.

The compiler of the books of Samuel treated his materials in the same

way. The result is that the picture of the Hebrew prophet which is

presented to us is not always uniform in its colours. Sometimes he is a

priest, sometimes the judge of all Israel, sometimes a mere local seer

whose very name appears to be unknown to Saul.[372] Throughout the

greater part of the narrative the Philistines are represented as the

irresistible masters of the country; once, however, we hear that the

cities they had captured were restored to Israel.[373] But it does not

follow that because the colours of the picture are not uniform, a fuller

knowledge of the history would not show that they are in harmony with

one another. European critics are apt to forget that in the East, and

more especially in the ancient East, conditions of life and society

which are incompatible in Europe may exist side by side. John, the

hermit of Lykopolis in Upper Egypt, was nevertheless on more than one

occasion the arbiter of the destinies of the Roman Empire. And in the

border warfare of Canaan cities passed backwards and forwards from one

side to the other with a rapidity which it is difficult for the modern

historian to realise.

Whether Samuel was a Levite or an Ephraimite by descent has been

disputed. His father came from the village of Ramathaim-zophim in Mount

Ephraim, and was descended from a certain Zuph, who is called ‘an

Ephrathite.’[374] ‘Ephrathite’ signifies ‘a man of Ephraim’ (as in 1

Kings xi. 26). But it also signifies a native of Ephratah or Bethlehem

in Judah (Ruth i. 2, 1 Sam. xvii. 12), and could therefore signify any

other place of the same name. That there were other places of the name,

the very name of Ephraim, ‘the two Ephras,’ is a witness,[375] and we

might therefore see in the ‘Ephrathite’ merely a native of one of them.

The Chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 26, 27, 33-38) definitely makes Samuel a

Levite, and traces his genealogy back to Kohath. It is true that in the

age of Samuel the priests, in spite of the Mosaic law, were not always

of the family of Levi—the fact that David’s sons were ‘priests’ is a

sufficient proof of this,[376]—but it seems hard to believe that such an

infringement of the Levitical tradition would have been permitted at

Shiloh. Nor is it likely that the genealogy given by the Chronicler was

an invention. Samuel had been in a special manner the gift of Yahveh.

His mother Hannah had borne no children to her husband Elkanah, and was

accordingly exposed to the taunts of a second and more fortunate wife.

Once each year did the whole family ‘go up’ to Shiloh, ‘to worship and

to sacrifice unto the Lord of Hosts.’ On one of these occasions Hannah

besought Yahveh with tears that He would grant her a son, promising to

dedicate him to the service of the sanctuary should he be born. A

Babylonian tablet, dated in the fifth year of Kambyses, records a

similar dedication by a Babylonian mother of her three sons to the

service of the sun-god at Sippara.[377] In this case, however, the sons

did not leave their mother’s house until they were grown up, when they

entered the temple, where part of their duty was to attend the daily

service.

Hannah’s prayer was granted, and a son was born. The name which he

received has no relation to the circumstances of his birth, in spite of

the etymology suggested for it in 1 Sam. i. 20, so long as we look only

to its Hebrew spelling. But if this spelling has been derived from a

cuneiform original all becomes clear. Samû-il in Assyrian would mean

‘God hears,’ and there would thus be a fitting connection between the

name and the story of the prophet’s birth. The fact is noteworthy, as it

suggests that the history of Samuel was first written in the cuneiform

characters of Babylonia; and that the cuneiform syllabary was used in

Israel up to the time of the fall of Shiloh.[378]

As soon as the child was weaned he was brought to the sanctuary along

with other gifts. These consisted of meal and wine, and three bullocks,

one of which was slain at the time of the dedication. ‘The priest’ who

presided over the services of the temple was old and infirm, and the

management of the sanctuary was really in the hands of his two sons,

Hophni and Phinehas. His own name was Eli. But he comes before us

without introduction; we know nothing of his parentage and descent, and

even the Chronicler found no record of his genealogy. That he was a

lineal descendant of Aaron, however, admits of no doubt. This, indeed,

is plainly stated not only in the prediction of the destruction that

should overtake Eli’s house (1 Sam. iii. 14), but also in the opening

words of the prophecy of ‘the man of God’ (1 Sam. ii. 27, 28).[379] The

very name of Phinehas, given to Eli’s son, connects him with the line of

Aaron and the long bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Phinehas is not

Hebrew, but the Egyptian Pi-Nehasi ‘the Negro,’ and could have no sense

or meaning in the Israel of the age of Samuel except as an old family

name.

Samuel was clad in the linen ephod, the sacred vestment and symbol of

the priest, and ‘ministered unto Yahveh before Eli.’ One night, before

‘the lamp of God’ had gone out which burned before the ark of the

covenant,[380] ‘the word of the Lord’ came to the boy in his sleep.

Three times did it call to him, and then came the revelation of the

punishment which Yahveh was about to bring on the house of the high

priest.[381] His sons had been unfaithful to their office; not only had

they lain ‘with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle

of the congregation,’ they had made men abhor the offering of the Lord,

and the weak old man had restrained them not. The law had ordained that

the fat of the sacrifice belonged to Yahveh, and that before it was

burned upon the altar neither priest nor offerer could receive anything

of the victim. Unless the law was complied with, the sacrifice was

useless; Yahveh had been robbed of His portion, and no blessing could

follow upon the offering. But the sons of Eli persistently set at naught

the strict injunctions of the law. Before the fat was burned, their

servant came and struck his three-pronged fork into the flesh that had

been placed in the caldron, demanding that it should be given to him

raw. God’s priests thus mutilated the sacrifices that were made to Him,

and compelled His worshippers to defraud Him of His due. The Israelites

began to shrink from bringing their yearly offerings to Shiloh, and the

downward course of the religion of Israel was hastened by the cynical

greed of its priests.[382]

