Lecture XIII: Israel Under the Judges (part 3)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
V. "And now" (if I may venture for a moment to
use the language of the sacred book which in the
New Testament has thrown itself with the greatest ar-
dor and sympathy into this troubled period), "what
shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell
of Gideon and Barak, and of Samson and of Jeph-
thah."
Reserving the detail, let me say thus much by
way of prelude to all these characters. I have
dwelt on the unsettled, transitory, unequal
state of the time in which they lived, because only
in the light of that time can they be fairly considered.
Mixed characters they are, as almost all the charac-
ters in Scripture are — but in them the ingredients
are mixed more closely, more strongly than in any
others, in proportion to the mixed character of the
period which produced them. It is this which gives
to the narrative of the Book of Judges its peculiar
charm. And, though as I have said, it stands, by
its own confession, on a lower moral level than other
portions of the Sacred record, although it portrays a
time when "every man did what was right in his
own eyes," and when "the children of Israel did
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord," yet
there is in this very circumstance a lesson which we
should sorely miss if it were lost to us. It represents
a period of ecclesiastical history, with all the check-
ered colors of real life. It gives a play to those nat-
ural qualities which, though not strictly religious, are
yet too noble, too lively, too attractive, to be over-
looked in any true, and therefore (in the highest
sense) any religious view of the world. We cannot
pretend to say that Samson and Jephthah, hardly
that Gideon or Barak, are characters which we should
have selected as devout men, as servants of God. We
should, at least if we had met with them in another
history, have regarded them as wild freebooters, as
stern chieftains, at best as high-minded patriots. They
are bursting with passion, they are stained by revenge,
they are alternately lax and superstitious. Their vir-
tues are of the rough kind, which make them sub-
jects of personal or poetic interest rather than of
sober edification; their words are remarkable, not so
much for devotion or wisdom, as for a burning en-
thusiasm, like the song of Deborah; for a chivalrous
frankness, as in the acts of Phinehas and Jephthah;
for a ready presence of mind, as in the movements
of Gideon; for a primitive and racy humor, as in the
repartees of Samson. Yet these characters are with-
out hesitation ranked among the lights of the Chosen
People: the world's heroes are fearlessly enrolled
amongst God's heroes; the men in whom we should
be inclined to recognize only the strong arm which
defends us, and the rough wit which amuses us, —
are described as "raised up by God." No modern
theory of "inspiration" checks the sacred writers in
speaking of "the Spirit of the Lord" as "clothing"
Gideon as with a mantle for his enterprise, as "de-
scending" upon Othniel and Jephthah for their wars,
as "striking" the soul of Samson like a bell or drum,
or as "rushing" upon him with irresistible force for
his heroic deeds. In a lower degree, doubtless, and
mingled with many infirmities, the wild chiefs of this
stormy epoch, with their Phœnician titles, their Bed-
ouin lives, and their "muscular" religion, partook of
the same Spirit which inspired Moses and Joshua be-
fore them, and David and Isaiah after them. The
imperfection of their characters, the disorder of their
times, set forth the more clearly the one redeeming
element of thrust in God that lurked in each of them,
and, through them, kept alive the national existence.
"By faith," as the author of the Epistle to the He-
brews is not afraid to say, they, too, in their uncon-
scious energy "subdued kingdoms . . . . obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions . . . . es-
caped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were
made string, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight
the armies of the aliens."
Such an acknowledgement of these characters is a
double boon. Nothing should be lamented, nothing
should be despised, which brings within the range of
our religious sympathy, within the sanction of Reve-
lation, qualities and incidents which in common life
we cannot help admiring, which history and common
sense command us to admire, but which yet, from our
narrow construction of God's Providence, we are afraid
to recognize in our theological or ecclesiastical systems.
We gain by being made at one with ourselves: Scrip-
ture gains by being made at one with us. Had the
history of the Chosen People been framed on the
principle of many a later history of the Church, who
can doubt that these inestimable touches of human
life and character would have been altogether lost to
us? How would Samson have fared with Milner? to
what would Deborah have been reduced in the refined
speculations of Neander?
