The early history of the Hebrews

271. The main body of the Kenites, however, who, like ‘the children of Judah,’ had settled in the neighbourhood of Jericho after its capture, moved afterwards into the desert south of Arad (Judg. i. 16; 1 Sam. xv. 6), and lived here along with a portion of the tribe of Judah.

272. Beth-lehem has been supposed to have been the original headquarters of the tribe, as it is called Beth-lehem-Judah (xix. 1). But this was merely to distinguish it from another Beth-lehem in Zebulon.

273. Thus, in a despatch sent to one of the later Assyrian kings, the writer says, ‘I am a dog, a dog of the king his lord’ (Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, iv. p. 460).

274. Josh. xv. 49. In one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets Ebed-Tob of Jerusalem, when referring to the Khabiri or ‘Hebronites,’ speaks of Bit-Sâni, which may be the Kirjath-Sannah of the Old Testament. Winckler (Tell el-Amarna Letters, 185) has given a wrong translation of the passage, which is partly based on an incorrect copy of the text. The translation should be, ‘Behold Gath-Carmel has fallen to Tagi and the men of Gath. He is in Bit-Sâni, and we will bring it about that they give Labai and the land of the Sutê (Bedâwin) to the district of the Khabiri.’

275. The determinative of ‘writing’ is attached to the word Sopher, showing that the Egyptian scribe was acquainted with its meaning. The name of Beth-Sopher (Baitha-Thupar) was first deciphered on the papyrus by Dr. W. Max Müller, and published in his Asien und Europa.

276. Not the pluperfect, as in the Authorised Version.

277. See above, p. 247.

278. The latter reading (Judg. ii. 9) is probably the more correct. The name of Timnath-heres, ‘the portion of the Sun-god,’ may have been changed to Timnath-serah, ‘the portion of abundance,’ on account of its idolatrous associations. Perhaps it is the modern Kafr Hâris, nine miles south of Shechem.

279. Judg. iii. 3. The ‘Hivites’ of the Hebrew text should probably be corrected into ‘Hittites.’ The Sidonians are mentioned to the exclusion of the Tyrians, as in Gen. x. 15-18. This takes us back to the period before that of David, when Tyre was still a place of small importance, and Sidon was the leading city on the Phœnician coast. Cp., however, 1 Kings xvi. 31.

280. Judg. iii. 6, 7.

281. As Israel was theoretically considered to be divided into twelve tribes, there is no reason for doubting the cypher, even though there were not actually twelve tribes at the time in Canaan, and one of tribes, Benjamin, can hardly have had a piece sent to it. The text carefully avoids saying that the pieces were sent to each of the tribes. In chap. xx. 2, the word ‘all’ is used in that restricted sense to which western students of Oriental history have to accustom themselves, since one at least of the tribes, Benjamin, was absent.

282. The value of modern philological criticism of the Old Testament may be judged from the fact that Stade pronounces the narrative of the war against Benjamin to be unhistorical, because the first king of Israel was a Benjamite! (Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 161).

283. Judg. xviii. 12, 13, where it is said to be ‘behind’ or west of Kirjath-jearim. In xiii. 25 the Camp of Dan is placed between Zorah and Eshtaol, which were west of Kirjath-jearim. See G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 220, 221.

284. We hear on other occasions of a regiment of six hundred men among the Israelites (Judg. xx. 47; 1 Sam. xiii. 15, xxiii. 13), and it would seem, therefore, that in the division of the troops a memory of the culture of Babylonia was preserved. Six hundred men represented the Babylonian ner.

285. Judg. xviii. 30. ‘The captivity of the land’ is of course that described in 2 Kings xv. 29, and shows that the compilation of the Book of Judges must be subsequent to the conquest of Northern and Eastern Israel by Tiglath-pileser.

286. Kennicott, Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum, i. p. 509. ‘Moses’ is also the reading of the Vulgate and a few Greek MSS.

287. See 1 Kings viii. 9. The addition of the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 4) is due to a misunderstanding of Ex. xvi. 33, 34, and Numb. xvii. 10.