Eli had already been warned by ‘a man of God’ of the coming vengeance of

Yahveh. The prophet destined to play so important a part in the history

of Israel now appears almost for the first time upon the scene. Deborah,

indeed, had been a prophetess, and a prophet had denounced the idolatry

of his countrymen during the period of Midianitish oppression; but the

spirit of Yahveh, which, in later days, revealed itself in the form of

prophecy, had hitherto rather inspired those upon whom it had fallen to

become leaders in war and ‘judges’ of their people. Now it assumed a new

shape. Out of the misery and confusion produced by the Philistine raids

sprang the first great outburst of Hebrew prophecy. Those who still

believed Israel was the chosen people of Yahveh, and that He alone was

God over all the earth, were profoundly stirred by the triumph of the

uncircumcised. There was an outbreak of that religious enthusiasm,

degenerating at times into fanaticism, which has occurred again and

again in the East. The ‘seer’ took the place of the ‘judge.’ The waking

visions which he beheld revealed the future, and declared to him and the

people the will of Yahveh. The arms of flesh had failed; all that was

left was the ‘open vision,’ where the events of the future were pictured

beforehand, and men learned how to escape disaster.

Around the seer there gathered bands of disciples, closely resembling

the dervishes of to-day. They, too, received a part of the prophetic

spirit, and at times, under the influence of strong emotions, passed, as

it were, out of the body into an ecstatic state. Like the modern

dervishes, however, they were completely under the control of the seer.

At a word from him their ecstasy would cease, and they would once more

become ordinary citizens of the world. But the spirit that moved in them

was easily communicated to religious or excitable natures. The

messengers sent by Saul to arrest David at Ramah were themselves

arrested by the spirit of prophecy which permeated the home of Samuel,

and when Saul himself followed in his wrath, he, too, was suddenly

overcome by the same divine influence. ‘The spirit of God was upon him

also; and he went on and prophesied, until he came to Naioth (the

convent) in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied

before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that night.’

But this ecstatic excitement was not of the essence of Hebrew prophecy,

and the latter soon divested itself of it. The dervish element, indeed,

remained almost to the last; Elijah is a proof of it, and even Hosea and

Isaiah still recur at times to symbolic action. But it became

subordinate and purely symbolical, while the seer himself became a

prophet. The conception that gathered round him was no longer that of a

seer of visions, a revealer of the future, but of an interpreter of the

will of God to man. Prediction there might be in his prophecies; but it

was accidental only, and dependent on conditions which were clearly

expressed. If the people repented of their sins, God’s anger would be

turned away from them; if, on the contrary, they persisted in their evil

ways, disaster and destruction would fall upon them. The message of

Yahveh was conditional; it did not contain the revelation of an

inevitable future.

In this respect the Hebrew prophet was unique. His name _nâbî_ is found

in Babylonian, where it takes the form of _nabium_ or _nabu_, ‘the

speaker.’ It was the name of the prophet-god of Babylon, Nebo, the

interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, the supreme deity of the city.

Nebo declared to mankind the wishes and commands of Merodach; he was,

too, the patron of literature, the inventor, it may be, of writing

itself. The name of the mountain whereon Moses died is a testimony that

the worship of Nebo had been carried to the West in the old days of

Babylonian dominion in Canaan, and we need not wonder that the word

_nâbî_, with all that it implied, had been carried to the West at the

same time. But it was not until after the age of Samuel that it made its

way successfully into the Hebrew language. Samuel was still the _roeh_

or ‘Seer,’[383] though the Babylonian word in the form of a verb

(_hithnabbê_) was already applied to his ecstatic companions who

prophesied around him.[384] But the word answered to a need. As the

Hebrew prophet ceased more and more to be a seer, it became necessary to

find some new title for him which should express more accurately his

true nature, and the word _nâbî_ was already at hand. The ‘seer,’

accordingly, fell into the background; the ‘prophet’ occupied his place.

We can trace the beginning of this great religious movement in the age

of Samuel. Samuel has often been called ‘the founder of the prophetic

schools,’ and, to a certain extent, this is true. But they were not

schools in the sense of establishments where his contemporaries could be

educated in the older literature of their country, and be trained to

take upon them the prophetic office. Schools of this kind were to come

later in the history of Israel. They did not even resemble the early

Christian monasteries of Egypt, where bodies of monks lived together

under a head, sometimes in a single building, sometimes in a collection

of separate cells. The earlier disciples of Samuel were wandering bands

of enthusiasts, over whose religious ecstasies he exercised an exciting

and a controlling influence. They were men, to use a Biblical

expression, who were ‘drunk with the spirit’ of God.[385]

The loss of the ark and the destruction of Shiloh must have quickened

the movement which the Philistine troubles had begun. And it should be

remembered that the ‘prophets’ among whom Saul was numbered were not all

of them of the Dervish type. Among them must have been men like Samuel

himself, the true predecessors of the prophets of later Hebrew history.

In the generation which followed, we find men like Gad and Nathan, who

have ceased to be seers and have become the preachers of Israel, the

conscience-keepers of the king himself, and the chroniclers of his

reign.[386] The literary traditions of Shiloh passed to them through the

hands of Samuel.

The prophetic movement did something more than keep alive a belief in

Yahveh as the God of Israel. It preserved at the same time the feeling

of national unity. The ‘prophets’ who surrounded Samuel were drawn from

all classes and from all parts of the Israelitish territory. That Samuel

was ‘established to be a prophet of Yahveh’ was, we are told, known to

‘all Israel,’ ‘from Dan to Beer-sheba.’ That the statement is not too

general is shown by the history of Saul. All Israel demanded a king, and

it was over all the Israelitish tribes that he ruled. As he owed his

power to Samuel, it is clear that the influence of Samuel also must have

extended from one extremity of the Israelitish tribes to another.

