Lecture XIII: Israel Under the Judges (part 1)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
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 deliverance from Egypt. We have seen
them become the depositories 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 es-
pecially invite our critical and historical inquiries.
Other portions of Scripture may be more profitable
"for doctrine, for correction, for reproof, for instruc-
tion in righteousness;" but for merely human inter-
est — for the lively touches of ancient manners — for
the succession of romantic incidents — for the con-
sciousness that we are living face to face with the per-
sons described — for the tragical pathos of events and
characters — there is nothing like the history of the
Judges from Othniel to Eli. No portion of the Hebrew
Scriptures, whether by its actual date or by the vivid-
ness of its representations, brings us so near to the
times described; and on none has more light been
thrown by the German scholar, to whose investiga-
tions we owe so much in the study of the Older Dis-
pensation. It would seem, if one may venture to sy
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 recognizing 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 agents reaches
so nearly to the Divine, that we may, if we choose,
almost forget that we are reading of men of like pas-
sions with ourselves. But in the history of the Judges,
the whole tenor of the book, especially of its conclud-
ing chapters, renders this forgetfulness impossible. The
angles and roughnesses of the sacred narrative, which
elsewhere we endeavor to smooth down into one uni-
form level, here start out from the surface too visibly
to be overlooked by the superficial observer. Like
the rugged rock which, to this day breaks the plat-
form of the Temple area at Jerusalem, and reminds us
of the bare natural features of the mountain that must
have protruded themselves into the midst of the mag-
nificence of Solomon, — so the Book of Judges recalls
our thoughts from the ideal, which we image 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 irregu-
larities, 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, 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 what was right in his own eyes."
This sentence, thus frequently and earnestly repeated,
is the key-note of the whole book. It expresses the
freedom, the freshness, the independence, — the license,
the anarchy, the disorder, of the period. It tells us
that we are in a period of transition, gradually draw-
ing 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 to Beersheba." But meantime the dark and
bright sides of 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." Never
was there a better instance than in these two al-
ternate sentences, ten times repeated, that we need
not pronounce any age entirely bad or entirely good.
I. First, then, look at the outward relations of the
country. The Conquest was over, but the up-
heavings of the conquered population still con-
tinued. The ancient inhabitants, like the Saxons un-
der the Normans, still retained their hold on large
tracts, or on important positions throughout the coun-
try. The neighboring powers still looked on the new-
comers as easy prey to incursion and devastation
if not to actual subjugation. Against these enemies,
both from without and 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 insur-
gents against the Romans. A glance at the first
chapter of the Book of Judges will show in a mo-
ment the motley, parti-colored character which Pales-
tine must have presented afer the death of Joshua.
Nearly the whole of the sea-coast, all the strongholds
in the rich plains 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 contention, a natural field of battle. Or
look at the relations of conquerors and conquered as
they appear in the story of Abimelech. The insur-
rection, which was nearly successful, of the an-
cient 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 gov-
ernment oftener fallen into worthless hands. Or look
at the migration of the sons of Dan. It is like the
story of the whole nation epitomized over again in
the portion of a single tribe. "In those days the
tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to
dwell in." 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, like a sec-
ond Gilgal, and they track the Jordan to its source,
and, in the secluded corner under Mount Hermon, fall
on the easternmost of the Phœnician colonies, and es-
tablish 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 Peo-
ple was left to work its way. First, they re-
pel 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, under
Deborah and Barak, they encounter the final rising
of the Canaanites. The battle of Merom is repeated
over again by the waters of Megiddo. In that cen-
tral conflict of the period, Israel and Canaan met to-
gether for 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 pro-
duces. Finally, they are brought into collision with
the new enemies, — the race of strangers, — who, as it
would seem, had barely settled in Palestine at the
time of the first conquest, — the "Philistines," — and
amidst the death-struggle with them under Samson,
Eli, and Samuel, ends this period of the history.
It was a hard discipline; it must have checked the
progress of arts, of civilization, 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 succes-
sion 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 of the wars of Canaan; only that the
generation of Israel might know to teach them war,
at the least such as before knew nothing thereof."
