CHAPTER I.

Ver. 7. Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off.

The Hebrew has this, "the thumbs of their hands and of their feet." The Hindoos call the thumb the reria-viril, the great finger of the hand, and the large toe is named the great finger of the foot. This punishment was exceedingly common in ancient times, and was inflicted principally on those who had committed some flagrant offence with their hands and their feet. Thus, those convicted of forgery, or numerous thefts, had their thumbs cut off. The practice is abolished, but its memory will remain, as it is now one of the scarecrows of the nursery and domestic life : "If you steal any more, I will cut off your thumbs." "Let me find out the thief, and I will soon have his thumbs.”ROBERTS.

CHAPTER III.

Ver. 17. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab and Eglon was a very fat man. 18. And when he had made an end to offer the present, he sent away the people that bare the present.

See on Gen. 43. 45.

There is often in the East a great deal of pomp and parade in presenting their gifts. Through ostentation," says Maillet, "they never fail to load upon four or five horses what might easily be carried by one. In like manner as to jewels, trinkets, and other things of value, they place in fifteen dishes, what a single plate would very well hold." Something of this pomp seems to be referred to in this passage, where we read of making an end of offering the present, and of a number of people who conveyed it. This remark also illustrates 2 Kings viii. 9. So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels' burden.-HARMER.

Ver. 19. But he himself turned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal, and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king: who said, Keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him.

From a circumstance mentioned by Mr. Bruce, it appears that Ehud acted in strict conformity to the customs of the time and place, so that neither the suspicion of the king nor his attendants should be excited by his conduct. It was usual for the attendants to retire when secret messages were to be delivered. "I drank a dish of coffee, and told him, that I was a bearer of a confidential message from Ali Bey of Cairo, and wished to deliver it to him without witnesses, whenever he pleased. The room was accordingly cleared without delay, excepting his secretary, who was also going away, when I pulled him back by the clothes, saying, stay, if you please; we shall need you to write the answer."-BURDER.

Ver. 20. And Ehud came unto him; and he was sitting in a summer-parlour, which he had for himself alone.

Dr. Shaw tells us, their doors are large, and their chambers spacious; conveniences, as he observes, very well adapted to those hotter climates. But when Eglon is represented as receiving Ehud and Death, in a parlour of cooling, as it is called, in the margin of Judges iii. 20, or rather in a chamber of cooling, something more seems to be

meant than merely its having a large door, or being spacious; at least there are now other contrivances in the East, to give coolness to particular rooms, which are very common; and though the time in which Eglon lived, is acknowledged to be of very remote antiquity, yet we are to remember he was a prince, and in the palaces of such these contrivances without doubt began. The doctor is silent upon this point, but Russell has given us the following acTheir count of one of their methods of cooling rooms. great houses at Aleppo are composed of apartments on each of the sides of a square court, all of stone; and consist of a ground door, which is generally arched, and an upper story, which is flat on the top, and either terraced with hard plaster, or paved stone; above-stairs is a colonnade, if not round the whole court, at least fronting the West, off from which are their rooms and kiosques; these latter are a sort of wooden divans, that project a little way from their other buildings, and hang over the street; they are raised about a foot and a half higher than the floor of the room, to which they are quite open, and by having windows in front and on each side, there is a great draught of air, which makes them cool in the summer, the advantage chiefly intended by them. They have another way of cooling their rooms in Egypt. It is done by openings at the top, which let the fresh air into them. Egmont and Heyman, as well as Maillet, make mention of them, but the last-mentioned author gives the most distinct account of these contrivances: they make, he tells us, their halls extremely large and lofty, with a dome at the top, which towards the North has several open windows; these are so constructed as to throw the north wind down into these rooms, and by this means, though the country is excessively hot, they can make the coolness of these apartments such as, oftentimes, not to be borne without being wrapped in furs. Egmont and Heyman speak of chambers cooled after this manner, as well as halls. Eglon's appears to have been a chamber, and what Shaw calls an olee, which gives a propriety to the mention that is made of Ehud's passing through the porch, which no interpreter before the doctor has, that I know of, remarked: but whether it was cooled by a kiosque, as they are called at Aleppo, or by an Egyptian dome, or by some contrivance distinct from both, is of no consequence to determine. That some contrivance to mitigate the extreme heat of that climate began early to obtain, in the palaces of princes, is natural to believe; that it began as early as the time of Eglon, this passage puts out of all doubt. It was the more necessary, as Eglon appears to have kept his court at Jericho, where the heat is so excessive, that it has proved fatal to some even in March.-HARMER.

Ver. 25. And they tarried till they were ashamed; and, behold, he opened not the doors of the parlour: therefore they took a key and opened them; and, behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth.