Wherever the Philistine supremacy allowed it, the authority of the seer

was recognised and reverenced.[387]

But it follows from this that the veneration in which the temple at

Shiloh had been held was equally widespread. Theoretically, at least,

the Israelite acknowledged a central sanctuary, where the sons of Aaron

served before Yahveh, and the prescriptions of the Mosaic law were

observed. In practice, it is true, the old Canaanitish high places, with

their local Baalim and Ashtaroth, had usurped the place of Shiloh;

private chapels had been set up in the houses of individuals, and

priests ministered in the sacred ephod before a graven image. But all

this was the natural fruit of an ‘age of ignorance,’ and later

generations recognised that such was the case. The purer worship of

Yahveh was no ‘development’ out of an earlier polytheism; it was simply

a return to an ideal, the memory of which was kept alive at Shiloh.

And yet a time came when it seemed as if Yahveh had forgotten the

sanctuary wherein He had set His ‘name at the first.’ The punishment

denounced upon the house of Eli was not slow in coming. Judah was

already in Philistine hands, and the enemy were now attacking the

Israelitish stronghold in Mount Ephraim. The Philistine camp was pitched

at Aphek, not far from Ramah, the birthplace of Samuel.[388] The last

relics of the Hebrew army were encamped opposite them in a spot

subsequently named Eben-ezer, ‘the Stone of Help.’ But it proved no help

to them on this occasion. The Israelites were defeated with a loss of

about four thousand men, and in their despair ‘the elders’ advised that

the ark of the covenant should be brought to the camp. Yahveh, it was

believed, enthroned Himself above it between the wings of the cherubim,

like the Babylonian Bel-Merodach, who on the feast of the New Year

similarly enthroned himself above the ‘mercy-seat’ in his temple at

Babylon.[389] He would therefore be actually among them, visibly, as it

were, leading their troops to victory and blessing them with His

presence. In the old days of the conquest of Canaan, the ark had been

carried before the camp of Israel; the visible presence of ‘Yahveh of

hosts’ had gone with it, and the foe had been scattered before Him like

chaff before the wind.

The ark was accordingly fetched from its resting-place at Shiloh, and

for the first time since the days of Moses and Joshua the safeguard of

Israel was seen by the common eye. Despite the fears and reluctance of

Eli[390] his two sons bore it on their shoulders to the Israelitish

camp. Its arrival was greeted by a shout of joy which resounded across

the valley to the camp of the foe. Thereby the Philistines knew that the

God of the Hebrews had come in person to help his people against their

enemies as he had helped them in old days against the Egyptians. But the

old days were not to come again. The ark had been carried out of its

resting-place by the command of the elders, not of Yahveh. Its sanctity

had been profaned, the mystery that surrounded it rudely stripped away.

It was only when it stood in its appointed place in the Holy of Holies

that the glory of the Lord rested upon it, and Yahveh enthroned Himself

between the wings of its golden cherubim. The tabernacle and the ark

were inseparable like the casket and the treasure within it; either

without the other was forsaken of the Lord.

The presence of the ark in the Israelitish camp availed nothing. The

Israelites fought with desperation, but without a leader they were no

match for the well-armed and well-trained Philistine troops. Their army

was cut to pieces; it was said that thirty thousand of them were left

dead on the field. Worst of all, the two sons of Eli were among the

slain; the ark of Yahveh was captured by the heathen, and the way lay

open to Shiloh.

A Benjamite fled from the slaughter to carry the evil tidings to the

high priest. Eli was ninety-eight[391] years old; his eyes were blind,

and he was sitting on a bench at the entrance to the temple, full of

anxiety for the fate of the ark. The shock of the news was more than he

could bear; when he heard that it had been taken by the Philistines he

fell backwards, and his neck was broken. A single day had deprived

Israel of its ark and of its priests.

Hardly was Eli dead when his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was

prematurely delivered of a child. He was born on an evil day, a day when

the light of Israel seemed extinguished for ever. Throughout his life he

bore a name which prevented the terrible circumstances of his birth from

being forgotten. His mother called him I-chabod, ‘the glory is

departed,’ ‘for the ark of God was taken.’[392]

I-chabod had an elder brother, Ahitub, born in happier times.[393]

Through him the line of Shilonite priests was continued, and the high

priesthood still remained in Eli’s house. It was Ahitub’s grandson,

Abiathar, who, after being the faithful servant of David in his

troubles, was banished and deprived of the priesthood on Solomon’s

accession.[394] But Ahitub must still have been young when the

Philistines gained the victory which laid all Palestine at their feet.

The destruction of the temple at Shiloh must have been one of the first

results of the victory. The Israelites had no longer an army, and the

Philistine conquerors could march in safety through the passes of Mount

Ephraim. A fort was built by them to command the pass at Michmash, and

the old sanctuary of Israel was levelled to the ground. No record of its

destruction, indeed, was known to the compiler of the books of Samuel;

it would have been strange, if in that hour of distress and national

disaster, when the storehouse of Hebrew literature was itself destroyed,

a chronicler should have been found to describe the event. But the

memory of it was never forgotten, and it is alluded to both by the

prophet Jeremiah and by the Psalmist (Jer. vii. 12, xxvi. 6; Ps.

lxxviii. 60).

Such of the priests of Shiloh as survived the catastrophe were scattered

through Israel. In the time of Saul we find eighty-five of them at Nob,

which is accordingly called ‘the city of the priests.’ Samuel himself

fled to the home of his fathers at Ramah. There as a seer and prophet,

as the representative of the fallen sanctuary of Israel, and as one of

the few literary men of the age, he became the centre of all that was

left of patriotism and national feeling in Israel. Gradually his

influence grew. Ahitub, the grandson of Eli, was young like himself, and

the destruction of Shiloh had deprived him of such authority as his

service before the ark of the covenant would have conferred.

The ark itself was once more within the confines of Israel. It had been

carried to Ashdod, and there placed in triumph in the temple of Dagon.