And there is yet further affinity between us and
them, which the Sacred history impresses upon
us. It is not the case that, in this period, we
see for the first time, and more distinctly than
elsewhere, that the approximation which is developed, ir-
regularly, obscurely, but still perceptibly, as time goes
on, between some elements of the Hebrew character
and those of the western and European world? It is
a matter which must be stated carefully and cautiously,
lest we seem to encourage the extravagant theories
which, on the right hand and on the left, have beset
every such view of the question. But the very fact
of such theories having arisen implies a common
ground, which is really a matter of solid interest and
instruction. Few, if any, will now maintain the hy-
pothesis of our old divines of the last century, that the
stories of Iphigenia and Idomeneus are stolen from the
story of Jephthah's daughter, or the labors of Hercules
from the labors of Samson; few, if any, will now main-
tain, with some Germans of the last generation, the
reverse hypothesis that Samson and Jephthah are
mere copies of Hercules and Agamemnon. But the
resemblance between the two sets of incidents is an
undoubted indication that there was something in the
Hebrew race which did more readily produce incidents
and characters, if we may use the expression, of a
classical, western, Grecian type, than we find in any
other branch of the Semitic, we might almost add, of
the Oriental world. It is a likeness, which, as I have
said, goes on increasing from this time forward. It
is as if, from the moment that the tribes of Israel
caught sight of the Mediterranean waters, — of the
ships of Chittim, — of the isles of the sea, — the spirit
of the West began to be mingled with the spirit of
their native East, and they began to assume that
position in the world which none have occupied
except the inhabitants of Palestine, — links between
Asia and Europe, between Shem and Japhet, be-
tween the immovable repose of the Oriental, and
the endless activity and freedom of the Occidental
world.
We may, as we read the story of the Judges, feel
that the sacred characters are gradually drawing
nearer to us, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone.
The figures of speech which they use are familiar to
us in the imagery of our own West. In the parable
of Jotham — the earliest known fable — we fall upon
the first instance of that peculiar kind of composition,
in which the Eastern and Western imagination coin-
cide. The fables of Æsop are alike Grecian and Indian.
The fable of Jotham might, as far as its spirit goes,
have been spoken in the market-place of Athens or
of Rome as appropriately as on the height of Gerizim.
Of the classical elements in the stories of Jephthah
and Samson we shall have to speak in detail. In the
case of Samson specially, the classical tendency has
been put to the severest conceivable test, for it has
been chosen by the most classical of all English poets
as the framework of a drama, which, even after
all that has been done since in our day for fin-
ished imitations of the Grecian style, with Grecian
scenery and Grecian mythology for their basis, must
yet be considered the most perfect likeness of
an ancient tragedy that modern literature has pro-
duced.
VI. Finally, there is, perhaps, no period of the Jew-
ish history which so directly illustrates a cor-
responding period of Christian history. It is,
no doubt, a grave error, both in taste and in
religion, to institute a too close comparison between
sacred history and common history. There is a bar-
rier between them which, with all their points of
resemblance, cannot be overleaped. But we are ex-
pressly told that the things which "were written
aforetime" "happened to them for ensamples," that
they were "written for our admonition, upon whom
the ends of the world are come." If so, we cannot
safely decline to recognize the undoubted likenesses
of ourselves and of our forefathers which those ex-
amples contain. And, in this case, I know not where
we shall find a better guide to conduct us, with a
judgement at once just and tender, through the med-
iæval portion of Christian ecclesiastical history, than
the sacred record of the corresponding period of the
history of the Judges. The knowledge of each period
reacts upon our knowledge of the other. The diffi-
culties of each mutually explain the other. We can-
not be in a better position for defending mediæval
Christianity against the indiscriminate attacks of one-
sided Puritanical writers, than by pointing to its coun-
terpart in the Sacred record. We cannot wish for a
better proof of the general truth and fidelity of this
part of the Biblical narrative, than by observing its
exact accordance with the manners and feelings of
Christendom under analogous circumstances. We need
only claim for the doubtful acts of Jephthah and of
Jael the same verdict that philosophical historians
have pronounced on the like actions of Popes and
Crusaders, — a judgment to be measured not by our
age, but by theirs, not by the light of full Christian
civilization, but by the license of a time when "every
man did what was right in his own eyes," — and
when the maxim of them of the old time still prevailed
over every other consideration, — "Thou shalt love
thy neighbor and hate thine enemy." We need only
claim for the Middle Ages the same favorable hearing
which religious men of all persuasions are willing to
extend to the Judges of Israel. The difficulty which
uneducated or half-educated classes of men find in
rightly judging, or even rightly conceiving, of a state
of morals and religion different from their own, is one
of the main obstacles to a general diffusion of com-
prehensive and tolerant views of past history. What
we want is some common ground, on which the poor
and unlearned can witness the application of such
views no less than the highly cultivated. Such a
ground is furnished by many parts of the sacred nar-
rative; but by none so much as the Book of Judges.
