length, for the most part. They served Cushan-Rishath for eight years; Eglon for eighteen years; Jabin for tw years. The servitudes increased also in the degree of hum tion. First, they served a distant king; next, a neighbou king; then, a king in Canaan itself. Jabin disarmed t (ch. v. 8), as in 1 Sam. xiii. 22, the Philistines subseque did. It is remarkable that the three nations which brought Israel into bondage, were the same which prove be her scourge in subsequent history-Mesopotamia, Moab, Philistia. The fourth, fifth, and sixth servitudes, namely, t to Midian, Ammon, and the Philistines, rise in progres severity, lasting as they did for seven, eighteen, and forty y respectively.

Peaceful times under the Judges.-At the same time we remember, as Jahn observes (Heb. Commonw.), the book record of the exceptional diseases of the body politic, wi the years of health are passed over in almost total sile The servitudes occupy only 111 years; the time of peac independence, 319 years, if we take the whole period as years. Jair's time is a sample of one of those pead intervals, of which it has been said, a people is then hap when it has the least to record (x. 4). The recurring ph "the land had rest 40-80-40-40 years," is and illustration of the general tranquillity which characterised period of the Judges, notwithstanding the sad interrup which occurred (iii. 11, 30, v. 31, viii. 28). Hence, in coming millennial restoration of Israel, Jehovah pro (Isa. i. 26, compare xxxii. 1), "I will restore thy judges the first," namely, as in Israel's happiest days of the theoc when the Lord Himself was king, and princes rule judgment (Isa. xxxii. 1; compare Matt. xix. 28).

Israel's degeneracy entailed an earthly monarchy.-Bu general decline of Israel rendered the succeeding establish of au earthly king a necessity, for a carnal people who ha the faith to appreciate the blessings of a theocracy: him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken from him." Repeated successive declensions, after fred revivals, degrade the impenitent lower than ever (Mat

Pember (The Great Prophecies) beautifully harmonises Paul's 573 years between the exodus and the building of Temple (Acts xiii. 18-21: 450 under the Judges, 40 in wilderness, 40 under Saul, 40 under David, 3 of Solomon be his beginning the temple building) with 1 Kings vi. 1, wh gives 480, by distinguishing the mystical from the ordin chronology. Paul has the ordinary chronology: 1 Kings v The latter omits the 93 years (exactly: 8 un Cushan Rishathaim; 18 Eglon; 20 Jabin; 7 Midian; 40 Philistines) of God's formal rejection of Israel during the ti of the Judges: 573

This cannot be earlier than the close of that deliverance f the Philistine oppression, which Samson 'began' (ch. xiii. and Samuel completed (1 Sam. vii. 9-14). Again, it before David's taking Zion from the Jebusites (i. 21; 2 San 6); for these dwelt with the Benjamites in Jerusalem d to the time of writing the book of Judges. Zidon oppre

Israel during that period (x. 12), and it was to Zidon that Canaanites then looked for protection (xviii. 7). In Da days on the other hand, Tyre took the lead, and was his instead of being, like Zidon, Israel's enemy. By the time v the book of Judges was composed, Israel had a king, and enjoying a more organised government, as is proved by xviii. 1: "In those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (com xvii. 6, xix. 1). Probably Samuel, or one of the school of prophets, was the writer, in Saul's reign, or early in th David. It was written after the Philistine capture of the and its return and setting up at Nob in Saul's reign (1 xxi.), as appears from ch. xviii. 30, 31: "Until the da the captivity of the land (ie., the captivity of the ark; fo ark was regarded as the very heart of the national theo and its capture as the captivity of the people), they se Micah's image, all the time that the house of God w Shiloh;" the last words brand them with the stigma of per