But the triumph was short-lived. In the night, the image of Dagon twice

fell from its pedestal and lay on its face before the ark of the

mightier God. On the second occasion, it was broken in pieces by its

fall; when the priests entered the sanctuary in the morning, they found

the head and hands of their god rolled upon the threshold. ‘Therefore,’

we are told, ‘neither the priests of Dagon nor any that come into

Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this

day.’[395]

Dagon has been supposed to have had the shape partly of a man, partly of

a fish. But the supposition has arisen from a false etymology of the

name, which connects it with the Hebrew _dâg_, ‘a fish.’ We now know

from the cuneiform inscriptions that Dagon was really one of the

primitive deities of Babylonia adored there in days when as yet the

Semite had not become master of the land. Dagon was coupled with Anu,

the god of the sky, and when the name and worship of Anu were carried to

the West, the name and worship of Dagon were carried there too. Sargon

‘inscribed the laws’ of Harran ‘according to the wish of the gods Anu

and Dagon,’ and a Phœnician seal in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has

upon it the name of Baal-Dagon as well as representations of an ear of

corn, a winged solar disk, a gazelle, and several stars. The ear of corn

symbolises the fact that among the Phœnicians Dagon, the brother of El

and Beth-el, was the god of agriculture and the inventor of bread-corn

and the plough.[396] But this was because in the language of Canaan

_dagan_ signified ‘corn.’ In passing to the West the god thus assumed

new attributes, and became an agricultural deity who watched over the

growing crops.[397]

The power of the God of Israel was not shown only in the humiliation of

the Philistine god. The plague broke out in Ashdod, accompanied by its

usual symptom, hæmorrhoidal swellings. The inhabitants of the city were

not slow in recognising in it the wrathful hand of Yahveh, and the ark

was accordingly sent to their neighbours in Gath. But here, too, the

plague followed it, and Ekron, to which it was sent next, fared no

better. For seven months the sacred palladium of Israel remained in the

hands of its captors. Then ‘the priests and the diviners’ advised that

it should be sent back to the people of Yahveh along with offerings to

mitigate the anger of the offended God. Five mice and five hæmorrhoids

of gold were made and placed in a coffer by the side of the ark. They

represented the five Philistine cities, and the mice were symbols of the

wrathful Yahveh, the God of hosts and of battle, who had wreaked his

vengeance on the worshippers of the peaceful god of agriculture. The

mice which devoured the corn were the natural foes of Dagon.

The ark and the coffer were placed on a cart, and two milch-kine were

yoked to draw it. A doubt still lingered in the minds of the Philistines

whether the God who had allowed his people to be conquered and his

dwelling-place to be captured could really, after all, have been the

author of the plague, and they watched, therefore, to see whether the

kine took the road towards Israelitish territory or back to their own

young. But all doubt vanished when the kine marched straight eastward

towards Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went. The villagers were in the

fields reaping when they saw the cart coming towards them, laden with

its precious freight. The kine stood still at last by the side of a

great stone—the stone of Abel ‘in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite.’

Then the Levites came and took the ark and the offerings from the cart

and laid them on the stone, which thus became a sanctuary and an altar.

The wood of the cart was broken into firewood, and the kine were repaid

for the gift they had brought by being sacrificed to the Lord.

But the plague followed the ark even upon Israelitish soil. The men of

Beth-shemesh believed that it was because they had looked into the

sacred shrine of Yahveh, to see, possibly, whether its original contents

were still within it, and in their terror they begged the inhabitants of

Kirjath-jearim to come and carry it away. To Kirjath-jearim accordingly

it was removed and placed in the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar

was consecrated to look after it. That it was not carried to Shiloh is a

sign that the destruction of Shiloh had already taken place.

With the removal of the ark to Kirjath-jearim darkness falls on the

history of Israel. There was little for the patriotic historian to

record. The people were in servitude to the Philistines, the national

sanctuary had been destroyed, the ark itself was hidden away in a

private house. When the curtain is again lifted, it is to chronicle a

local success over the Philistine foe. Samuel is at Mizpeh, ‘the

watch-tower,’ which must have adjoined Ramah, if indeed it was not the

name of one of its two quarters.[398] Here was the last refuge of the

few Israelites who still refused to acknowledge the Philistine rule, and

the surrounding mountains afforded a home and shelter to the bands of

outlaws who still carried on a guerilla warfare with the foreigner. One

of the incidents of this warfare was long remembered. While Samuel was

sacrificing a lamb as a burnt-offering to Yahveh, the Philistines fell

upon the assembled people. But a sudden thunderstorm dismayed the

assailants, who fled down the valley towards Beth-car pursued by the

inhabitants of Mizpeh. It was in memory of the victory that Eben-ezer,

‘the stone of help,’ was set up by the seer between Mizpeh and

Shen.[399]

It would seem that no further attack was made upon Mizpeh and its

neighbourhood during the lifetime of Samuel. At least such appears to be

the conclusion we must draw from the generalising and optimistic

language of the Hebrew historian.[400] For a time, indeed, the whole

district was freed from the presence of the foreigner. The villages

eastward of Ekron and Gath ceased to pay tribute to the conqueror,

though their independence could not have lasted long.[401] Samuel’s

‘circuit’ did not extend beyond Mizpeh, Gilgal and Beth-el, and his sons

judged cases in Beer-sheba.

Ahitub, the high-priest, was doubtless at Nob with the rest of the

Levites of Shiloh, almost within sight of Mizpeh. What had been saved

out of the wreck of the temple at Shiloh must have been there with him.

We know that at Nob the sword of Goliath was subsequently laid up before

Yahveh, and at Nob too was probably preserved the brazen serpent that

had been set up by Moses in the wilderness.[402] According to the

Chronicler,[403] however, the tabernacle and the brazen altar which had

been made by Bezaleel were at Gibeon; how this came to be the case he

does not say.[404] At any rate, if the brazen serpent were preserved,

there is no reason why other things should not have been preserved as

well. And the books of the Law would have been among the first objects

to be carried with them by the fugitive priests. We are told that when

the ark was brought into the temple of Solomon it still contained the

tables of stone which had been placed in it by Moses (1 Kings viii. 9);

if these had been removed from it when it was taken to the Israelitish

camp, they too must have formed part of the temple furniture which was

saved by the priests.

