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THE BOOK

OF

JUDGE S.

6

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THE Hebrew title of the seventh book of the Scriptures is D'ppie Shophetim, which the Septuagint renders by KPITAI, and the Vulgate by Judices. Our word JUDGES is a correct and yet an insufficient interpretation of the original. Judges,' with us, simply designates those who administer justice; the Hebrew word SHOPHETIM denotes also the administration of justice, but instead of being confined to that function, it comprehends much more. Governors,' or 'Rulers,' would be a more sufficient interpretation of the Hebrew title, because that is the office really denoted, to which the name of Judges' is given merely because in those times to dispense justice in the last resort, or in cases of high public interest, was a prominent and signal part of the duty of any king, prince, governor, or civil magistrate. In the present book the term designates those occasional leaders and chief magistrates of the Israelites who led out the people in war against their enemies, and after having delivered them from the oppression of the neighbouring nations, exercised each, during peace, the office of chief magistrate and judge in Israel. Nor was it only by the Hebrews that this term was applied as a title of distinction to non-regal governors or magistrates. The Carthaginians, who were descended from the Tyrians, and spoke the Hebrew language, called their chief magistrates by the same name; but the Latins, whose language does not possess the sh of the ancient Hebrews and Carthaginians, wrote the word with a sharp s, and adding a Latin termination, denominated them Suffetes.

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The date and authorship of the book cannot with positive certainty be determined. Some ascribe it to Samuel, some to Hezekiah, some to Ezra; but the tradition which assigns the anonymous books of Scripture to some eminent historical personage is like that which leads the natives of Syria to ascribe all great anonymous ruins to Solomon. When no internal evidence for determining the question exists, it is much wiser to leave the matter unembarrassed by such vague conjectures. In Israel there were many high servants of God who take no place in history, and many prophets whose names have not descended to us. It has been urged that the book must have been written after the establishment of regal authority among the Hebrews, in consequence of the frequently recurring phrase, in apology for the disorders of the times, In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.' But those who produce this argument overlook the fact that this remarkable phrase occurs only in the supplementary chapters (xvii. 6; xviii. 1; xix. 1; xxi. 25), which form a perfectly separable portion of the book, composing in fact two appendices, which may have been written, and probably were written, subsequently to the continuous history of which the book is mainly composed. Whatever weight, therefore, belongs to this argument pertains only to this portion, and may not be extended to the entire book. That the substantial history of the book could not have been written later-however much earlier than the expulsion of the Jebusites from Jerusalem, towards the beginning of David's reign (2 Sam. v. 6), is shewn by the fact that the author expressly describes Jerusalem as being, at the time he wrote, in the possession of the Jebusites. (ch. i. 21.) So also in 2 Sam. xi. 21, there is a distinct reference to a fact recorded in Judges ix. 53, shewing that the book must have been in existence when the second book of Samuel was produced. Upon the whole, therefore, it would appear that the first portion of Judges could not have been written later than the reign of Saul, or the seven first years of that of David; and as the history itself reaches down to the time of Eli, it cannot be taken back earlier than that, so that the resulting probability would confine the range of the history to the governments of Samuel and Saul-most probably in that of Saul, as the change of the form of government by the election of a king, would supply a motive for the composition of the history of the antecedent circumstances, which had occurred since the death of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him, and the knowledge of which had been preserved in unconnected memorials, registers, poems, and traditions. As Samuel is

VOL. II.

A

1

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