THE JUDGES. Character! period. LECTURE XIII. ISRAEL UNDER THE JUDGES. We are now arrived at the last stage of the first period of the history of the Chosen People. We have seen the nation of slaves turned into a nation of freemen in the deliveristics of the ance from Egypt. We have seen them become the depositaries of a new religion in Mount Sinai. We have seen them in their first flush of conquest in the Promised Land. We have now to see the gradual transition from their primitive state, and to track them through the interval between the death of Joshua and the rise of Samuel-between the establishment of the Sanctuary at Shiloh on the first occupation of the country, and its final overthrow by the Philistines. The characteristics of this period are such as especially invite our critical and historical inquiries. Other portions of Scripture may be more profitable 'for doctrine, for correction, 'for reproof, for instruction in righteousness;' but for merely human interest-for the lively touches of ancient manners, for the succession of romantic incidents, for the consciousness that we are living face to face with the persons described, for the tragical pathos of events and characters-there is nothing like the history of the Judges from Othniel to Eli. Hardly any portion of the Hebrew Scriptures, whether by its actual date or by the vividness of its representations, brings us nearer to the times described; and on none has more light been thrown by the German scholar to whose investigations we owe so much in the study of the Older Dispensation. It would seem, if one may venture to say so, as if the Book of Judges had been left in the Sacred books with the express view of enforcing upon us the necessity, which we are sometimes anxious to evade, of recognising the human, national, let us even add barbarian, element which plays its part in the Sacred history. In other portions of the Hebrew annals, the Divine character of the Revelation is so constantly before us, or the character of the human agent reaches so nearly to the Divine, that we may, if we choose, almost forget that we are reading of men of like passions with ourselves. But, in the history of the Judges, the whole tenor of the book, especially of its concluding chapters, renders this forgetfulness impossible. The angles and roughnesses of the Sacred narrative, which elsewhere we endeavour to smooth down into one uniform level, here start out from the surface too visibly to be overlooked by the most superficial observer. Like the rugged rock which, to this day, breaks the platform of the Temple area at Jerusalem, and reminds us of the bare natural features of the mountain that must have protruded themselves in the midst of the magnificence of Solomon,—so the Book of Judges recalls our thoughts from the ideal which we imagine of past and of sacred ages, and reminds us, by a rude shock, that even in the heart of the Chosen People, even in the next generation after Joshua, there were irregularities, imperfections, excrescences, which it is the glory of the Sacred historian to have recorded faithfully, and which it will be our wisdom no less faithfully to study. 'In those days there was no king in Israel,1 but every man 'did that which was right in his own eyes.' 'In those days 'there was no king in Israel.' 'It came to pass in those days 'when there was no king in Israel.' 'In those days there was 'no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his 'own eyes.' This sentence, thus frequently and earnestly repeated, is the keynote of the whole book. It expresses the freedom, the freshness, the independence-the license, the 'Judg. xvii. 6; xviii. 1; xix. 1; xxi. 25. anarchy, the disorder, of the period. It tells us that we are in a period of transition, gradually drawing near to that time when there will be a 'king in Israel,' when there will be 'peace on 'all sides round about him, Judah and Israel dwelling safely, 'every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan 'unto Beersheba.' But meantime the dark and bright sides of the history shift with a rapidity unknown in the latter times of the story-The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the 'Lord,' and 'The children of Israel cried unto the Lord.'1 Never was there a better instance than in these two alternate sentences, ten times repeated, that we need not pronounce any age entirely bad or entirely good. Outward I. First, then, look at the outward relations of the country. The Conquest was over, but the upheaving of the conquered population still continued. The ancient inhabitants, struggles. like the Saxons under the Normans, still retained their hold on large tracts, or on important positions throughout the country. The neighbouring powers still looked on the new-comers as an easy prey to incursion and devastation, if not to actual subjugation. Against these enemies, both from without and from within, but chiefly from within, a constant struggle had to be maintained; with all the dangers, adventures, and trials incident to such a state-a war of independence such as was not