Here, therefore, in a small district of the tribe of Benjamin, a portion

of which was inhabited by the old Gibeonite natives of the land, all

that remained of Israelitish independence, whether religious or

political, found its last refuge. Here the national spirit of Israel

still lingered among the priests and Levites who had fled from Shiloh,

or who lived in the mountains of Ephraim. It is not without significance

that here, too, was the home of the Gibeonite serfs of the

sanctuary;[405] priests, Levites, and Nethinim were gathered together,

as it were, in one spot. Though the temple had fallen, the Mosaic Law

and ritual were enshrined in the hearts of those who had served in it.

The destruction of Shiloh had restored to Beth-el its old

pre-Israelitish renown. Once more its high-place became thronged with

worshippers, and those who had formerly carried their gifts and

sacrifices to Yahveh at Shiloh, now brought them instead ‘to God at

Beth-el.’[406] At Beth-el, accordingly, once each year Samuel offered

sacrifice and adjudged the cases that were brought before him, or

predicted the future to those who consulted him as a seer. It was at a

similar gathering at Mizpeh that the Israelites had been attacked by the

Philistines, and that the victory of Eben-ezer had been gained.

But the results of the victory were local and momentary, and the

condition of the Israelites had become intolerable. Samuel, moreover,

was growing old; his sons Joel and Abiah were corrupt,[407] and his own

influence was that of the seer rather than that of the leader in war or

the administrator in peace. The only hope for Israel lay in its finding

a chieftain who could mould its shattered fragments into unity, could

organise its forces, and break the Philistine yoke. A new Jerubbaal or

Jephthah was required, but one who would lead to victory not a few only

of the tribes, but the whole of Israel.

The people demanded a king. Their instinct was right; in no other way

could the Israelitish nation be saved. Democracy had been tried, and had

failed: the end of the era of the Judges was internal anarchy and decay,

the destruction of the central sanctuary, and servitude to the

foreigner. Naturally Samuel was reluctant to hand such powers as he

still possessed to another. His sons, doubtless, were more reluctant

still. Moreover, he had been brought up in the school of the past. His

boyhood had been spent at Shiloh under the influence of ideas which saw

in a theocracy the divinely-appointed government of Israel.[408] At

first he resisted the demand of the people. But it was in vain that he

protested against their rejection of Yahveh and himself, or pointed out

to them that the establishment of a kingdom meant the loss of their

personal independence. The logic of events was too strong for the seer,

and he was compelled to yield. The time had come when the choice lay

between a king or national extinction, and a king accordingly had to be

found.

Samuel yielded apparently with a good grace. In such a matter the word

of the chief seer and prophet of Israel was law, and he knew that the

selection was in his own hands. And he made it wisely and patriotically.

Saul, the son of Kish, the first king of united Israel, justified his

election to the crown. He saved Israel from destruction, and for a time

succeeded in rolling back the wave of Philistine domination. His

military capacities were unquestionable, as well as his courage and

devotion to his people.[409]

But there was another side to his character, which perhaps commended

itself to Samuel quite as much as his military abilities. A vein of deep

religious fervour ran through his whole nature, which at times

degenerated into the gloomy despondency of the fanatic. Rightly handled,

he was capable of high religious enthusiasm, and of following his

religious guide with the simplicity of a child. But he could not brook

opposition; and, like all men of strong emotions, his hate was as

intense as his love. He was born to be the leader of his countrymen,

whether as a king or as a dervish the future had to decide.

Naturally he was a Benjamite, from that little corner of Palestine which

still remained true to the best traditions of Israel. At first it seemed

as if he was going to be the obedient disciple of Samuel, a crowned

addition to the group of dervish-like prophets who surrounded the seer.

More than one account of his accession to the throne of Israel has been

handed down, and it is not always easy to reconcile them. One thing,

however, is clear: Saul did not seek election, and it came upon him as a

surprise.

But the tallness of his stature had marked him out from among his

companions; it was the outward token of superiority which Yahveh had set

upon him. His first meeting with Samuel was accidental. He had been sent

by his father[410] to seek some asses that had strayed or been stolen,

and, while vainly engaged on his quest, was advised by his slave to

consult a seer who lived in the neighbouring town. The town proved to be

Ramah, and the seer to be Samuel, who was that day offering a solemn

sacrifice on the high place.[411] Samuel invited him to the feast which

followed the sacrifice, and assigned to him the chiefest position among

his guests; then before his departure he secretly anointed his head with

oil, and declared that he was chosen to be ‘captain over Yahveh’s

inheritance.’ Next the seer told him where the asses were that he

sought, and bid him make his way to the sacred circle of stones at

Gilgal, and there remain seven days until the prophet himself should

come.

Hardly had Saul quitted the presence of Samuel than he was met by ‘a

company of prophets’ coming down with music and wild cries from the

high-place of Gibeah.[412] Saul had not yet recovered from the

excitement of the strange and unexpected scene in which he had just been

an actor, and was in no mood to resist the infection of the religious

ecstasy which now seized upon him. He, too, like the spectators at a

modern _zíkr_ in the East, joined the band of enthusiasts, and added his

voice to theirs. It was not until he reached the high-place that his

outburst of religious frenzy had spent itself.

Such is one of the versions of the history of the foundation of the

Israelitish monarchy. Saul is anointed secretly by Samuel, and at once

enrols himself in one of the ‘prophesying’ bands of which Samuel was the

spiritual director. According to another version, his election as king

took place in public at a great assembly convened by Samuel at Mizpeh.

