Lecture XIII: Israel Under the Judges (part 2)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley
III. In connection with this Phœnician origin of
the name of these rulers, other customs, as
might be expected from the near neighbor-
hood, now first appear, in every shade of good and
evil, from the same source. The temptations to idol-
atry are no longer of the same kind as in Mesopo-
tamia, or in Egypt. Two forms of worship rise above
all others, — the two Phœnician deities, Baal
and Astarte, — as seducing the Israelites from
their allegiance, marked everywhere by the image and
altar, or the grove of olive or ilex round the sacred
rock or stone on which the altar was erected. Relics
of such worship continued long afterwards in the
names, probably derived from this period, both of
places and persons. Everywhere throughout the land
lingered the traces of the old idolatrous sanctuaries,
— Baal-Gad, Baal-Hermon, Baal-Tamar, Baal-Hazor,
Baal-Judah, Baal-Meon, Baal-Perazim, Baal-Shalisha,
like the memorials of Saxon heathenism, or of medi-
æval superstition, which furnish the nomenclature of so
many spots in our own country. And even in fam-
ilies, as in that of Saul, we find that the title of the
Phœnician god appears, as in the names so common
in Tyre and Carthage, — Maherbal, Hannibal, Asdrubal.
But the most distinct and peculiar mark of the
Phœnician worship at this time — and not un-
naturally adopted in the license given to
every form of independent organization and
association — is that of cities congregated in leagues
round such a temple of Baal, hence called Baal Be-
rith, "Baal of the League;" as in the combination
of Tyre, Sidon, and Arvad to found Tripolis, as in
the Carthaginian settlements which in Sicily formed
themselves round the Temple of Astarte at Eryx, as
in the Canaanitish League of Gibeon. The chief in-
stance of it is the League of Shechem and Thebez
round the Temple of the League at Shechem, under
the half-Canaanite king Abimelech, the first organized
form of Canaanite polity and worship within the pre-
cincts of Israel.
Another practice, which falls in with the wild
usages of the time, has also a direct affinity
with Phœnician customs, — the frequent use
of vows. One memorable instance of a Phœnician
vow has been handed down to us, so solemn in its
origin, so grand in its consequences, that even the
vows of the most sacred ages need not fear compari-
son with it. The impulse from his early oath which
nerved the courage and patriotism of Hannibal from
childhood to age, in his warfare against Rome, may
well be taken as an illustration of the feeling which,
in its highest and noblest forms, led to consecra-
tion of Samson and Samuel, and in its unauthorized
excesses, to the rash vows, of the whole nation
against the tribe of Benjamin, of Jephthah against
his daughter, of Saul against Jonathan. These spas-
modic efforts after self-restraint are precisely what
we should expect in an age which had no other
mode of steadying its purpose amidst the general
anarchy in which it was enveloped, and accordingly
in that age they first appear, and within its limits
expire.
IV. But whatever traces there may be of foreign
influence, the heart of the people and their
manners remained essentially Israelite, and
the disorders of the time breathe always the air
rather of the desert than of the city. We see the
princes and the judges riding in state on their asses,
the asses of the Bedouin tribe, abhorred of Egypt.
"Speak, ye that ride on she-asses, dappled with
white," is the address of Deborah to the victorious
chiefs returning from battle. The thirty sons of Jair
ride on their thirty ass colts, which the play on the
word connects with their thirty cities. As in the
wilderness, the assemblies of the people are still gath-
ered by the fresh springs or the running streams.
