43. B.C. 1426 to 1285

B.C. 1426 to 1285

Chapter III

Timeline View:

1. We now enter upon the time of the Judges, a period of 331 years, (1426 to 1095 b.c.), during which we shall find the Hebrew nation afflicted or prosperous, in proportion to their neglect or observance of the conditions of their covenant with their Divine King. When they turned from God, and worshipped idols, He humbled them before their enemies, by whom they were subjected to the yoke of bondage; and when at length, in their misery, they repented and turned to God, he sent them deliverers, named “Judges,” under whom they continued prosperous, until they sinned again, when they were again punished.

2. During the generation which had taken the covenant under Joshua, idolatry, although it had never been wholly eradicated, was never allowed to predominate in the nation. Soon, however, the idols of Canaan began to receive that homage which had formerly been given to those of Mesopotamia and Egypt. This increasing tendency to idolatry arose from the continued remissness of the Israelites in their conduct towards the Canaanites. Only a few tribes made war upon them, and these soon grew weary of the contest. In most cases where they had the ascendency, they were content to hold the Canaanites under tribute, although this had been forbidden by an express law; and their intercourse becoming gradually more intimate, they engaged in affairs of commerce, and intermarried with the native inhabitants.

3. Joshua has been blamed by some for not asking permission to appoint a successor in the government; but his office was one in which no successor was needed. He was a military commander, not a civil governor. The Lord himself, enthroned in the Tabernacle, was the political and civil, as well as the religious, head of the nation; and there were established means of obtaining the commands of the Divine King on all questions that could arise, through the instrumentality of his chief minister, the high-priest. In those days the functions of general government were so simple that this theocratical institution contained every element of stability and safety, had its principles and advantages been properly understood by the people. The administration of justice among them had been well provided for; the business of public instruction was in the hands of the Levites, in their several cities; and the internal concerns of the several tribes were sufficiently cared for by their own patriarchal or family chiefs and elders.

4. The only military operations of any note shortly after the death of Joshua, consisted in the endeavours of the tribe of Judah, assisted by Simeon, to get full possession of its territory. In this it seems to have succeeded generally; but it was unable to expel the Jebusites from the strong fortress which formed the upper town of Jerusalem. In one action against Adoni-bezek, in Bezek, ten thousand Canaanites were slain, and the king was taken prisoner. His thumbs and great toes were cut off, in retribution for the manner in which he had been wont to treat his own captives; for he himself declared that seventy kings, whose thumbs and great toes be had cut off, gathered their bread under his table.

5. The high-priest Eleazer did not long outlive Joshua, and he was succeeded by his son Phinehas. Early in his administration, “the angel of the Lord,” who had appeared to Joshua at Gilgal, again appeared to the people when assembled before the tabernacle at Shiloh, and, having solemnly reprehended their conduct with regard to the Canaanites, threatened no longer to vouchsafe Almighty power for their expulsion, but to leave the remainder of the Canaanites for a test and trial of their faithfulness. This authoritative rebuke produced some effect, and moved them to such cries and tears as caused the place to be called Bochim (weepers).

6. But the impression produced was of short duration. The last five chapters of the book of Judges relate events which belong to the time of Phinehas, and give a melancholy view of the moral condition of the nation at this period. The tribe of Dan being pressed for room in its southern allotment, and being unable to get possession of the portions of territory which were successfully defended by the Canaanites, sent out a portion of its members to seek for a situation where they might more easily form a settlement. This they found near the source of the Jordan, where they took the town of Leshem or Laish from the inhabitants, who were living in security, and changed its name to Daniel—under which name it is often celebrated as the most northerly town of Palestine in the popular phrase, “from Dan (in the north) to Beersheba (in the south),” which described the whole length of the land. On this occasion a modified system of idolatry was introduced into this tribe. The depravity of the inhabitants of the Benjamite city of Gibeah, and the grievous maltreatment of a Levite and his wife, roused the other tribes to warlike operations, on the refusal of the Benjamites to give up the offenders. This infatuated tribe had some success in the first and second actions; but in a third, their reverse was so complete, and the ensuing carnage so dreadful, that the tribe was nearly exterminated, and never wholly recovered the blow, but ever after remained the smallest tribe in Israel.

7. To punish the disorders, which these circumstances illustrate rather than describe, the Lord in his anger brought the nation into subjection to a distant and unexpected enemy, Chushan Rishathaim, a king from beyond the Euphrates, who kept the Israelites under severe tributary bondage for eight years. At the end of that time they turned to the Divine King against whom they had so grievously revolted; and he moved Othniel, the nephew of Caleb, to act for their deliverance After some desultory warfare, a general action was fought, in which the complete victory of the Israelites effected their deliverance from the Mesopotamian yoke. After this, Othniel, as “judge” or regent for the Divine King, directed the foreign and military policy of southern Israel for forty years, during which time the people continued true to their allegiance, and dwelt in peace.

8. On his death, the Israelites again returned to their idolatrous practices, and were punished by their jealous neighbors and relatives, the Moabites, who, finding the chosen people not invincible, ventured a battle, and, being victorious, reduced to subjection the tribes beyond Jordan, and, at length, also the southern tribes on this side the river. Eglon, the king, then fixed his residence at Jericho, as the best means of establishing his power, by controlling the communications of the tribes which the river separated. The Hebrews were kept under tribute for eighteen years; at the expiration of which, one of the tribute-bearers, Ehud of Benjamin, secretly slew the king, whose death struck the Moabites with such consternation, that the Israelites were enabled, under the conduct of Ehud, to shake off their yoke. This man’s deed was murder; but in the East, such acts are considered a sanctioned by public objects and successful results.

9. The victory over the Moabites was followed by. a repose of eighty years, at the end of which the Philistines first invaded the land of Judah. But their force was encountered by a body of husbandmen, under the conduct of Shamgar, who, although armed only with the instruments which they employed in goading their oxen,[*] them with great slaughter. If Shamgar, in consequence of this victory, became judge in southern Israel, it does not appear that he lived long to enjoy that honor.

[*] These ox-goads, which are still used in the East, were good substitutes for spears. They are often eight feet long, armed at one end with a sharp point, for goading the oxen and at the other with a kind of spade or paddle for clearing the plow of clay, etc. repelled

10. In the 200 years which had elapsed since their discomfiture by Joshua, the northern Canaanites had gradually recovered such power as enabled them to form another confederacy against the Israelites, headed by Jabin, king of Hazor. He had at his disposal a large army, comprehending 900 iron-armed chariots of war, which the Israelites regarded with peculiar dread. With such a force, commanded by Sisera, one of the ablest generals of that age, he grievously oppressed the northern tribes for twenty years; and his yoke appears to have been more intolerable than any which they had previously sustained. At the end of that time, Deborah, a prophetess of Mount Ephraim, was moved by a Divine impulse to exhort Barak, of the tribe of Naphtali, to undertake the deliverance of the afflicted tribes. With some reluctance he accepted the call, on condition that she went with him. He assembled 10,000 men, near Mount Tabor, with whom, confiding in God, he gave battle to the numerous hosts of Jabin in the plain of Esdraelon. The Canaanites were completely routed; and a sudden inundation of the river Kishon swept away great numbers of the fugitives. Sisera found refuge in the tent of a pastoral chief, a Kenite, named Heber, whose wife Jael offered him hospitality and protection; but while be slept, she treacherously slew him, by driving a tent-pin through his temples, and nailing his head to the ground. This great victory was celebrated by Deborah in a song of thanksgiving, abounding in the richest ornaments of sacred oriental poetry. Jdg 4:5.