288. The identity of Mitanni and Nahrina is stated in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters (W. and A. 23) from Mitanni, a hieratic docket attached to it stating that it came from Nahrina. In one place, however (W. and A. 79. 13, 14), the Phœnician governor Rib-Hadad seems to distinguish between ‘the king of Mittani and the king of Nahrina,’ though the passage may also be translated, ‘the king of Mittani, that is, the king of Nahrina.’ Ilu-rabi-Khur of Gebal (W. and A. 91. 32) writes the name Narima, and says that the king of Narima in alliance with the king of the Hittites was destroying the Egyptian cities of Northern Syria.

289. W. and A. 104. 32-35. Comp. Numb. xxiv. 24, where Assyria and Eber take the place of Babylonia and Nahrima. The translation given above is from a corrected copy of the cuneiform text.

290. See Records of the Past, new ser., vi. pp. 28, 29, 34, 45.

291. Brugsch, Egypt under the Pharaohs (Eng. tr.), ii. p. 151; Records of the Past, new ser., vi. pp. 31-45.

292. Records of the Past, new ser., vi. pp. 38-41. As only the qau or ‘district’ of Shalam is mentioned, it is possible that the city itself was not captured by the Egyptian troops. Hebron is written Khibur, i.e. the city of the ‘Khabiri.’

293. Was the campaign of Ramses III. the mysterious ‘hornet’ sent before the children of Israel to destroy the populations of Canaan (Exod. xxiii. 28, Deut. vii. 20, Josh. xxiv. 12)? At any rate, this is more probable than the suggestion that tsir’âh, rendered ‘hornet,’ is a variant of tsâra’ath, ‘plague.’

294. The name has been Hebraised, and perhaps corrupted, so that it is difficult to suggest what could have been its Mitannian original. The Khusarsathaim of the Septuagint, however, reminds us of the name of Dusratta or Tuisratta, the Mitannian king who corresponded with the Pharaoh Amenophis IV.

295. Livy, xxviii. 37, xxx. 7.

296. The Welsh laws allowed a stranger to acquire proprietary rights in the fourth generation, and to become a tribesman in the ninth (Seebohm, in the Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1895-96, pp. 12 sqq.).

297. This is expressly stated in the Song of Deborah: the Reubenites could not come to the help of their brethren, for they had become a body of scattered and nomad shepherds (Judg. v. 15, 16).

298. See Judg. xx. 16.

299. P’sîlîm, mistranslated ‘quarries’ in the Authorised Version. They were the sacred stones, believed to be inspired with divinity, which formed the Gilgal or ‘Circle.’ Modern critics have raised unnecessary difficulties about the geography of the narrative, and conjectured that the name of the capital of Eglon has dropped out of the text in Judg. iii. 15 (see Budde: Die Bücher Richter und Samuelis, p. 99). The Biblical writer makes it plain that Eglon was at Gilgal, not at Jericho as his would-be critics assert.

300. Caphtor is written Kptar in hieroglyphics at Kom-Ombo (on the wall of the southern corridor of the temple), where it heads a list of geographical names, and is followed by those of Persia and Susa (Sayce: The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, 3rd edition, p. 173). The name of the Zakkal, formerly read Zakkar or Zakkur, and identified with the Teukrians, has been pointed out by Professor Hommel in a Babylonian inscription of the fifteenth century B.C. (W. A. I. iv. 34, No. 2, ll. 2, 6). Here it is called the city of Zaqqalu, and we may gather from a papyrus in the possession of M. Golénischeff that it was situated on the coast of Canaan not far from Dor.

301. A reminiscence of the event is probably preserved in Justin, xviii. 3, where we read that in the year before the fall of Troy, ‘the king of the Ascalonians’ destroyed Sidon, whose inhabitants fled in their ships and founded Tyre. The date would harmonise with that of the reign of Ramses III. Lydian history related that Askalos, the son of Hymenæos, and brother of Tantalos, had been sent by the Lydian king Akiamos in command of an army to the south of Palestine, and had there founded Askalon (Steph. Byz. s.v. Ἀσκάλων), and according to Xanthos the Lydian historian, the goddess Derketô was drowned in the lake of Askalon by the Lydian Mopsos (Athen. Deipn. viii. 37, p. 346). In these legends we have a tradition of the fact that the Philistines and their allies came from the coast of Asia Minor and the Greek Seas.

