THE JUDGES.
Animosity of the Idumæans--Othniel, a Deliverer--Eglon,
King of Moab--The Canaanite King, Jabin--Sisera, his
General--The Prophetess and Poetess Deborah--Barak--Victory
near Tabor--Early Hebrew Poetry--Sufferings through
Nomads--The Hero Gideon (Jerubbaal)--Victory in the Plain of
Jezreel--Commencement of Prosperity--Abimelech--Feud with the
Shechemites--Jair the Gileadite--Hostilities of the Amalekites
and the Philistines--Jephthah--Samson--Zebulunite Judges.
Othniel, the son of Kenaz, a brother, and at the same time the
son-in-law of Caleb, was the first warrior-judge. Having collected a
brave band of combatants, he advanced against an Idumæan[11] king, and
delivered the southern tribes of Judah and Simeon. But his enterprise
did not bring the least advantage to the rest of the tribes, and
remained almost unknown on the other side of Mount Ephraim. The
daring act of the Benjamite, Ehud, the son of Gera, was of greater
significance. The Israelites being oppressed by the Moabites, Ehud did
not immediately invite his injured companions to make an open attack
upon the foe. He first sought to put the hostile king, Eglon, out of
the way. One day he presented himself before the king under the pretext
that he was the bearer of a gift from his people in token of their
submission. Being alone with Eglon, he thrust a double-edged sword into
the body of his victim, and fled after having locked the door of the
audience chamber. He then summoned the men of Ephraim and Benjamin,
and occupied the fords of the Jordan so as to cut off the retreat of
the Moabites, who had established themselves on the west side of that
river. The Moabites were then totally routed. After this victory, the
western tribes of Israel remained for a long time unmolested by the
people of Moab.
From another quarter, the Israelites were harassed by the Philistines.
Shamgar, the son of Anath, probably of the tribe of Benjamin, chastised
the assailants with a weapon extemporised out of an ox-goad. Such
sporadic acts of bravery, inadequate to improve the situation of
the Israelites, tended only to aggravate their troubles. Jabin, a
Canaanite king, joined by some of the neighbouring rulers, seemed bent
upon exterminating the Israelites. The high-roads became insecure,
and wayfarers had to seek devious byways. At that juncture, Israel
was without a leader, or a man of tried courage. A woman, a poetess
and prophetess, Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, then came forward as
"a mother in Israel." With her inspiriting speech she animated the
timorous people, and changed them from cowards into heroes. Urged by
Deborah, Barak, the son of Abinoam, reluctantly undertook to lead the
Israelites against the enemy; and, at her bidding, the most valiant
men in Israel joined the national army. Meeting near Mount Tabor, they
discomfited the Canaanites, who were commanded by Jabin's general,
the hitherto unvanquished Sisera. The power of Jabin was henceforth
broken. The commander himself now had to flee for his life, and was
slain by Jael, the wife of Heber, a member of the Kenite tribe, which
maintained an amicable alliance with the Israelites. In a hymn known
as "The Song of Deborah," the praises were sung of this unexpected
victory, and of the mercy which God had bestowed upon His people.
But these hostilities had not yet reached their end. The restless
nations of the neighbourhood continued to inflict heavy blows upon
the Israelites, who either were too weak or too disunited to resist
such attacks. The roving Midianites periodically ravaged Palestine.
At harvest time, they would cross the Jordan with their irresistible
hordes, bringing with them their tents, their camels, and their herds.