"At the places" or "amongst the companies of the
drawing of water, are rehearshed the righteous acts
of the Lord." "By the streams of Reuben are the
divisions and searchings of heart." Tents may still
be seen beside the settled habitations. The Arab
Kenites still linger in the south. A settlement of
the same tribe is planted far north also, under the
ancient oak, called from their encampment "the oak
of the unloading tents," and underneath the tent
of Jael, the wife of Heber, every Bedouin custom was
as purely preserved as in the time of Abraham. The
sanctuary of Shiloh itself was still a tent; or rather,
according to the Rabbinical representations, which
have every appearance of truth, a low structure of
stones with a tent drawn over it, exactly like the
Bedouin village, an intermediate stage between a
mere collection of tents and a fixed precinct of build-
ings. And although a city grew round it, and a
stone gateway rose in front of it, yet it still retained
its name of the "camp of Shiloh;" and the sanctuary
was only known as the "tabernacle or tent that God
had pitched among men."
Accordingly the whole period breathes a primitive
simplicity which peculiarly belongs both to the crimes
and the virtues of this earliest stage of the occupation
of Canaan. The Book of Judges closes with three
pictures, of which the two first, at lest, appear to
have been inserted with the express purpose, so un-
usual in the sacred history, — so unusual, one may
add, in any history, till within the most recent times,
— of giving an insight into what we should call the
state of society in Judea. How precious to us would
be any details of the private life and incidental cus-
toms of Greece or Rome, equal to what are afforded
in the stories of Micah, of the war with Benjamin,
and of Ruth! Though appended to the close of the
book, they form, both by their style and by the actual
order of the events which they relate, its natural
preface.
1. Take the expedition of the Danites. They start,
as we have seen, once more to seek new set-
tlements — they track the Jordan to its source,
and then mark out for their prey the easy
colonists from Sidon in the rich and beautiful seclu-
sion of that loveliest of the scenes of Palestine. It is
the exact likeness of the Frankish and Norman migra-
tions, reopening the path of conquest and discovery,
when it had seemed all closed and ended with the
final settlement of Europe. And still more character-
istic is the incident which is interwoven with their
expedition, and which opens another vista into the
mingled superstition and religion which swayed the
feelings of the time. We are introduced to the house
of Micah, on the ridge of the hills of Ephraim; we
hear the frank disclosure of Micah to his mother, how
he was the thief who had carried off her shekels —
and we see the mother's grateful dedication of her re-
stored property. Their isolation from the central wor-
ship of Palestine soon manifests itself. The house
becomes a castle; and not only a castle, but a temple.
Like the sanctuary of Shiloh itself, it stands
in a court, entered by a spacious gateway.
Round about it gather houses of those who take a
common interest in this worship, and a caravansary
for strangers. Within is a chamber, called "the House
of God," and in this chamber are two silver images,
one sculptured, one molten, clothed in a mask and
priestly mantle, so as to represent as nearly as possi-
ble the Priestly Oracle at Shiloh. And when we in-
quire further into the worship of this little sanctuary,
still stranger scenes disclose themselves. The five
Danite warriors, as they pass by, and lodge in the car-
avansary, are arrested by the sound of a well-known
voice. It is the voice of a Levite of Bethlehem, whom
they had known whilst in their southern settlement.
They ask him, "Who brought thee hither? and what
makest thou in this place? and what hast thou here?"
They ask him, and we, with our precise notions of Le-
vitical ritual, may well ask him too. He tells his own
wild story. He, like them, had been a wanderer for
a better home than he found in the little village of
Bethlehem. He, like them, had halted by the house
of Micah, on the ridge of Ephraim; and the supersti-
tion of Micah and the interest of the Levite combined.
The one, like many a feudal noble, was eager to se-
cure the services and sanction of a regular chaplain
for his new establishment. The other, like many a feu-
dal priest, was willing to secure "ten shekels of silver
by the year, and a suit of apparel, and his victuals."
So the Levite went in, and "was content to dwell with
the man," was unto him as one of his sons; and Mi-
cah consecrated the Levite, and the young man be-
came his priest, and occupied one of the dwellings by
the house of Micah. Then said Micah, "Now know I
that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Le-
vite to my priest."
But as the story unravels itself, still further does it
lead us into the manners and the spirit of the time.
The same feelings which had prompted Micah to
secure the wandering treasure, were shared by the
Danite warriors, who had recognized in him their old
acquaintance. They had received their blessing on their
enterprise as they passed by on their first expedition.