The wooden locks commonly used in Egypt, " consist of a long hollow piece of wood, fixed in the door, so as to slide backward and forward, which enters a hole made for it in the doorpost, and is there fastened by small bolts of iron wire, which fall from above into little orifices made for them in the top of the lock. The key is a long piece of wood, having at the end small pieces of iron wire of different lengths, irregularly fixed in, corresponding in number and direction with the bolts which fall into the lock; these it lifts upon being introduced into the lock, which it then pulls back. The bolts of wire differ in number from three to fourteen or fifteen, and it is impossible to guess at the num ber a lock contains, or at the direction in which they are placed."-TURNER's Journal of a Tou: in the Levant.

Ver. 31. And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox-goad: and he also delivered Israel.

Mr. Maundrell has an observation which at once explains this transaction, and removes every difficulty from Che passage. He says, "the countrypeople were now everywhere at plough in the fields, in order to sow cotton. It was observable, that in ploughing they used goads of an extraordinary size; upon measuring of several, I found them about eight feet long, and at the bigger end six inches in circumference. They were armed at the lesser end with a sharp prickle for driving the oxen, at the other end with a small spade, or paddle of iron, strong and massy, for cleansing the plough from the clay that encumbers it in working. May we not from hence conjecture, that it was with such a goad as one of these, that Shamgar made that prodigious slaughter related of him, Judges iii. 21. I am confident that whoever should see one of these instruments, would judge it to be a weapon not less fit, perhaps fitter, than a sword for such an execution. Goads of this sort Í saw always used hereabouts, and also in Syria; and the reason is, because the same single person both drives the oxen, and also holds and manages the plough; which makes it necessary to use such a goad as is above described, to avoid the encumbrance of two instruments."-BURDER.

CHAPTER IV.

Ver. 6. And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh-naphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the LORD God of Israel commanded, saying, Go, and draw towards Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali, and of the children of Zebulun?

Arriving at the top, we found ourselves on an oval plain, of about a quarter of a mile in its greatest length, covered with a bed of fertile soil on the west, having at its eastern end a mass of ruins, seemingly the vestiges of churches, grottoes, strong walls, and fortifications, all decidedly of some antiquity, and a few appearing to be the works of a very remote age. First were pointed out to us three grottoes, two beside each other, and not far from two cisterns of excellent water; which grottoes are said to be the remains of the three tabernacles proposed to be erected by St. Peter, at the moment of the transfiguration, when Jesus, Elias, and Moses, were seen talking together. In one of these grottoes, which they call more particularly the Sanctuary, there is a square stone used as an altar; and on the sixth of August in every year, the friars of the convent come from Nazareth, with their banners and the host, to say mass here; at which period they are accompanied by all the Catholics of the neighbourhood, who pass the night in festivity, and light large bonfires, by a succession of which they have nearly bared the southern side of the mountain of all the wood that once clothed it. Besides these grottoes, no particular history is assigned to any other of the remains, though among them there seem to have been many large religious buildings. The whole of these appear to have been once enclosed with a strong wall, a large portion of which still remains entire on the north side, having its firm foundation on the solid rock. This appeared to me the most ancient part. Traditions here speak of a city built on the top, which sustained a five years' Siege, drawing its supplies by skirmish from different parts of the fertile plains below, and being furnished with water from two excellent cisterns still above; but as no fixed period is assigned to this event, it may probably relate to the siege of Vespasian. As there still remained the fragments of a wall on the southeast angle, somewhat higher than the rest, we ascended it over heaps of fallen buildings, and enjoyed from thence a prospect truly magnificent, wanting only the verdure of spring to make it beautiful as well as grand. Placing my compass before me, we had on the northwest a view of the Mediterranean sea, whose blue surface filled up an open space left by a downward bend in the outline of the western hills: to west-northwest a smaller portion of its waters were seen: and on the west again the