Here the lot fell upon Saul, who had hidden himself ‘among the stuff,’

and Samuel thereupon presented him to the people, who shouted ‘Long live

the king!’ Then the seer ‘wrote in a book’ such regulations regarding

the election and duties of a. king as we find in the book of Deuteronomy

(xvii. 14-20), ‘and laid it up before the Lord.’ As soon as the assembly

was dismissed Saul returned ‘to his house at Gibeah.’[413]

His election, however, was not accepted unanimously, consecrated though

it had been by Yahveh. There were some who failed to see in the tall

enthusiast anything more than the son of a yeoman at Gibeah. But a

sufficient number of his own tribesmen were ready to gather around him

as soon as he should summon them to battle. And the occasion was not

long in coming. Jabesh-Gilead, the old ally of Benjamin, was beleaguered

by Nahash, the Ammonite king. The city was too weak to resist, and its

inhabitants, offered to surrender. But with Semitic ferocity Nahash

answered that he would spare their lives only on condition that the

right eye of each should be torn out. Seven days were granted them in

which to determine whether they should accept his terms or fight to the

death, and during the period of respite the elders of the city sent to

Benjamin to beg for help. Saul was ploughing when the messengers

arrived, and, fired with indignation, he cut his oxen into pieces, which

he sent throughout Israel with the words: ‘Whosoever cometh not forth

after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.’[414]

The summons still ran in the name of the old seer.

Men came in from all sides, and Saul found himself at the head of a

small army. It is said that when he numbered his troops at Bezek, ‘the

children of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah

thirty thousand.’ Such may have been the full fighting force of Israel

before Saul’s reign was ended; it cannot have represented the number of

those who were able to flock to his standard during the few days that

still remained for the relief of Jabesh. As elsewhere in the Old

Testament, the ciphers are largely exaggerated. Indeed when we consider

the size of the Assyrian army, as recorded in the inscriptions, at a

time when it was the most formidable engine of destruction in Western

Asia, it becomes clear that the number of fighting men in the Hebrew

army can never have been very great. The three hundred and thirty

thousand men in Saul’s army are but an instance of that Oriental

exaggeration of numbers and inability to realise what they actually

mean, which is as common in the East to-day as it was in the age of

Samuel.[415]

Jabesh was rescued, and the Ammonites were scattered in flight. The

victory was a proof of Saul’s military capacity, and justified his

choice as king. The news of it rang from one end of Israel to the other,

and the victorious soldiers demanded the death of those who had

questioned their leader’s right to reign. But Saul refused the demand;

no bloodshed was to mar the glory of the day; from henceforth all true

Israelites were to be united in recognising their king. Yahveh had

chosen him at Mizpeh; it was now needful that he should go to the sacred

enclosure of Gilgal, the first camping-ground of the Israelites in

Canaan, and there be solemnly acclaimed by the assembled multitude. As

Joshua the Ephraimite had started from Gilgal to conquer Canaan, so Saul

the Benjamite, the new ‘captain of the Lord’s inheritance,’ set forth

also from Gilgal to restore its fallen fortunes.

A year had to pass before Saul felt himself strong enough to attack the

Philistine garrisons. By that time he had collected three thousand

Israelites about him, all of them prepared to fight and willing to obey

their leader. But they were armed only with implements of agriculture,

or such other makeshifts for weapons as they could find. The Philistines

had forbidden the wandering blacksmiths to enter Israelitish territory,

and Saul and his son Jonathan, we are told, alone possessed sword and

spear. Out of the three thousand, one thousand were with Jonathan at

Gibeah; the rest were with Saul watching the road that led over the

mountains from Michmash to Beth-el. There was a Philistine fort on the

hill above Gibeah, in the very heart of Saul’s own country; another fort

commanded the pass of Michmash and the approaches to Ephraim.

The Philistines seemed to have made a rising among the Israelites

impossible. Their forts and garrisons commanded the roads, like the

French garrisons in Algeria, and the conquered population was forbidden

the use of arms. Saul, nominally the king of Israel, was in reality

merely the chief of a band of outlaws, desperately holding their own in

the fastnesses of the mountains, and protected by the sympathy of the

priests and the peasantry. The victory over Nahash had confirmed Saul’s

title to lead them among his own countrymen; it had done nothing towards

releasing them from the domination of the Philistines.

Now, however, Jonathan ventured to assail the Philistine outpost at

Gibeah. The attack was successful; the fortress was taken and its

defenders put to the sword.[416] It was open revolt against the

Philistine supremacy, and the news of it quickly spread. Saul sent

messengers throughout Israel, claiming the success for himself and the

monarchy, and formed a camp at Gilgal. Meanwhile the Philistine army was

on the march to suppress the revolt. The Hebrew chronicler describes it

as consisting of ‘thirty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen,

and people as the sand which is on the seashore for multitude,’[417] and

it pitched its camp at Michmash, a little to the north of Gibeah. Here

it cut Saul off from all communication with the north, and threatened

his rear. He therefore left Gilgal and joined his son at Gibeah. Only

six hundred men remained with him; the rest had fled at the approach of

the enemy, who sent out three bands of raiders from their camp, one of

which marched in a south-eastward direction towards the Dead Sea, while

the other two turned, the one to the north-west, and the other to the

north-east.