They came "like a flight of locusts," emptied the barns, led off the
flocks, the herds and the asses, and then quitted the impoverished
and despoiled land. The rich and fertile plain of Jezreel, with the
adjacent northern and southern territory, was especially exposed to
these incursions. To save their scanty means of subsistence, the owners
of the land concealed their provisions in caverns and other hiding
places. The insignificant gleanings of wheat had to be threshed in
caves intended for wine-presses. In their severe trials the tribes
prayed unto the God of their fathers, and assembled at Shiloh, where
they were reproved for their sinfulness by "a man of God"--probably a
Levite--who reminded them that their misfortunes were the consequence
of their iniquities. Exhortations of this kind seem to have made a deep
impression upon at least one man of note. This man was Jerubbaal, also
named Gideon, of the tribe of Manasseh. In Ophrah, his native place, in
a grove consecrated to Baal or to Astarte, there was an altar, which
Jerubbaal destroyed, and he then raised another in honour of the God
of Israel. The men of Ophrah, enraged at this sacrilege, were about
to stone Jerubbaal, but he gathered round him tribesmen of Manasseh,
Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, and encamped at Endor to the north of
Mount Moreh; there he dismissed the timid and faint-hearted, retaining
only a picked force of 300 warriors. In the dead of night he fell upon
the sleeping enemy, whom he terrified with the shrill blast of horns,
the brandishing of burning torches, and the war-cry, "For God and for
Gideon." The unprepared Midianites were utterly routed, and were forced
to retreat across the Jordan. During many ages "the day of Midian"
was remembered as a triumph which a handful of brave Israelites had
accomplished.
Gideon then pursued the two fugitive Midianite kings, Zebah and
Zalmunna, on the other side of the Jordan, chastised those Israelites
who refused him and his famishing warriors the needful provisions, and
inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Midianites, from which they never
recovered. The people thus delivered offered to make him their king,
an honour which he declined, both for himself and his descendants. It
appears that he made Ophrah a centre for pilgrims, to the detriment
of the less conveniently situated sanctuary of Shiloh. This aroused
the jealousy of the men of Ephraim, who, after the death of the
hero, were involved in violent conflicts with the men of the tribe
of Manasseh. Gideon had, after his great victories, carried the rich
treasures of the vanquished enemies into the land. The towns of Israel
became seats of wealth and luxury. Phœnician caravans could henceforth
safely journey through the land. Covenants were concluded with the
trafficking strangers, who were placed under the protection of the
tutelar Baal-Berith (Baal of the Covenant). The jealous men of Ephraim,
who sought to foment dissension among the seventy sons and grandsons
of Gideon, found in Abimelech, one of his sons, an unscrupulous ally.
This Abimelech, being the son of a woman of Shechem, was elected by the
Shechemites to be their leader. His first act was to put his brothers
to death. Only Jotham, the youngest of them, escaped. On Mount Gerizim,
Jotham pronounced his trenchant parable of the trees, who, in their
search of a ruler, met with refusals from the fruitful olive, fig,
and vine trees. The prickly bramble (Atad) was the only one who would
accept the government; but he warned the trees that if they refused to
acknowledge him as ruler, he would send forth a fire to consume all
the trees of the Lebanon. The parable found its application in the
subsequent hostilities between the men of Shechem and Abimelech, whose
cruelty ended in his death at the hand of his own armour-bearer.
After the fall of Abimelech the cis-Jordanic tribes seem to have
retrograded, while the men of Manasseh or Gilead, on the other side of
the Jordan, invaded the high land of the Hauran, and took possession
of sixty rock-built cities. This district then received the name
Havvoth Jair. At that time the Israelites suffered a shock from two
sides, which caused further disintegration among them. On the one
hand they were attacked by the Ammonites, and on the other, by the
Philistines. These attacks distracted them, and rendered them incapable
of resistance. The Ammonites appear to have driven the Israelites from
their open places, after which they attacked the strongholds. These
incursions were successful against the tribes of Ephraim and Judah.
On the opposite side, the Philistines assailed the neighbouring tribes
of Israel, and sought to subdue them. They first attacked the tribe of
Dan; nor did they spare the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. Even these
disasters did not arouse the tribes to make a combined resistance.
The trans-Jordanic tribes had turned to the Ephraimites for help; but
the latter took no part in the contest, either from selfishness or
because the inhabitants of Shechem and other Ephraimite towns had been
enfeebled by Abimelech.