slender line of its distant horizon was just perceptible over a range of land near the seacoast. From west to south the plain of Esdraelon extended over a vast space, being bounded on the south by the range of hills, generally considered to be the Hermon, whose dews are poetically celebrated, Psalm cxxxiii. 3, and having in the same direction, nearer the foot of Tabor, the springs of Ain-el-Sherrar, which send a perceptible stream through its centre, and form the brook Kishon of antiquity. Psalm lxxxiii 9. From southeast to the east is the plain of Galilee, being almost a continuation of Esdraelon, and, like it, appearing to be highly cultivated, being now ploughed for seed throughout. Beneath the range of this supposed Hermon is seated Endor, famed for the witch who raised the ghost of Samuel, to the terror of the affrighted Saul; and Nain, equally celebrated as the place at which Jesus raised the only son of a widow from death to life, and restored him to his afflicted parent. The range which bounds the eastern view is thought to be the mountains of Gilboa, where the same Saul, setting an example of self-destruction to his armour-bearer and his three sons, fell on his own sword, rather than fall wounded into the hands of the uncircumcised, by whom he was defeated. The sea of Tiberias, or the Lake of Gennesareth, famed as the scene of many miracles, is seen on the northeast, filling the hollow of a deep valley, and contrasting its light blue waters with the dark brown shades of the barren hills by which it is hemmed around. Here, too, the steep is pointed out down which the herd of swine, who were possessed by the legion of devils, ran headlong into the sea. In the same direction, below, on the plain of Galilee, and about an hour's distance from the foot of Mount Tabor, there is a cluster of buildings, used as a bazar for cattle, frequented on Mondays only. said that Christ delivered the long and excellent discourse Somewhat farther on is a rising ground, from which it is called the Sermon on the Mount; and the whole view in this quarter is bounded by the high range of Gebel-el-Telj, or the Mountain of Snow, whose summit was at this moment clothed with one white sheet, without a perceptible breach or dark spot in it. The city of Saphet, supposed to be the ancient Bethulia, a city said to be seen far and near, and thought to be alluded to in the apophthegm which says, "a city set on a hill cannot be hid," is also pointed out in this direction: but though the day was clear, I could not distinguish it, its distance preventing its being defined from hence without a glass. To the north were the stony hills over which we had journeyed hither, and these completed this truly grand and interesting panoramic view. -BUCKINGHAM.

Van Egmont and Heyman give the following account of Tabor:-"This mountain, though somewhat rugged and difficult, we ascended on horseback, making several circuits round it, which took us about three quarters of an hour. It is one of the highest in the whole country, being thirty stadia, or about four English miles, a circumference that rendered it more famous. And it is the most beautiful I ever saw, with regard to verdure, being everywhere decorated with small oak-trees, and the ground universally enamelled with a variety of plants and flowers, except on the south side, where it is not so fully covered with verdure. On this mountain are great numbers of red partridges, and some wild-boars; and we were so fortunate as to see the Arabs hunting them. We left, but not without reluctance, this delightful place, and found at the bottom of it a mean village, called Deboura, or Tabour, a name said to be derived from the celebrated Deborah mentioned in Judges." Pococke notices this village, which stands on a rising ground at the foot of Mount Tabor westward; and the learned traveller thinks, that it may be the same as the Daberath, or Daberah, mentioned in the book of Joshua, as on the borders of Zebulun and Issachar. "Any one," he adds, "who examines the fourth chapter of Judges, may see that this is probably the spot where Barak and Deborah met at Mount Tabor with their forces and went to pursue Sisera; and on this account, it might have its name from that great prophetess, who then judged and governed Israel; for Josephus relates, that Deborah and Barak gathered the army together at this mountain." This point Josephus was not required to prove, as the sacred history contains explicit information on this head, to which the Jewish historian was incapable of adding a single particular. The name of the village seems, however, more probably to be derived from

MOUNT TABOR.Judges iv. 6. 12. 14. ; 1 San x 3.; Psalm lxxxix. 12. ; Jer. xivi. 18.; Hea v. 1.

the mountain, than from the prophetess. Deborah, the name of the place where she dwelt, and to which the children of Israel came up to her for judgment, was between Ramah and Bethel in Mount Ephraim, and consequently much farther to the south. Whereas in Deboura, or Dabour, we have the very Dabor or Thaboor of the scriptures, with only that slight corruption which the Hebrew names receive, as pronounced by the Arabs. The mountain itself they call Djebel Tour.-MODERN TRAVELLER. Ver. 10. And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kelesh; and he went up with ten thousand men at his feet: and Deborah went up

with him.

The phrase "men at his feet," did not, I believe, refer to any particular class of soldiers, but applied to ALL, whether they fought in chariots, on horses, or on foot. This form of speech is used in eastern books to show how many obey or serve under the general. It may be taken from the action of a slave being prostrate at the feet of his master, denoting submission or obedience. In this way devotees, when addressing the gods, always speak of themselves as being at their feet. When the Orientals speak of his Majesty of Britain, they often allude to the millions who are at his feet. The governors, generals, or judges in the East, are said to have the people of such countries, or armies, or districts, at their feet. Nay, it is common for masters, and people of small possessions, to speak of their domestics as being at their feet. It is therefore heard every day, for "I will send my servants," en-kal-adiyila, “those at my feet."-ROBERTS.

Ver. 18. And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle.

The Arabs are not so scrupulous as the Turks about their women; and though they have their harem, or women's apartment, in the tent, they readily introduce their acquaintances into it, or those strangers whom they take under their special protection. Pococke's conductor, in his journey to Jerusalem, led him two or three miles to his tent, where he sat with his wife and others round a fire. The faithful Arab kept him there for greater security, the wife being always with him; no stranger ever daring to come into the women's apartment unless introduced. We discover in this custom, the reason of Jael's invitation to Sisera, when he was defeated by Barak: "Turn in, my lord, turn in to me, fear not." She invited him to take refuge in her own division of the tent, into which no stranger might presume to enter; and where he naturally supposed himself in perfect safety.-PAXTON.

