CHAPTER V.

THE AGE OF THE JUDGES.

The age of the Judges.

We have already seen that the Canaanites were far from being exterminated by the conquests of Joshua. The coast-land remained in the possession of the Philistines and Phoenicians; the strong fortress towns of central Canaan were still held by their former inhabitants; there were many districts in which the Israelitish invaders were allowed to have a footing, but not supremacy. In fact it was only the lack of cohesion among the demoralized Canaanites that enabled the Hebrews to hold their ground. A united and determined effort on the part of their foes might have swept them back into the deserts from which they had emerged. For the most part they lived in 'villages' or open encampments, like those to which they had been used during their wilderness life, with the result that they came into more frequent contact with the Canaanitish peasantry than with the dwellers in towns. Moreover the relations subsisting between the different tribes were as yet undefined and insecure. They were weakened by their want of organization, by their tenacious love of independence, and by their unfamiliarity with the habits of a settled people. Conquerors and conquered soon became inextricably intermingled: Israel still to a great extent imbued with the ideas and beliefs it had inherited from Moses; the Canaanites possessed of a superior culture, but deeply debased

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by the corrupting taint of Semitic heathenism.1

For a time it

was doubtful which type of civilization would prevail. For as the Hebrews naturally learned from the Canaanites the necessary arts of husbandry, so they were inevitably introduced by them to the local sanctuaries (bamoth or 'high places'), at which were practised the foul rites of the heathen deity who was regarded as the author of fertility, and the giver of corn, wine, and oil to his worshippers.2 The Hebrews did not indeed openly abandon their allegiance to Jehovah, but they co-ordinated, and sometimes even identified, their national Deity with one or other of the gods of Canaan, and thus the simple and pure worship of Jehovah was gradually corrupted by the admixture of usages and symbols borrowed from the nature-worship of the Canaanites. The compilers of the Book of Judges, however, writing some five or six centuries after the events of this period, regarded Israel's religious retrogressions as even amounting to a formal apostasy from Jehovah."

Disunion of

Two features of this stage in Israel's career, during which it was transformed from a powerful horde of nomads into an agricultural people, call for attention at the outset. First, the bonds of union between the different tribes were quickly dissolved when they found themselves dispersed in different districts, and when the conditions of warfare were finally exchanged for a state of security and peace. The peculiar formation of the land itself with its sharp contrasts of mountain and plain, table-land

the tribes.

1 The Tel el-Amarna letters shew that the Canaanites were both in race and language closely akin to the Hebrews. Isaiah even describes Hebrew as the language of Canaan' (xix. 18).

2 "When we speak of Baal as the principal god of the Canaanites, it is not to be understood that there was one god, Baal, whom all the Canaanites worshipped, but that the many local divinities were all called by this significant name." (Moore in Polychrome Bible on Judg. ii. 13.) The Ba'al of a place is the god to whom it belongs, just as the citizens of a town are its ba'alim, 'proprietors.'

See e.g. Judg. ii. 12, x. 6.

and valley, intensified the tendency to isolation. Yet there remained elements of cohesion which could occasionally be appealed to with effect: faith in Jehovah as the God and champion of the Hebrews, reverence for the traditional Law of Sinai, and the existence of a central sanctuary at Shiloh. The 'Song of Deborah' (Judges, ch. v.) bears witness to the fact that the influence of the national religion was powerful enough to unite six of the tribes in common action against their northern oppressor.

1

Religious function of the Judges.

Again, the rule of the so-called 'Judges' was not merely a social necessity: it was a safeguard of religion. The Judges (Shophetim) 1 were not so much administrators of law and government as tribal chiefs, who from time to time undertook to vindicate the independence of Jehovah's people and to proclaim anew the truths of His religion. They contended not merely against the foes that threatened Israel from without, but against the spirit of heathenism within it. Most of the Judges were strong, rough men, stirred by heroic zeal for Jehovah's cause, and eager to defend the peculiar principles which sharply distinguished the religion of Israel from that of Canaan. That the higher conscience of the nation was still active in the days of the Judges is sufficiently proved by the stern vengeance which the Benjamites suffered at the hands of the other tribes for the outrage perpetrated at Gibeah.2 Thus it may be said with truth that the task laid upon Israel at this period was chiefly that of "spiritual self-assertion against the genius of the Canaanitish nation." 8 The age of the Judges was in short an age of transition, in which, humanly speaking, Israel's higher life depended upon the force of character and singlemindedness of individual

1'Judges' were an institution peculiar, so far as we know, to the Semitic world. The chief magistrates of Carthage were called Sufetes. Cp. Sayce, ЕНН, р. 288.