In those troubled times there arose two deliverers, who drove off
the enemy, and procured temporary relief. Jephthah and Samson, two
adventurers, disregarding order and discipline, brought their powers to
bear, as much for evil as for good. They both displayed extraordinary
activity; but while Jephthah was a warrior who conquered his enemies
by warlike measures, Samson, though endowed with great strength
and daring, appears to have overcome his enemies by stratagems and
unexpected attacks.
Jephthah, the Gileadite, of the tribe of Manasseh having been banished
by his tribesmen, began to lead the life of a highwayman. Daring
associates, who thought little of law and order, joined him and
appointed him their leader. When attacked by the Ammonites, the men of
Gilead remembered their outlawed kinsman, whose bold deeds had come to
their knowledge. Some of the elders of his tribe went to him, and urged
him to aid them with his troops, and help them to expel the enemy from
their territories. Full of proud indignation, Jephthah rebuked them
with the words, "You hated me, and drove me from my father's house;
wherefore do you come to me now when it goes ill with you?"[12] The
Gileadite elders, however, entreated him more urgently, and promised,
if he should vanquish the enemy, that they would recognise him as chief
in Gilead. Upon this Jephthah determined to return with them. He then
sent a formal message to the Ammonites, demanding that they should
desist from their incursions into the territory of the Israelites; and
when they refused on the pretext of ancient rights, he traversed the
districts of Gilead and Manasseh in order to enlist warriors. Jephthah
knew well how to gather many brave youths round him, and with these
he proceeded against the Ammonites, defeated them, and wrested twenty
cities out of their hands. After Jephthah had gained these decisive
victories, the Ephraimites began a quarrel with him; and as previously,
in the case of the heroic Gideon, they were displeased that he had
obtained victories without their aid.
This led to a civil war, for Jephthah was not so submissive to the
proud Ephraimites as the judge of Ophrah had been. The men of Ephraim
crossed the Jordan, near the town of Zaphon, and assumed a warlike
attitude; but Jephthah punished them for their presumption, defeated
them, and blocked their road of retreat on the banks of the Jordan.
Jephthah might have strengthened the tribes beyond the Jordan, but
his rule lasted only six years, and he left no son to succeed him. He
had only one daughter, and about her a deeply touching story has been
preserved, which describes how she became the victim of her father's
rash vow.
Whilst the hero of Gilead was subduing the Ammonites by force of arms,
Samson was fighting the Philistines, who claimed from the tribe to
which Samson belonged the coast-line of Joppa, formerly a part of their
possessions. The tribe of Dan smarted under their yoke, but had not the
power to effect a change. Samson was not supported in his enterprises
by the various tribes, as Jephthah had been. They greatly feared the
Philistines; thus Samson was compelled to have recourse to stratagems,
and could harm the enemy only by unexpected onslaughts. This mode of
warfare was censured in the words, "Dan shall judge his people like one
of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be as a serpent by the way, and as
an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider
shall fall backwards."[13]
Samson is supposed to have fought during twenty years for Israel,
without, however, improving the state of affairs. Long after his
death, the Philistines kept the upper hand over the tribes of Dan and
Benjamin, and also over Judah and Ephraim. The rule of the Philistines
pressed with increasing weight upon Israel. After Samson there arose
successively three other deliverers, two in the tribe of Zebulun, and
one in the tribe of Ephraim; but their deeds were of so insignificant
a character that they have not been deemed worthy of mention. Of the
two hero-judges in Zebulun, only the names and the territory or town
in which they were buried have been preserved: Ibzan, of Bethlehem in
Zebulun, and Elon, of the town of Ajalon. Also of the Ephraimite judge,
Abdon, son of Hillel, the Pirathonite, little is known. It is not
even stated against what enemies they waged war; but the fact that the
men of Zebulun, who at first lived far away from the sea, afterwards
extended their dwelling-places to the shore, leads us to suppose that
they supplanted the Canaanite inhabitants.