Internal state of Shechem. Anglo-Saxon and Norman long after the Conquest of England, is thrown by this simple and vivid narrative on the like relations of Canaanite and Israelite after the Conquest of Palestine. The supporters of Abimelech, as we have seen, were the native Shechemites— the 'lords' of Shechem, as they are called, by a name especially appropriate to the native races of Canaan. This remnant of the original population, with the adherents gained from amongst the conquerors, had elevated Shechem into a kind of metropolitan dignity amongst the neighbouring towns; who thus formed a religious league, of which the Temple was at Shechem, under the name of Baal-Berith, or Baal of the League. Beth-Millo, Arumah, Thebez, are named as amongst the dependent cities. The Temple itself was a fortress 3 containing the Sacred Treasury.4 Fall of Over this entangled system, Abimelech, the Bramble King, undertook to rule. He himself seems to have lived at one of the lesser towns of the League, Arumah,5 leaving his vicegerent, Zebul, to govern his unruly kinsmen of Shechem. Zebul took advantage of the disorganised state of the country to place troops of banditti along the tops of the neighbouring mountains to plunder the travellers through Central Abimelech. Palestine. It was in the midst of this union of despotism and anarchy that the Feast of the Vintage-chief among the festivals of Palestine-came on with the usual religious pomp and merriment with which it was celebrated in the Jewish Church during the Feast of Tabernacles; but at Shechem, in the precincts of the God of the League. In a population thus excited, the words of a native Shechemite fell with still greater force than those of Abimelech himself at the commencement 7 of what may be called this movement of the oppressed nationality. He pointed out to them that Abimelech 1 Baali-Shechem, translated 'men of 'Shechem.' It is thus used of Jericho. Josh. ii. 4; xxiv. II; and of Uriah the Hittite, 2 Sam. xi. 26. The word elsewhere is only applied to the warriors of Jabesh-Gilead, 2 Sam. xxi. 12; and the ruffians of Gibeah, Judg. xx. 5. (See 6 .6 was but half a kinsman—' Is he rot the son of Jerub-baal? '— and called upon them to choose their own native rulersServe the men of Hamor the father of Shechem; why should " we serve him? ’ Zebul gives the alarm. By three desperate onslaughts the insurrection is quelled. In the first, we see the troops of Abimelech stealing over the mountain tops at break of day, by the well-known terebinth, and by some sacred spot called 'the 'navel of the land.' In the second, the main battle is fought in the wide corn-fields at the opening 1 of the valley of Shechem. This ends in the rout of the native party, now deprived of their chief, and the total destruction of the city of Shechem, to appear no more again till the time of the monarchy. In the third and last conflict, the remnant of the insurgents takes refuge in the lofty tower in the stronghold of the Temple of the League. Not far off was the mountain of Zalmon,2 famous in the winter for its snow, in the summer for its shady forests. Thither the new king, with an energy worthy of his father, led his followers, axe in hand. Like a common woodcutter, he hewed down a bough and threw it over his shoulder. The whole band followed the royal example; and in the smoke and flames kindled round the fortress, the insurgents perished. One other stronghold of the mutiny remained—a similar fortress at Thebez ;3 and there, too, the same expedient was tried. Men and women alike, as at Shechem, were crowded within the tower, and mounted to the top. From this eminence they commanded a full view of the besiegers; and when the fearless king ran close to the gate, to fire it with his own hands, one of the women above seized her opportunity, and dashed upon his head a fragment of a millstone. He fell; but in his fall remembered the dignity of himself and of his race; and, like his next successor in the regal office, invoked the friendly sword of his armour-bearer to give him a soldier's death. In this violent end of a noble house, the nation recognised the Divine Judgment on the murderer of his brothers; in the sweeping destruction of the ancient Shechem, and the conflagration of its famous sanctuary, was recognised no less the fulfilment of the Curse of Jotham.1 The disaster itself passed into a kind of proverb in the military service of Israel, as a warning2 against a near approach to the enemy's walls. With Abimelech expired his first abortive attempt at monarchy. In the obscure rulers who follow, the same tendency is still perceptible. Jair and Ibzan cause their state to descend to the numerous sons of their wives or concubines; and the dignity of Abdon reaches even to his grandsons.3 But the true King of Israel is still far in the distance. 