They suggested to their countrymen, on their advance
to accomplish their design, that here was the religious
sanction which alone they needed to render it success-
ful. "Do ye know," they said as they ap-
proached the well-known cluster of houses on
the hill-side — "Do ye know that there is in these
houses an ephod, and teraphim, and a graven image,
and a molten image? Now therefore consider what
ye have to do." In the centre of the settlement rose
the house of Micah, and at its gateway was the dwell-
ing of the Levite. By the gateway the six hundred
armed warriors stood conversing with their ancient
neighbor, whilst the five men stole up the rocky court
and into the little chapel, and fetched away the im-
ages and teraphim and ephod; and, long before they
were discovered, were far along their northern route.
The priest has raised his voice against the theft for a
moment. "What do ye?" But there is a ready bribe.
"Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and
go with us; and be to us a father and a priest: is it
better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one
man, or that thou become priest unto a tribe and
family in Israel?"
"Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth,"
— so almost in the same words was the like bribe offered
by one of the greatest religious houses of England to
the monk who guarded the shrine of one of the most
sacred relics in the adjacent cathedral of Canterbury.
— "Give us the portion of S. Thomas's skull which is
in thy custody, and thou shalt cease to be a simple
monk; thou shalt be Abbot of S. Augustine's." As
Roger accepted the bait in the twelfth century after
the Christian era, so did the Levite of Micah's house
in the fifteenth century before it. "And the priest's
heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the tera-
phim, and the graven image, and went in the midst
of the people." The theft was so adroitly managed,
that the soldiers were far away before Micah and his
neighbors overtook them, and uttered a wail of grief
and rage. The whole neighborhood had a common
interest in the sanctuary; and Micah, in particu-
lar, felt that his importance was gone. "Ye have
taken away my gods which I made, and the priest,
and ye are gone away; and what have I more?"
But they are too strong for him, and they advance
to the easy conquest which gives them their new
home.
In the biography of this one Levite, thus acciden-
tally, as it were, brought into view, we have a sample
of the darker side of his tribe, as brought
out in the curse of Jacob, — "I will divide
them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel," — lending
himself to the highest bidder, to Micah first for ten
shekels a year and food and clothing, to the Danites
afterwards, that he might become a Priest of a tribe
and family in Israel rather than to the house of one
man. He had his reward; he became a Father and
Patriarch to the new commonwealth. Under his aus-
pices on the green hill by the sources of the Jordan
a new sanctuary was established; the graven image
remained there undisturbed during the whole period
of the Judges, "all the time that the House of God
"was in Shiloh;" and he and his sons founded a long
line of Priests, for the same period, "Priests to the
tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the
land." And who was this stranger Levite? this
founder of schismatical worship? Was he of some
obscure family, that might be thought to have escaped
the higher influences of the age? So from the larger
part of the narrative, so from the dexterous alteration
of the text by later copyists in the one passage which
reveals the secret, it might have been inferred. But
that one passage, according to the reading of several
Hebrew manuscripts, and of the Vulgate, and according
to an ancient Jewish tradition, and to the almost cer-
tain conjecture both of Kennicott and of Ewald, tells
us who he was: — "Jonathan, the son of Gershom, —
the son" — not, as we now read, of Manasseh,
but "of Moses." Whether it was from the
general laxity of the time, or from the obscurity which
throughout envelops the family of the great lawgiver,
there can be little doubt that this type of the wander-
ing, ambitious, lawless Priest of this and so many after-
ages, was no less than the grandson of the Prophet
Moses. What Jewish copyists have done here by
endeavoring to change the honored name of Moses
into the hated name of Manasseh, is what has been
often attempted in the later history of the church, by
endeavoring to conceal, or to palliate, the excesses or
errors or irregularities of the inferior successors of
noble predecessors. Let the story of the grandson of
Moses be at once an illustration of the fact, and a
warning to us not to make too much of it. A profli-
gate and heretical Pope in a profligate or heretical
age, a turbulent or timeserving Reformer in a turbu-
lent or timeserving age, are not of such importance
for the succeeding or preceding history, as that we
should be very eager either to conceal or to affirm
the fact of their existence. Each age has its own er-
rors and sins to bear. Jonathan the son of Gershom,
and the long succession of the priesthood which he
transmitted, are indeed illustrative of the time to which
they belonged, are exact likenesses of what has occurred
again and again in like confusions of the Cristian
Church, — but prove nothing beyond themselves, and
need not either be kept out of sight, on the one hand,
or made into standing arguments, on the other hand,
against the Church which, for the time, they repre-
sented.