Without this discipline, they might have sunk into
mere Phœnecian settlements, like the "people of Laish,
dwelling 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 any-
thing that is in the earth." Like their Phœnician
neighbors, like their own descendants in later times,
they might have become a mere nation of merchants:
"Dan would have abode in h is ships, and Asher would
have remained in his creeks by the sea-shore," and
not "a shield or a 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 jeopardize 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 coul-
ters, their mattocks, and their goads;" and Shamgar,
the son of Anath, came with his rude ox-goad, and
Samson with his quaint devices, — the jawbone of an
ass, and the firebrands at the tails of jackals, — devas-
tating the country of their enemies.
II. But it is chiefly in their internal relations that
this transnational state appears. "there was no king
in Israel," no fixed capital, no fixed sanctuary, no
fixed government. It was a heptarchy, a dodecarchy,
of which the supremacy passed, as in the early ages
of our own country, first to one tribe and then to
another.
Even in a religious point of view, now one, now
another place presents itself as the rallying-
point of the nation. The sacred solitary palm-
tree was the spot to which at one time the children
of Israel came up for judgment. Another was the
sanctuary of Micah, visited as an oracle by wandering
travellers and pilgrims. A third was the greensward
on the broad summit of Tabor, the gathering-place
of the northern tribes. A fourth was the little capi-
tal of the northern Dan, already mentioned, beside
the sources of the Jordan. Doubtless amidst all these
variations, the national feeling still turned chiefly to
two spots, the old primeval stone or structure called
"the House of God" — "Bethel;" the other, the
modern sanctuary of Shiloh, set up by Joshua. But
even these were tokens of division and independence.
At the close of the period, the High Priesthood, the
one great office which had been bequeathed by the
Mosaic age, appears at Shiloh. But in its earlier
years, we find it established at Bethel, and the
Ark itself, as if suffering in the general disintegra-
tion of the people, reposed not within the sacred
tent of Shiloh, but within the primitive sanctuary
of Bethel.
In like manner, no one tribe exercises undisputed
preëminence. Ephraim, on the whole, retains the
primacy, but not exclusively. Judah, after the death
of Othniel, disappears almost entirely. "There was
no king in Israel," there was no succession of Proph-
ets. Long blanks occur in the history, of which we
know nothing. From time to time deliverers were
raised up, as occasion called, and the Spirit
of the Lord came upon them, and again, on
their death, the central bond was broken, and the
thread of history is lost. The office, which gives its
name to the period, well describes it. It was occasion-
al, irregular, uncertain, yet gradually tending to fixed-
ness and perpetuity. Its title is itself expressive. The
Ruler was not regal, but he was more than the mere
head of a tribe, or the mere judge of special cases.
We have to seek for the origin of the name not
amongst the Sheiks of the Arabian desert, but amongst
the civilized settlements of Phœnicia. Shofet — Sho-
fetim, the Hebrew word which we translate "Judge,"
is the same as we find in the "Suffes," "Suffetes,"
of the Carthaginian rulers at the time of the Punic
Wars. As afterwards the office of "king" was taken
from the nations round about, so now if not the
office, at least the name of "judge" or "shofet,"
seems to have been drawn from the Canaanitish cities
with which for the first time Israel came into contact.
It is the first trace of the influence of the Syrian
usages on the fortunes of the Chosen People, the first-
fruits of the Pagan inheritance to which the Jewish
and the Christian Church has succeeded. Gradually
the office so formed consolidates itself. Of Othniel,
Ehud, and Shamgar, we know not whether they ruled
beyond the limits of the special crisis which called
them forth. But in Deborah and Gideon we see the
indications of a rule for life. In Gideon, we find the
attempt at a regular monarchy in his lifetime, and for-
mally revived, after his death, by his son Abimelech.
In the succession of obscure rulers who follow, the
hereditary principle has established itself. Sons and
grandsons inherit, if not the power, at least the pomp
and state of their father and grandfather. And,
finally, the two offices, which in earlier years of
this period had remained distinct, — the High Priest
and the Judge, — were united in the person of Eli;
and Samuel, who acted as the interpreter between
the old and the new order of his people, had actu-
ally transmitted the office by hereditary succession
to his sons, and they for the first time appear exer-
cising those "judicial" functions which alone are
expressed in the modern translation of Shophet into
"Judge."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture XIII: Israel Under the Judges.
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 315-323
Posted Apr 12, 2018, 12:27 PM UTC · edited
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