If we urge that the Middle Ages must be judged by an-
other standard than our own; that the excesses which
are now universally condemned were then united with
high and noble aspirations; to half the world we shall
be saying words without meaning. But if we can
show that the very same variation of judgment is al-
lowed and enforced in the sacred and familiar instance
of the Judges, we shall, at any rate, have a chance of
being heard. Here, as elsewhere, the Bible will dis-
charge its proper function of being the one book of all
classes, — the one history and literature in which rich
and poor can meet together and understand each other.
These resemblances between the mediæval history
of the Jewish Church and the mediæval history of
the Christian Church are seen at every turn, and
perhaps more felt than seen. Take any scene, almost
at random, from this period; and, but for the names
and Eastern coloring, it might be from the tenth or
twelfth century. The house of Micah and his Levite
set forth the exact likeness of the feudal castle and
feudal chieftain of our early civilization. The Danites,
eager to secure to their enterprise the sanction of a
sacred personage and of sacred images, are the fore-
runners of that strange mixture of faith and super-
stition, which prompted in the Middle Ages so many
pious thefts of relics, so many extortions of unwilling
benedictions. The Levite bribed by the promise of
a higher office is, as we have already observed, the
likeness of the faithless guardian of a venerated shrine
tempted by the vacant Abbacy in some neighboring
monastery to betray the sacred treasure committed
to him. In Micah and his armed men pursuing their
lost teraphim, and repulsed with rough taunts by the
stronger band, we read the victory obtained by the suc-
cessful relic-stealers over their less ready or less pow-
erful rivals. The whole story of the Benjamite war
has been introduced as a mediæval tale into a cele-
brated historical romance, perhaps with questionable
propriety, but in such exact conformity to the cos-
tume and fashion of the time, as to furnish of itself
a proof of the graphic faithfulness of the sacred nar-
rative, which could lend itself so readily to the meta-
morphosis. The summons of the tribes by the bones
of the murdered victim, and of the slaughtered ani-
mal, is the same as the summons of the Highland
clans by the fiery cross dipped in blood. The vows
of monastic life, the vows of celibacy, the vows of
pilgrimage, which exercise so large an influence over
mediæval life, have their prototypes in the vows al-
ready noticed in the early struggles of Israel — the
same excuses, the same evils, and many of the same
advantages. The insecurity of communication — the
danger of violence by night — is the same in both
periods. The very roads fall, if one may so say, into
the same track. "The highway becomes unoccupied
and the travelers," alike in Judæa and in England
"walk along the by-ways," under the skirt of the
hills and through the dark lanes which may screen
them from notice. We are struck at Ascalon and in
the plains of Philistia by finding the localities equally
connected with the history of Richard Cœur-de-Lion
and of Samson; but they are, in fact, united by moral
and historical, far more than by mere local, coin-
cidences. In both ages there is the same long cru-
sade against the unbelievers. The Moors in Spain,
the Tartars in Russia, play the very same part as the
Canaanites and Philistines in Palestine. The caves of
Palestine furnish the same refuge as the caves of As-
turias. Priests and Levites wander to and fro over
Palestine: mendicant friars and sellers of indulgences
over Europe. Hophni and Phinehas become at Shiloh
the prototypes of the bloated pluralists of the Mediæ-
val Church of Europe. "In those days there was no
king in Israel," there was no settled government in
Christendom, — all things were as yet in chaos and
confusion. Yet the germs of a better life were
everywhere at work. In the one, the Judge, as we
have seen was gradually blending into the hereditary
King. In the other, the feudal chief was gradually
passing into the constitutional sovereign. The youth
of Samuel, the childhood of David, were nursed under
this wild system. The schools of the prophets, the
universities of Christendom, owe their first impulse to
this first period of Jewish and Christian History.
The age of the Psalmists and Prophets was an im-
mense advance upon the age of the Judges. Yet Psalm-
ists and Prophets look back with exultation and delight
to the day when the rod of the oppressor was broken,
when the hosts of Sisera perished at Endor, when
Zeba and Zalmunna were swept away as the stubble
before the wind. Our age is an immense advance
upon the age of chivalry and the Crusaders; but it
is well, from time to time, to be reminded that there
are virtues in chivalry and in barbarism, as well as in
reason and civilization; and the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews has taught us that even the most
imperfect of the champions of ancient times may be
ranked in the cloud of the witnesses of faith, —
"God having provided better things for us, that
they without us might not be made perfect."
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. 338-347
Posted Apr 13, 2018, 8:20 PM UTC
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