2 See Judg. xx.

8 E. König in Hastings' DB, art. 'Judges, Book of.'

[CHAP. leaders. Such men when they appeared were rightly regarded as heroes raised up by Jehovah not merely to deliver the nation from the yoke of its oppressors, but also to keep alive the standard of worship and morality which Israel had inherited from Moses. In the belief that the Judges had on the whole faithfully fulfilled their appointed task, the men of a later age blessed their memory.1

Some incidents mentioned in the Book of Judges throw a vivid light on the disorganized condition of the Hebrew tribes, and explain the impulse which tended towards the establishment of a monarchy. The narratives which form a kind of appendix to the book (chh. xvii.-xxi.) are apparently intended to illustrate the truth and the consequences of the fact that in those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.2

Micah and the Danites:

Judg. xvii., xviii.

The strange story of Micah the Ephraimite presents us with a picture of a domestic sanctuary or 'house of God,' furnished with its 'Ephod3 and Teraphim, and served by a consecrated priest. It forms a preface to the account of an interesting tribal movement. The Danites, hard pressed apparently by their Philistine neighbours, resolved to abandon the territory assigned to them on the coast, and ultimately found a new settlement in the north, near the foot of Mount Hermon. The narrative relates how the Danite explorers, in crossing Mount Ephraim, paused to consult the oracle in Micah's house for guidance in their quest; and how, when the main body of the tribe had migrated to their new home, they persuaded the Levite, who acted as Micah's household priest, to accompany them, and to bring with him the sacred images. Micah made a fruitless attempt to recover his 'gods,' which were triumphantly carried

1 See Ecclus. xlvi. II, 12.

2 Judg. xvii. 6, xxi. 25; cp. xviii. 1, xix. 1.

8 An 'Ephod seems to mean some kind of oracular image, but the word has never been quite satisfactorily explained.

The

off. They were eventually placed in a permanent sanctuary belonging to the new city of Dan (formerly Laish), and committed to the charge of the Levite and his descendants. sanctuary soon became notorious, and a dangerous rival to the 'house of God' established at Shiloh. The priest who was first appointed was a grandson of Moses; we are told that he and his sons held this tribal priesthood until the day of the captivity of the land.2

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The fate of the

Judg. xix., xx.

The moral degeneracy which resulted from Israel's contact with the Canaanites was signally exemplified in the crime committed at Gibeah, which brought Benjamites: upon the tribe of Benjamin a fearful vengeance. In their abhorrence of the deed, the other tribes demanded that the perpetrators should be delivered up and put to death. This demand the Benjamites peremptorily rejected, and threatened to meet force with force. In the hostilities that ensued the tribes were at first defeated; in a second battle however the Benjamites were deceived by a stratagem, and worsted; Gibeah was captured and burnt, and the guilty tribe was almost exterminated. The victors however were moved to pity by the reflection that there should be one tribe lacking in Israel. Accordingly the males who had survived the general massacre were provided with wives by expedients which illustrate the reckless cruelty and lawless violence of that rude age. The capture of the maidens who attended the vintage festival at Shiloh finds a parallel in the Roman legend of 'the rape of the Sabines.'

If this state of anarchy and disorganization had been allowed. to continue, Israel must have finally lost all elements of cohesion, and have fallen into the helpless degeneracy which had

1 Judg. xviii. 30. The reading Manasseh (R.V. marg.) for Moses is probably due to an alteration of the text in later times.

2 i.e. till the deportation of the northern tribes by Tiglath Pileser (734) or the overthrow of Samaria (721).

3 Judg. xxi. 19 foll. Cp. Liv. Hist. Rom. i. 9 foll.