2. No less characteristic of the good and evil of the
period is the story of the war of the eleven tribes
against their brother Benjamin for the outrage
committed by the inhabitants of Gibeah. Here,
again, is a roving Levite of irregular life.
Every step of his journey shows us a glimpse of the
state of the country. His father-in-law entertains him
with true Arabian hospitality, day after day, night aft-
ter night. Amidst the shadows of the evening, "when
the day is far spent," we see the towers of "Jebus,
which is Jerusalem," still in the hands of the Ca-
naanites. The apprehension of the travellers as they
find themselves overtaken by darkness is exactly that
which still attends the fall of night in any country
where the unsettled state of the government makes
itself felt in robbers and outlaws. Outside the town
of Gibeah, in the open space beneath the walls, on
what in the "Arabian Nights" are so often called
"the mounds," the little band encamps. Then comes
the aged countryman from the fields, and the dark
crime which follows, and the ferocious summons of the
whole people to vengeance by the signal of the di-
vided bones of the outraged woman. Both the atro-
city and the indignation which it excites belong alike
to the primitive stage of a people, when, as the his-
torian observes, tanto acrior apud majores ut virtutibus
gloria, ita flagitiis pœnitentia. There is nothing in later
times like the original outrage. But neither is there
anything in later times like the universal burst of hor-
ror. "We will not any of us go into his tent, neither
will we any of us turn into his house; but now this
shall be the thing which we will do unto Gibeah. . .
. . . according to the folly that we have wrought
in Israel. So all the men of Israel were gathered
together against the city, knit together as one man."
There are many wars in Israel after this, civil and
foreign, but none breathing so ardent a spirit of zeal,
excessive, extravagant zeal it may be, against moral
evil. As in the former story, so here, we meet with
one who had known the old generation. As before it
was the grandson of Moses, so here it is the grandson
of Aaron. But Phinehas the son of Eleazar
was made of sterner and better stuff than Jonathan
the son of Gershom. He was "before the Ark in those
days," and in the fierce, unyielding, yet righteous
desire for vengeance which animated the whole peo-
ple, we seem to see the same spirit which appeared
when, in the matter of Baal-Peor, "Phinehas arose and
executed judgement, and that was counted unto him
for righteousness among all generations for ever
more;" "because he was a zealot for his God, and
brought an atonement for the children of Israel."
And the sudden change of feeling, no less primitive
and natural, the return of compassion towards the
remnant of the Benjamites, is still in accordance with
the only other trait which we know of the character
of the aged Priest. They wept sore and said, "O Lord,
God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel that
there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel?
And the children of Israel repented them for Ben-
jamin their brother." Even so, when for the fancied
offence of the Transjordanic tribes, the rest of the na-
tion with Phinehas at their head had set off to exter-
minate them, the same tender brotherly feeling revived,
when the same Phinehas heard and accepted the ex-
planation of the act. It is the same union of a wild
sense of justice and religion, combined with a keen
sense of national and family union, such as marks an
early age, and an early age only. In the later dis-
sensions of the nation, we find no such hasty vows, no
such measures of sudden and total destruction. But
neither do we find such ready and eager forgiveness,
such frank acknowledgement of error. The early feuds
of nations and churches are more violent, but they are
often less inveterate and malignant than the sectarian-
ism and party-spirit of later years. The one is a fit-
ful frenzy, the other is a chronic disorder. Doubtless
there was something fierce and terrible in the oracles
of the ancient Phinehas, Priest and Warrior in one;
but he was in the end a milder counsellor than the
High Priest who, in the latest days of the nation, in
all the fulness of civilization and of statesmanship,
gave his counsel that "it was expedient that one man
should die for the people, that the whole nation perish
not."