to occur again till the struggle of the Maccabees against the Greek kings, or even of the last insurgents against the Romans. A glance at the first chapter of the Book of Judges will show in a moment the motley, parti-coloured character which Palestine must have presented after the death of Joshua. Nearly the whole of the seacoast,2 all the strongholds in the rich plain of Esdraelon, and in the heart of the country, the invincible fortress of Jebus, were still in the hands of the unbelievers. Every one of these spots was a focus of disaffection, a bone of contenConquest. tion, a natural field of battle. Or look at the relations of conquerors and conquered as they appear in the story Continua tion of the 1 Judg. ii. 4, 11, 18 19; iii. 7, 9, 12, 15; iv. 1, 3; vi. 1, 7 ; x. 6, 10; xiii. 1. of Abimelech. The insurrection, which then was nearly successful, of the ancient Shechemites-the 'sons of Emmor 'the father of Sychem '-reveals the fires which must have been smouldering everywhere throughout the land, and which would have broken out more frequently had the government oftener fallen into worthless hands. Or look at the migration of the sons of Dan. It is like the story of the whole nation epitomised over again in the portion of a single tribe. 'In those 'days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to 'dwell in.' 2 They were still unprovided. Spies were sent forth, as formerly, by Moses and by Joshua. They returned with the account of a land 'very good,' 'a place where there is 'no want of anything;' and their kinsmen follow their guiding. They leave the trace of their encampment on their road,3 like a second Gilgal, and they track the Jordan to its source, and in the secluded corner under Mount Hermon, fall on the easternmost of the Phoenician colonies, and establish themselves in that beautiful and fertile spot, with a sanctuary of their own, and a priesthood of their own, during the whole period of which we are speaking. Slowly, gradually, the dominion of the Chosen People was left to work its way. First, they repel distant invaders from Mesopotamia. This is the special work of the Lion of the tribe of Judah-of the last hero of the old generation. Then, Successive under Deborah and Barak, they encounter the final conflicts. rising of the Canaanites. The battle of Merom is repeated over again by the waters of tral conflict of the period, Israel and the last time face to face in battle. Then follows the most trying invasion to which the country had ever been subjected -the wild Midianite hordes from the desert. How great was the crisis is proved by the greatness of the champion who was called forth to resist it. In Gideon and his family we see the nearest approach to a king that this epoch produces. Finally, they are brought into collision with the new enemies—the race 1 See Lecture XV. 2 Josh. xix. 47; Judg. xviii. 1-31. 5 See Lecture XV. of strangers-who, as it would seem, had barely settled in Palestine at the time of the first conquest-the‘Philistines › 1— and amidst the death-struggle with them under Samson, Eli, and Samuel, ends this period of the history. Military discipline of the nation. It was a hard discipline; it must have checked the progress of arts, of civilisation, of refinement. But it was the fitting school through which they were to pass. It was the formation of the military character of the people. It prepared the way for the inauguration of the new name by which, in the next period of their history, God would be called the Lord of Hosts.' Through a succession of failures, they stumbled into perfection. Amidst these struggles for independence was nourished no less a youth than that of David. 'Therefore the Lord left those nations, without driving 'them out hastily;' to prove 'Israel by them; even as many 'as had not known the wars of Canaan; only that the genera'tions of Israel might know to teach them war, at the least 'such as before knew nothing thereof.' 2 Without this disci pline, they might have sunk into mere Phoenician settlements, like the 'people of Laish, dwelling 3 careless, after the manner 'of the Zidonians, quiet and secure, having no business with any man, in a large land where there was no want of anything that is in the earth.' Like their Phoenician neighbours, like their own descendants in later times, they might have become a mere nation of merchants: Dan would have abode in his 'ships, and Asher would have remained in his creeks by the sea shore,' and not 'a shield or spear would have been seen ' amongst forty thousand in Israel.' But their spirit rose to the emergencies. Faithful tribes, like Zebulun and Naphtali, were always found amongst the faithless, ready to jeopardise their lives for the nation. Reversing the Prophetic visions of an ideal future, their pruning-hooks were turned into spears, and their ploughshares into swords. They had files to sharpen their coulters, their mattocks, and their goads ;' and Shamgar, the son of Anath, came with his rude ox-goad, and 1 See Lecture XVI. 2 Judg. ii. 23; ii. 1, 2. 3 Ibid. xviii. 7-9. 4 1 Sam. xiii. 21. |