302. Josh. xiii. 2, 3; Judg. iii. 1-3. The statement in Judg. i. 18 was true only theoretically; it was not true in fact until the reign of David.

303. Stephanus Byzantinus s.v. Ἰόνιον, where it is also said that Gaza was termed Ionê. According to Kastôr the thalassocratia or ‘sea-rule’ of Minôs lasted until B.C. 1180, when it passed into the hands of the Lydians. By the latter may be meant the expedition sent to the south of Palestine by the Lydian king Akiamos.

304. Sayce, Races of the Old Testament, pp. 126, 127, and pl. i.

305. Deut. ii. 23. Avim is merely a descriptive title signifying ‘the people of the ruins.’

306. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 325-327. It is possible that some of the Semitic deities had been adopted by the Philistines before they left Krete, if indeed they came from that island. At all events it has been supposed that certain Canaanitish divinities were adored there, more especially Ashtoreth, under the title of Diktynna. The presence of Semites in the island seems indicated by the name of the river Iardanos or Jordan.

307. In the age of Deborah, however, it would seem that the seaport of Joppa was still in the possession of the Danites (Judg. v. 17). But cp. Josh. xix. 46.

308. Winckler and Abel, Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen, iii. 143. 37, 43. Anatum or Anat, the son of Sin-abu-su, is also a witness to the sale of some property in a deed dated in the reign of the Babylonian king Samsu-iluna, the son of Khammurabi or Amraphel, and published by Mr. Pinches, Inscribed Babylonian Tablets in the Collection of Sir H. Peek, iii. p. 61.

309. See Judg. i. 27. Beth-shean, the Scythopolis of classical geography, is the modern Beisân.

310. Twenty is half the indeterminate number forty, and merely denotes that the exact number of years, though unknown, was less than a generation.

311. Judg. v. 15. Literally the words are: ‘Issachar [is] like Barak.’ The Heb. kên is the Assyrian kêmi, ‘like,’ and is used in the same way as kida in modern Egyptian Arabic. It is criticism run wild to assert with Budde, Wellhausen, and others, that Deborah also is described as belonging to Issachar.

312. Pindar, Pyth. iv. 106; Lactant. i. 22; Etym. Mag. s.v. ἐσσην.

313. Gen. xxxv. 8, where the name of the terebinth, Allon-Bachuth, ‘the terebinth of weeping,’ is derived from the lamentations over the death of the nurse. A different origin of the name, however, seems to be indicated in Hos. xii. 4.

314. Rimmon, one of the chief Assyrian gods, was also entitled Barqu, ‘the lightning,’ and it is possible that the name had migrated westward along with that of Rimmon. Noam, whose name enters into that of Abinoam, the father of Barak, seems to have been a Phœnician god, whose consort was Naamah.

315. ‘Forty thousand’ represents the highest unit, one thousand, in the division of the army, multiplied by the indeterminate number forty.

316. ‘The Hittites of Kadesh,’ according to the reading of Lucian’s recension of the Septuagint, 2 Sam. xxiv. 6, in place of the corrupt and unmeaning Tahtim-hodshi of the Massoretic text. See Hitzig, Z. D. M. G., ix. pp. 763 sqq.; Wellhausen, T. B. S., p. 221.

317. It has been generally assumed to have been near the Kishon, on account of Judges iv. 16. But the inference is not certain, partly because we do not know how far the pursuit may have extended, partly because Oriental expressions cannot be interpreted with the mathematical exactitude of western language. The name of Harosheth means probably ‘[the town of] metal-working,’ or ‘the smithy.’

318. Being a poem, it was probably handed down orally at first. This would account for variant readings like ‘also the clouds dropped,’ by the side of ‘also the heavens dropped,’ in v. 4; or ‘in the days of Jael,’ by the side of ‘in the days of Shamgar ben-Anath,’ in v. 6. The name of Jael, however, may have been a marginal gloss like sârîd, ‘a remnant,’ possibly, in v. 13. The song was almost certainly written from the outset in the letters of the so-called Phœnician alphabet, and not in cuneiform characters. Had it been written in cuneiform there would have been a confusion between aleph, hê and ’ayin, which cannot be detected in it. At the same time, the use of the preposition bě in vv. 2 and 15 (b’ Isrâel, b’ Issachar) could be explained from the cuneiform syllabary, in which the character pi (used for bi in the Tel el-Amarna tablets) also has the value of yi. The omission of the article, which is a characteristic of the Song, reminds us that in Canaanite or Phœnician the definite article of Hebrew did not exist.