The mountainous district from which Saul drew his forces was

panic-stricken. The peasantry fled from their devastated fields, and the

whole country was given up to fire and sword. Pure-blooded Israelites

and Hebrews of mixed descent were united in the common disaster. The one

hid themselves in the caves and forests, even in cisterns and

grain-pits, while the others took refuge in Gad and Gilead, on the

eastern side of the Jordan.[418]

It was again Jonathan who brought deliverance to Israel. Between the

Israelites at Gibeah, and the Philistines at Michmash, lay a deep gorge,

usually identified with the Wadi Suweinît.[419] On either side rose a

precipitous crag of rock which effectually cut off the hostile forces

one from the other. Across this gorge Jonathan determined to make his

way, accompanied only by his armour-bearer, and trusting in the help of

Yahveh of Israel. In broad daylight the two heroes climbed the opposite

cliff, in the face of the Philistines, who believed they were deserters

from the Israelitish camp. But once arrived in the Philistine

stronghold, they fell suddenly on its unprepared defenders and slew

about twenty of them ‘within as it were half a furrow of an acre of

land.’ The Hebrew camp followers of the Philistines thereupon turned

upon their companions, and the camp of the Philistines became a scene of

confusion and dismay. Jonathan had said nothing to his father of his

intended exploit, but Saul soon observed that fighting was going on in

the enemy’s camp.

Among the Israelitish fugitives with Saul was the high-priest

Ahimelech,[420] the great-grandson of Eli, who had joined the king with

the sacred ephod. The ark, too, had been carried for safety into the

Israelitish camp, and was once more accompanying the army of Israel

against its foes. When, therefore, Saul had numbered his men and found

that Jonathan was absent, he called for the priest and bade him inquire

of Yahveh whether they should go to his help or not. But before the

question could be answered the tumult on the opposite side of the valley

made hesitation impossible. It was clear that the moment had come for

striking a blow at the supremacy of the foreigner. The gorge accordingly

was quickly traversed, and the Israelitish king with his six hundred

followers threw himself on the enemy’s rear. The Philistines resisted no

longer. Attacked in front by the peasants who had followed them, and in

the rear by the soldiers of the king, they fled precipitately up the

pass to Beth-el.[421] The victory was complete, and the Philistine

forces would have been annihilated had Saul’s religious convictions been

less fervent. But when the instinct of the general overcame the zealot,

and he had stayed the priest in the very act of consulting Yahveh, he

salved his conscience by a vow. None should eat or drink until he had

overthrown his enemies, and whoever broke the royal vow should be

devoted to death.

The vow was rash and untimely, but it was registered in heaven. The

Philistines were pursued as far as Aijalon. The Israelites were too weak

from want of food to follow them further. Jonathan alone, who had not

been in the Israelitish camp when the vow was made, ate a little honey

which he saw dropping from a tree. His companions looked at it with

longing eyes, but dared not follow his example. All the more fiercely,

therefore, did they fall upon the spoil which they afterwards found in

the Philistine camp. The sheep and oxen and calves were slaughtered as

they stood upon the ground, ‘and the people did eat them with the

blood.’ The news of this violation of one of the primary laws of

Israelitish religion struck Saul with horror. He caused a great stone to

be rolled towards him, and on this improvised altar the animals were

slain. It was ‘the first altar,’ we are told, that Saul ‘built unto the

Lord.’

But worse was yet to come. Saul proposed to pursue the Philistines in

the night, and accordingly the oracle of Yahveh was again appealed to.

No answer, however, was returned to the questioners. Neither priest nor

ephod availed anything, and it became clear that sin had been committed

in Israel. When the lots were cast, they fell upon Jonathan, who then

confessed that he had, in ignorance of his father’s vow, eaten a little

honey. The religious fanatic was stronger in Saul than the father, and

he pronounced sentence that Jonathan must die. Jonathan, in fact, was

the firstborn whose sacrifice was demanded by Yahveh as the price of the

victory. Fortunately the religious convictions of the Hebrew soldiers

were less intense than those of their king. It was Jonathan to whom the

victory was due, and in the hour of his triumph they refused to allow

him to die. Saul yielded, perhaps willingly; but the Philistines were

permitted to disperse to their own homes.[422]

Was the sacrifice of Jonathan urged by Ahimelech and the priests? They

at any rate did not interfere to prevent it, and the lots were cast

under their supervision. What is certain is that from this time forward

there was an increasing estrangement between Saul and the priesthood,

which ended in the secret anointing of David as king of Israel, and in

the massacre of the priests at Nob. We hear no more of Ahimelech and the

ark in the camp of Saul.

Samuel, the aged and venerated representative of the Shilonite

priesthood, had much to do with this growing estrangement. From the

first he had looked upon Saul as a rival who had robbed him of his

former power. Even after Saul had proved his fitness to rule by the

rescue of Jabesh, and had been publicly acclaimed king by the people at

Gilgal, he could not conceal his mortification and hostility. Were not

he and his sons still with them? he asked the assembled Israelites; why

then had they added this ‘wickedness’ unto ‘all their sins,’ to demand a

king? In the thunder which rolled overhead he bade them recognise the

anger of Yahveh at their thus rejecting His representative, and he ended

with the threat that both they and their king should be ‘consumed.’[423]

Samuel was not long in embodying his hostility in deeds. According to

one of the authorities used by the compiler of the books of Samuel,

seven days only had elapsed after Saul’s election when the seer

upbraided him in the presence of his army and told him that Yahveh had

chosen another king in his place.[424] Here, however, two occurrences

have been confused together—Saul’s confirmation as king by the people at

Gilgal, and his subsequent encampment at the same place in the second

year of his reign. By this time the breach had grown and widened between

the old Judge and the new ‘Captain’ of Israel. Saul, in spite of his

religious convictions and excitability, had not shown himself the

obedient disciple and tool of Samuel that might have been expected; he

proved to have a strong and violent will of his own, which he was fully

ready to exercise when not under the influence of religious excitement.

It was only temporarily that Saul was ‘among the prophets.’ Nor did he

possess that tact and pliability which would have enabled David under

the same circumstances to avoid an open quarrel with the aged seer. Saul

was too earnest, too convinced that what he believed was the truth, to

understand a compromise, much less a course of duplicity.

That the incident at Gilgal is historical, there can be no doubt. It is

only the time of its occurrence that is misplaced. It belonged to those

days of danger and difficulty when the Philistines seemed to have

triumphed finally, and the hope of Israel lay in the six hundred

desperate men who still followed Saul. Saul had waited vainly for the

coming of Samuel, and at length, tired of waiting, had offered the

burnt-offering for the safety and success of the army which Samuel had

agreed to present. Hardly had it been offered when the seer appeared.

