Chapter V: The Age of the Judges (3)

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.