319. A variant reading gave ‘clouds’ instead of ‘heavens.’

320. Probably a marginal gloss.

321. This line also is corrupt, but there is a reference to it again in verse 11, ‘The people of Yahveh went down to the gates.’

322. I.e. on the road.

323. Dabbĕrî shîr, with a play on the name of Deborah.

324. The Massoretic text has ‘captives.’

325. The text is here again corrupt. The Septuagint renders it: ‘Then went down the remnant to the strong.’ But sârîd, ‘remnant,’ is possibly a marginal gloss derived from the name of the place Sarid in Zebulon (Josh. xix. 10), the meaning being ‘Then the people of Yahveh descended to Sarid to the nobles.’ The second member of the verse shows that the ‘nobles’ are Israelites.

326. The text cannot be right here, though the general meaning of it is clear.

327. The idea is the same as that of the sun and the moon standing still while Joshua defeated the kings at Makkedah (Josh. x. 12-14). Babylonian astrology taught that events in this world were dependent on the motions of the heavenly bodies.

328. Septuagint: ‘My mighty soul has trodden him down.’ The verse seems to be corrupt. Cheyne translates: ‘Step on, my soul, with strength!’

329. The Massoretic punctuation makes it ‘spoil.’ Ewald conjecturally reads sârâh, ‘princess,’ for shâlâl, ‘spoiling.’ The Septuagint has, equally conjecturally, ‘spoils for his neck.’ The garment referred to is the white towel worn round the neck as a protection from the sun or wind, and called shaqqa in Upper Egypt, or the parti-coloured milâya used for the same purpose in Lower Egypt. Cheyne translates: ‘A coloured stuff, two pieces of embroidery, for my neck, has he taken for a prey.’

331. 1 Sam. xii. 11, 2 Sam. xi. 21 (where ‘Baal’ has been changed into ‘bosheth,’ ‘shame’).

333. See Kittel, Geschichte der Hebräer, ii. p. 73.

334. If a distinction is to be drawn between the names of Gideon and Jerubbaal, it might be conjectured that the first was the name under which the bearer of it was known to the Israelites at Ophrah, the second that whereby he was known to the Canaanites of Shechem. According to Porphyry, Phœnician annals spoke of a priest of Ieuô named Hierombalos, which is clearly Jerubbaal. The Canaanitish kings could also be priests, as we learn from the history of Melchizedek. Baethgen makes Jerubbaal practically identical with Meribbaal (Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, p. 143).

335. The Kadmonites of Gen. xv. 19, where they are coupled with the Kenites and Kenizzites of Southern Palestine: see above, p. 162.

336. Many of the accounts of battles given by Livy are similarly confused, and are doubtless drawn from more than one source, but no one would think of distinguishing the sources, much less of splitting the narrative of the Roman historian into separate documents.

338. The usage lingered even as late as the time of Hosea (Hos. ii. 16).

339. The name of Abimelech, ‘my father is king,’ cannot be used as an argument, since the ‘king’ referred to in it is the divine king or Moloch, not an earthly ruler.

340. Judg. ix. 4, 46. Cf. viii. 33.

341. See Judg. i. 28.

342. The story of the pitchers and torches is pronounced by modern criticism to be a myth, and has been compared with old Egyptian romances like that which described the capture of Joppa in the reign of Thothmes III. by a stratagem similar to that which we read of in the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. But from the point of view of history alone there is no reason for discrediting the narrative. Bedâwin superstition would fully account for the panic and flight if the camp believed that the spirits of the night had attacked them. Indeed similar panics have been known to arise not only among the Bedâwin of the wilderness, but even among disciplined English soldiers.