There is an apparent treachery in the conduct of Jael to Sisera; and it appears from the following account as if the inhabitants of that country were still actuated by the same principle of interested dissimulation. "It was about noon when we reached the small village of Deborah, where we alighted to refresh, not suspecting that the treachery for which it is traditionally infamous, both in holy and profane records, was still to be found here at so distant a period. We entered into this village, and, like the unfortunate Sisera, demanded only a little water to drink, for with every thing else our scrip was well provided. It was furnished to us, as we desired, with provender for our beasts, and the offer of all that the village possessed. While the animals were feeding, I was desirous of ascending to the summit of Mount Tabor, for the enjoyment of the extensive view which it commands. Our guide from the convent offering to accompany me, we took with us a man from the village, who promised to facilitate our ascent by directing us to the easiest paths; and taking our arms with us, while my servant and the muleteer remained below to take care of the beasts, we all three set out together; by forced exertions we reached the summit in about half an hour. In our descent from Mount Tabor we entered a grotto, in which there had formerly been a church, and had scarcely got within it, before we heard the rushing of persons before the outer part of the passage by which we had entered. On turning round to ascertain the cause of this noise, we ob

served five or six armed men, nree of whom we recognised to be those who had made such offers of their hospitality in the village of Deborah below. They called out to us in a loud voice, that if we attempted the slightest resistance we should be murdered, but that if we submitted to be quietly stripped, no violence should be offered to our persons. There was no time for parley, though my companions at first cried for mercy, but as I rushed out with my musket cocked, and presented, they instantly folants to seek shelter behind the masses of rock near the lowed me, and an unexpected discharge drove our assailcave. A regular skirmish now commenced, in which we kept up a retreating fire, and often exposed ourselves to their shot, for the sake of getting to our mules at the foot of the hill. During a full hour of this kind of running fight, none of our party was hurt. From the first it seemed evident to us that we had been betrayed by our Deborah guide, and our notion was at length confirmed by his going over to the assailing party, and using his arms against us. Fortunately, and justly too, this man was himself wounded by a ball from my musket, and when he fell shrieking, on the side of the hill, his companions hastened to his relief, while we profited by the alarm of the moment to continue our retreat, and rejoin our mules below. Here we drew off at a short distance from the village of Deborah, and, with arms in our hands, being exhausted and fatigued, refreshed ourselves beneath a tree; but we had not yet remounted, when a large party, professing to be from the sheik of Deborah, a village consisting only of a few huts, came to sequester our beasts, for what they called the public service. We treated this with a proper degree of warmth, and threatened death to the first that should dare to lay hands on any thing belonging to us: so that the brave villagers kept aloof."-BUCKINGHAM.

Ver. 19. And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink; for I am thirsty. And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him.

The method of making butter in the East, illustrates the conduct of Jael, the wife of Heber, described in the book of Judges: "And Sisera said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink, for I am thirsty and she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him." In the song of Deborah, the statement is repeated: "He asked water, and she gave him milk, she brought forth butter in a lordly dish." The word (Dn hemah) which our translators rendered butter, properly signifies cream; which is undoubtedly the meaning of it in this passage, for Sisera complained of thirst, and asked a little water to quench it, a purpose to which butter is but little adapted. Mr. Harmer indeed urges the same objection to cream, which, he contends, few people would think a very proper beverage for one that was extremely thirsty; and concludes, that it must have been buttermilk which Jael, who had just been churning, gave to Sisera. But the opinion of Dr. Russell is preferable, that the hemah of the scriptures, is probably the same as the haymak of the Arabs, which is not, as Harmer supposed, simple cream, but cream produced by simmering fresh sheeps' milk for some hours over a slow fire. It could not be butter newly churned, which Jael presented to Sisera, because the Arab but ter is apt to be foul, and is commonly passed through a strainer before it is used; and Russell declares, he never saw butter offered to a stranger, but always haymak: nor did he ever observe the Orientals drink buttermilk, but always leban, which is coagulated sour milk, diluted with water. It was leban, therefore, which Pococke mistook for buttermilk, with which the Arabs treated him in the Holy Land. A similar conclusion may be drawn concerning the butter and milk which the wife of Heber presented to Šisera; they were forced cream or haymak, and leban, or coagulated sour milk diluted with water, which is a common and refreshing beverage in those sultry regions.-Paxton. Ver. 21. Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail ot the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: (for he was fast asleep and weary :) so he died.