Then it was that the king of Israel was told that he had been rejected

by the Lord, and that another had been selected in his place. The

occasion was indeed well chosen; the Israelites were already

sufficiently discouraged and inclined to believe that their king had

been even less successful against the Philistines than Samuel and his

sons. Under the rule of Samuel, at all events, the territory of Benjamin

had not been devastated, and its inhabitants compelled to hide

themselves in the holes of the earth.

Samuel returned from Gilgal to ‘Gibeah of Benjamin.’ The victory at

Michmash, which disappointed his predictions,[425] changed the aspect of

affairs, and Saul’s throne seemed now to be firmly established. Once

more, however, Samuel made an effort to shake it, and it was again at

Gilgal that the event took place. Saul’s power rested on his soldiery,

and the surest way, therefore, of striking at it was through the

soldiery in the camp of Gilgal.

It was after an expedition against the Amalekites. The Israelites had

marched towards El-Arîsh and smitten the Bedâwin of the desert ‘from

Havilah’ in Northern Arabia to the great Wall of Egypt.[426] They had

brought back with them a vast amount of spoil, as well as Agag, the

Bedâwin chief, ‘everything that was vile and refuse,’ including the mass

of the people, having been ‘destroyed utterly.’ But this was not enough.

The Amalekites were to be treated as the Canaanites had been by Joshua;

they and all that belonged to them had been laid under the ban and

condemned to extermination.[427] Samuel, therefore, went in haste to the

Israelitish camp, and there charged Saul with disobedience to the

commands of Yahveh. Saul’s plea that the cattle and herds had been saved

by ‘the people’ in order that they might be sacrificed to the Lord, was

not accepted, and the fierce old seer himself ‘hewed Agag in pieces

before Yahveh.’ At the same time, he told the Israelitish king that the

kingdom had been rent from him and given to a neighbour that was better

than he. It was the last time that the king and the seer met. Samuel

went back to his home at Ramah and Saul returned to Gibeah. Between Saul

and the priesthood there was open war.

The attack upon the Amalekites implies that the Philistines had for a

time ceased to be formidable. The extract from the state chronicles

given in 1 Sam. xiv. 47-52 makes it follow the other wars of Saul. Among

these wars we hear of one against Moab, of another against Edom (or

rather Geshur), and of a third against ‘the kings of Zobah.’[428] The

Aramæans of Zobah, called Tsubitê in the Assyrian texts, and placed

northward of the Haurân, were beginning to be powerful, and as we learn

from the history of David, were about to establish a kingdom under

Hadadezer which extended to the Euphrates and included Damascus. But at

present they were still governed by more than one chief.[429]

The campaign against Zobah makes it clear that Saul’s authority was

acknowledged in Gilead as well as on the western side of the Jordan. It

is not surprising, therefore, that after his death his son should have

resided there, well out of the reach of the Philistines, or that

Eshbaal’s kingdom should have comprised all the northern tribes. Little

by little, in spite of the opposition of Samuel, Saul worked his way to

general acknowledgment and power. The Israelites, for the first time,

were welded into a homogeneous state, and their enemies were kept at

bay. The organisation of the kingdom went hand in hand with the military

successes of its king. Israel at last was not only feared abroad, but at

peace and unity within.

With all this, Saul preserved the old simplicity of his life and

manners. He never yielded to the usual temptations of the Oriental

despot; he had no harîm like David or Solomon, no palaces, no gardens,

no trains of cooks and idle servants.[430] The people were not taxed to

supply him with luxuries, nor dragged from their homes for his buildings

and wars. In some of these royal pleasures doubtless he could not

indulge: the conditions under which he reigned prevented it. But it was

only by his own free choice that he remained faithful to one

wife—Ahinoam, the daughter of Ahimaaz,—and that he held court at Gibeah

under the shade of a tamarisk instead of a palace, with a spear in his

hand in place of a sceptre.[431]

Saul was a born soldier, and he had a soldier’s eye for detecting those

who could best serve him in war. He added to his bodyguard all who were

distinguished by strength or courage, and the border warfare with the

Philistines kept them in constant employment. Among the young recruits

was David, the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse, a Jew of Beth-lehem.

Two different accounts have been preserved of the way in which David was

first introduced to the king. It is difficult to reconcile them; the

compiler of the books of Samuel was content to set them side by side

without attempting to do so, while the Septuagint translators have cut

the Gordian knot by omitting large portions of one of them. The

difficulty is increased by the fact that the second account makes David

the conqueror of Goliath of Gath, who elsewhere (2 Sam. xxi. 19) is said

to have been slain during David’s reign by El-hanan the

Beth-lehemite.[432]

According to this second story, the Philistines had invaded Judah and

pitched their camp on a mountain-slope between Socoh and Azekah. Saul

was encamped on the hill opposite, and between the two armies was the

valley of Elah at the bottom of which was the dry bed of a mountain

stream. The three elder brothers of David were in the Hebrew army, David

himself having been left at home to look after his father’s sheep. From

time to time, however, he was sent with loaves of home-made bread to his

brothers and a present of milk-cheeses to ‘the captain of their

thousand.’ On one of these occasions a Philistine giant, Goliath by

name, came forth from the camp of the enemy to challenge the Israelites

to single combat. He had done so day by day, but none of Saul’s

followers had ventured to accept the challenge. For Goliath of Gath was

a descendant of the ancient Anakim, and of gigantic stature. His height,

it was said, was six cubits and a span, or nearly ten feet,[433] and the

staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, while its head weighed six

hundred shekels of iron. Like the Greeks, he wore not only a bronze

helmet and coat of mail, but also greaves on his legs; a bronze shield

was hung between his shoulders and a broad-sword at his side.