The early history of the Hebrews

363. The argument put into the mouth of the Ammonites (Judg. xi. 13), like the answer made by Jephthah, doubtless expressed the feelings on both sides, but the language is that of the historian, as in the case of the speeches in Thucydides. When it is said (v. 26) that the Israelites had occupied the district north of the Arnon for three hundred years, the chronology is that of the compiler. Three hundred years are equivalent to ten generations, and the ten generations are made up by counting the names of the judges given in the book of Judges, down to Jephthah, as representing so many successive generations (1. Moses; 2. Joshua; 3. Othniel; 4. Ehud; 5. Shamgar; 6. Barak; 7. Gideon; 8. Abimelech; 9. Tola; 10. Jair. If Moses and Joshua are reckoned as one generation, the numeration would be carried on to Jephthah).

364. The name of Jephthah is a shortened form of Jephthah-el, which we find as the name of a valley on the borders of Asher (Josh. xix. 27).

365. See Steinthal, The Legend of Samson, Eng. tr. by Russell Martineau in Goldziher’s Mythology among the Hebrews, pp. 392-446.

366. Ramath-lehi is ‘the height of Lehi,’ and has nothing to do with râmâh, ‘to throw’; ’Ên-haqqorê is ‘the Spring of the Partridge,’ not ‘of the caller.’

367. It may be gathered from Judg. i. 16, 17, that Simeon preceded Judah in the occupation of the future Judah. When the expedition against Arad and Zephath was formed, the Jews and Kenites were still encamped together at Jericho. The Kenites seem to have remained behind in the newly-won territory of the Negeb, while the Jews established themselves at Beth-lehem.

368. We hear only of citizens of Mount Ephraim going up yearly to sacrifice at Shiloh (1 Sam. i. 1-3).

369. It must be remembered that at this time, before the rise of Judah, Ephraim was the nearest neighbour of the Philistines as well as of the Amalekites.

370. It cannot be supposed, of course, that an Ephraimite would have recorded the defeat and slaughter of his tribe at the hands of Jephthah. But such a momentous disaster could not fail to become known throughout Canaan, and some notice of it must have been taken by the chroniclers of Ephraim themselves. Where and by whom, however, the present account was composed it is vain to inquire, and the question may be left for discussion to the philological critics. That Samuel, who was brought up at Shiloh, could write we are assured in 1 Sam. x. 25.

371. 1 Sam. ix. 5; xiv. 1.

372. 1 Sam. ix. 18, 19. The disintegrating critics have assumed this narrative to be primitive and contemporary because it presents us with a picture of Samuel which seems to degrade him into an obscure local soothsayer, and on the strength of it have disputed the antiquity of such narratives as assign to him national influence. They might just as well maintain that the only primitive and contemporary account of King Alfred that we possess is the story of the burnt cakes at Athelney.

373. 1 Sam. vii. 14.

374. Zuph gave his name to ‘the district of Zuph’ (1 Sam. ix. 5), which has the plural form in Ramathaim-zophim.

375. Ephraim, however, may be, like Jerusalem, the older form of which has been recovered from the cuneiform inscriptions, a later Massoretic mispronunciation of an original plural Ephrim. The Massoretes have erroneously introduced a dual form into the pronunciation of the name Chushan-rishathaim, and probably also into that of Naharaim when compared with the Egyptian Naharin and the Nahrima of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. Perhaps the dual form Ephraim originated in the existence of the two Ophrahs (with ’ayin), which are already mentioned in the geographical lists of Thothmes III.

376. 2 Sam. viii. 18; see also 2 Sam. xx. 26. The Authorised Version mistranslates the word in both passages.

377. Translated by me in the Records of the Past, new ser., IV., pp. 109-113.

378. See above, p. 244. The Hebrew Samuel could also represent a Babylonian Sumu-il, ‘Sumu is God’ or ‘the name of God,’ which we actually find in early Babylonian contracts.

379. So, too, the Chronicler states that he was descended from Ithamar the younger son of Aaron (1 Chron. xxiv. 3).

380. It would seem from 1 Sam. iii. 3, as compared with Exod. xxvii. 21, and Lev. xxiv. 3, that there was no veil at the time in ‘the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.’