The details of the story agree with its general char-
acter. The resolute determination of the Benjamites
not to give up the guilty city is a trait of the bond
of honor and of clanship which, in an early age, out-
weighs the ties of country and public interests. We
catch here, too, the first glimpse of the romantic, and,
as it were, secret alliance between Jabesh-gilead and
Benjamin. Hence their absence from the fatal mas-
sacre; hence the chase of their maidens for the future
wives of Benjamin; hence, in a later generation, their
application for help to the great chief of the Benja-
mite tribe; hence their fidelity to him after defeat
and death. The remnant of the tribe, entrenched on
the cliff of "the Pomegranate," reveals to us the
fierce daring of the time. The dances in the vineyards
of Shiloh reveal to us its simplicity and tenderness.
3. Thirdly, the story of Ruth (in the ancient edi-
tions of the Hebrew Scriptures always joined
in the Book of Judges) reveals to us a scene
as primitive in its simple repose as the others are in
their violence and disorder. It is one of those quiet
corners of history which are the green spots of all
time, and which appear to become greener and greener
as they recede into the distance. Bethlehem is the
starting-point of this story. as of the two which pre-
ceded, but now under different auspices. We see
amidst the cornfields, whence it derives its name,
"the house of Bread," the beautiful stranger gleaning
the ears of corn after the reapers. We hear the ex-
change of salutations between the reapers and their
master; "Jehovah be with you," "Jehovah bless thee."
We are present at the details of the ancient custom,
which the author of the book describes almost with
the fond regret of modern antiquarianism, as one
which was "the manner of Israel in former times," —
the symbolical transference of the rights of kinsman-
ship by drawing off the sandal. We have the first
record of a solemn nuptial benediction; with the first
direct allusion to the ancient patriarchal traditions of
Rachel and Leah, of Judah and Tamar. And whilst
these touches send us back, as in the two dark stories
which precede this tranquil episode, to the earlier stage
of Israelite existence, there is in this the first germ
of the future hope of the nation. The book of Ruth
is, indeed, the link of connection between the old and
the new. There was rejoicing over the birth of the
child at Bethlehem which Ruth bare to Boaz: "and
Naomi took the child and laid it in her bosom, and
became nurse to it. It would seem as if there
was already a kind of joyous foretaste of the birth
and infancy which, in after-times, was to be forever
associated with the name of Bethlehem. It was the
first appearance on the scene of what may be antici-
pation be called even then the Holy Family, for that
child was Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of
David. Nor is it a mere genealogical connection be-
tween the two generations. The very license and in-
dependence of the age may be said to have been the
means of introducing into the ancestry of David and
of the Messiah an element which else would have
been, humanly speaking, impossible. "An Ammonite
or a Moabite shall not enter into the congregation."
This was the letter of the law, and in the greater
strictness that prevailed after the return from the
captivity, it was rigidly enforced. But in the isolation
of Judah from the rest of Israel, in the doing of
every man what was right in his own eyes, the more
comprehensive spirit of the whole religion overstepped
the letter of a particular enactment. The story of
Ruth has shed a peaceful light over what else would
be the accursed race of Moab. We strain our gaze
to know something of the long line of the purple
hills of Moab, which form the background at once of
the history and of the geography of Palestine. It is
a satisfaction to feel that there is one tender associa-
tion which unites them with the familiar history and
scenery of Judæa, — that from their recesses, across the
deep gulf which separates the two regions, came the
gentle ancestress of David and of the Messiah.
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. 323-338
Posted Apr 12, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC · edited
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