1 Judg. ix. 56, 57. 2 This appears from the repetition of the story, twice over, first by Joab, as what the king would say when he heard of the catastrophe at Rabbah, then by David himself (2 Sam. xi. 21, 23, LXX.). 3 Judg. x. 9; xii. 9-14. LECTURE XVI. JEPHTHAH AND SAMSON. As Gideon is the highest pitch of greatness to which this period reaches, Jephthah and Samson are the lowest points to which it descends. In them, in different forms, the violence of the age breaks out most visibly. I. Jephthah is the wild, lawless freebooter. His irregular birth, in the half-civilised tribes beyond the Jordan, is the key Jephthah. The TransJordanic character of The war springs out of The battle sweeps over note to his life. The whole scene is laid in those pastoral uplands. Not Bethel, or Shiloh, but Mizpeh, the ancient watch-tower which witnessed the parting of Jacob and Laban, is the place of meeting. Ammon, the ancient ally of Israel against Og, is the assailant. the disputes of that first settlement. the whole tract of forest1 from Gilead to the borders of Moab. The quarrel which arises after the battle between the Trans-Jordanic tribe and the proud western Ephraimthe quarrel. ites, is embittered by the recollection of taunts and quarrels, then, no doubt, full of gall and wormwood, now hardly intelligible. 'Fugitives of Ephraim are ye: Gilead is among 'the Ephraimites and among the Manassites.' Was it, as Ewald 2 conjectures, some allusion to the lost history of the days when the half-tribe of Manasseh separated from its Western brethren? If it was, the Gileadites had now their turn'the fugitives of the Ephraimites,' as they are called in evident allusion to the former taunt, are caught in their flight at the 'From Aroer '-to the 'Meadow of the 'Vineyards,' Judg. xi. 33. The intervening links are lost in a hopeless confusion of the text. "Ewald, ii. 419, on Judg. xii. 4. The same sentiment appears in another form, if we adopt the version of the LXX.-'Ye are Gilead in the midst of Ephraim and ' in the midst of Manasseh.' fords of the Jordan, the scene of their victory over the Midianites, and ruthlessly slain. The test put to them was a word of which the very meaning is now doubtful, but which, familiar then from its allusions to the 'harvests' or 'floods' of Palestine, has revived in the warfare of Christian controversyShibboleth. Many a party watchword, many a theoShibboleth. logical test, has had no better origin than this difference of pronunciation between the two rough tribes, which has thus appropriately become the type and likeness of all of them. In the savage taunt of Jephthah to the Ephraimites, compared with the mild reply of Gideon to the same insolent tribe, we have a measure of the inferiority of Eastern to Western Palestine-of the degree to which Jephthah sank below his age, and Gideon rose above it. But in his own country, as well as in the Church at large, it is the other part of Jephthah's story which has been most keenly remembered. The fatal The Vow. vow at the battle of Aroer belongs naturally to the spasmodic efforts of the age; like the vows of Samson or Saul in the Jewish Church of this period, or of Clovis or Bruno in the Middle Ages. But its literal execution could hardly have taken place had it been undertaken by any one more under the moral restraints even of that lawless age than the freebooter Jephthah, nor in any other part of the Holy Land than that separated by the Jordan valley from the more regular institutions of the country. Moab and Ammon, the neighbouring tribes to Jephthah's native country, were the parts of Palestine where human sacrifice lingered longest. It was the first thought of Balak 2 in the extremity of his terror; it was the last expedient of Balak's successor in the war with Jehoshaphat.3 Moloch, to whom even before they entered Palestine the Israelites had offered human sacrifices, and who is always spoken of as the deity who was thus honoured, was especially the God of Ammon. It is but natural that a desperate soldier like Jephthah, breathing the same atmosphere, physical and social, should make the same vow, and, having made it, adhere 32 Kings iii. 27. 1 Both explanations are given of Shibboleth. Judg. xii. 6. 4 2 Micah vi. 7. |