343. The names of the chiefs have been said to have been derived from the two places which local tradition associated with their deaths. But though ‘the rock of the Raven’ is a very possible geographical name in the East—there is indeed more than one ‘Raven’s Rock’ in modern Egypt—‘the winepress of the Wolf’ is quite the reverse. Animal names like raven and wolf, on the other hand, were frequently applied in ancient Arabia to individuals and tribes (see W. Robertson Smith in the Journal of Philology, ix. 17, 1880, pp. 79-88).

344. In the narrative the quarrel with Ephraim comes before the defeat of Zebah and Zalmunna, but Judg. vii. 25 shows that it is misplaced. Certain critics have maintained that two different versions of the same story lie before us, and that the Oreb and Zeeb of the one version are the Zebah and Zalmunna of the other. This, however, is to exhibit a curious ignorance of Bedâwin organisation and modes of warfare: there would have been more than one raiding band, and the different bands would have been under different shêkhs.

345. See above, p. 270. Of the cities mentioned in Judg. i. 27, Dor, as we learn from the Golénischeff papyrus, had been occupied by the Zakkal, the kinsfolk of the Philistines, and would not have become Israelitish until after the conquest of the latter people. (Cf. 1 Kings iv. 11.) Dor, however, properly belonged to Asher, and Josh. xvii. 11 expressly states that the Canaanitish cities afterwards possessed by Manasseh were originally included in the territories of Issachar and Asher. Issachar could not have lost them until after the time of Barak.

346. Even at Tyre, the title of the supreme Baal, Melek-qiryath (Melkarth), ‘the king of the city,’ shows that at the outset the state had been a theocracy.

347. See above, p. 306. The priestly character of Jerubbaal has been suppressed in the narrative in accordance with the feelings of a later time, when the priesthood was strictly confined to the tribe of Levi. But at an earlier date the anointed king was regarded as invested by Yahveh with priestly functions. Saul and Solomon offered sacrifice, and David’s sons acted as priests (2 Sam. viii. 18).

348. See Judg. xvii. 5; Hos. iii. 4.

349. 1 Sam. ii. 18, xxii. 18, xxiii. 9, xxx. 7, 8.

350. Judg. vi. 24, viii. 27.

351. See Judg. ix. 1, 28.

352. 2 Sam. xx. 14. The reading of the latter passage, however, is not certain.

353. See Judg. ix. 41. Verse 31 should be translated, Zebul ‘sent messengers unto Abimelech to Arumah.’

354. The name of Jobaal, ‘Yahveh is Baal,’ has been preserved in the Septuagint. Its signification has caused it to be omitted in the Massoretic text where we have only ben-’ebed, ‘the son of a slave,’ corresponding to the expression ‘son of a nobody,’ which we meet with in the Assyrian inscriptions.

355. It is here called the Migdal Shechem or ‘Tower of Shechem,’ but seems to have been the same as the Millo of v. 6. The fort would have stood in the same relation to Shechem that the ‘stronghold of Zion’ taken by David stood to Jerusalem. It was probably built just outside the walls of the town. We may compare also the ‘Millo’ constructed by Solomon to defend his palace and the temple (1 Kings ix. 15).

356. See 2 Sam. xi. 21.

357. See Judg. x. 11, 12. All records of the wars with the Zidonians and the Maonites have perished. Perhaps Professor Hommel is right in identifying the Maonites with the people of Ma’ân in Southern Arabia, whose power waned before the rise of that of Sheba, and extended to the frontiers of Palestine (Aufsätze und Abhandlungen sur Kunde der Sprachen, Literaturen und der Geschichte des vorderen Orients, pp. 2, 47).

358. Numb. xxvi. 23, 26.

359. Had the southern Beth-lehem been meant, it would have been called, as elsewhere in the book of Judges, Beth-lehem-Judah.

360. Numb. xxxii. 41; Deut. iii. 4, 14. In Deut. iii. 4, the ‘cities’ of Argob are described as sixty in number, which in Josh. xiii. 30 are identified with ‘the towns of Jair which are in Bashan.’ This, however, is incorrect, as it was thirty villages and not sixty cities that were conquered by Jair.

361. This must mean that he had claimed a portion of his father’s inheritance from the legitimate sons, and that ‘the elders’ who tried the case decided it against him. In the narrative he is called merely ‘the son of Gilead.’