381. ‘The priest’ of the narrative is equivalent to ‘high priest’: see above, p. 219. Eli’s two sons were naturally not on a level of equality with himself. It has been gravely maintained that there were only three priests at Shiloh at the time, because nothing is said about any others; had the narrative not required the mention of Hophni and Phinehas we should have been told there was only one. Such trifling with historical documents is unfortunately only too characteristic of the so-called ‘literary criticism.’

382. It has been assumed that ‘the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation’ (Exod. xxxviii. 8, 1 Sam. ii. 22) were religious prostitutes like the qedashoth in the Phœnician temples (see Deut. xxiii. 17, 18). But the fact that the intercourse of the sons of Eli with them was a sin in the eyes of both Yahveh and the people proves the contrary. Here, as in other cases, an old institution of Semitic religion was retained among the adherents of the Mosaic law, but it was deprived of its pagan and immoral characteristics.

384. 1 Sam. xix. 23. Nâbî is not of Arabic derivation as is often supposed, as, for example, by Professor Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 8-10, where it is erroneously stated that the Babylonian nabû does not mean ‘to pronounce’ or ‘proclaim.’ The name of Nebo shows to what antiquity the Babylonian nabium in its special sense of ‘prophet’ reaches back. The modern Arabic nebi is borrowed from the Hebrew nâbî. Nâbî corresponds with the Greek προφήτης ‘forth-speaker,’ as distinguished from μάντις or ‘diviner,’ the Babylonian asipu. In Babylonia the asipu performed the offices which the Hebrew roeh had once fulfilled; he determined whether an army should move or not, whether victory would be on its side, whether an undertaking would be prosperous or the reverse. While, therefore, the asipu and the nabiu continued to exist side by side, performing the functions which had been combined in the Hebrew roeh, and at the outset in the Hebrew nâbî, among the Israelites the roeh disappeared, and the nâbî alone remained with purely prophetical attributes.

385. Towards the end of Samuel’s life, however, a Naioth or ‘monastery’ grew up around him at Ramah, which must have closely resembled the Dervish colleges of the modern Mohammedan world; see 1 Sam. xix. 23. This monastery will have taken the place of Shiloh, and become a veritable ‘school’ of prophetical training and instruction.

386. Gad, however, still retained the title of ‘seer’ (1 Chron. xxix. 29), and one of the histories of the reign of Solomon was contained ‘in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam’ (2 Chron. ix. 29). Even Isaiah’s history of Hezekiah was called ‘the vision of Isaiah the prophet’ (2 Chron. xxxii. 32). But the title was merely a survival.

387. We must, however, distinguish between Samuel’s authority as a seer, which did not excite the jealousy of his Philistine masters, and his authority as a dispenser of justice. That was confined to a small area in the heart of Mount Ephraim. Each year, we are told (1 Sam. vii. 16) he went on circuit like a Babylonian judge, ‘to Beth-el and Gilgal and Mizpeh.’ This is the Mizpeh of Benjamin.

388. Ramah, ‘the height,’ is identified in 1 Sam. ii. 11 with Ramathaim, ‘the two heights.’ The village evidently stood on two hills. For the possible site of Aphek, see G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 224. Eben-ezer is identified with the great stone at Beth-shemesh (1 Sam. vi. 14, 18) by M. Clermont-Ganneau (Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 1874, p. 279; 1877, pp. 154 sqq.), but this is questionable.

389. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 154; and above, p. 196.

391. The Septuagint text omits the ‘eight.’

392. The Septuagint reads Ouai-bar-khabôth, ‘Woe to the son of glory,’ with the insertion of the Aramaic bar, ‘son.’

394. As Abiathar was the contemporary of David, and his father Ahimelech or Ahiah of Saul, Ahitub will have been the contemporary of Samuel. If Solomon came to the throne about B.C. 965, and Saul was about forty years of age at the time of his death, we should have about B.C. 1045 for the date of Saul’s birth. Samuel was an old man when he died; if he lived ten years after Saul’s accession, and was ten years old when the ark was taken, we may place his birth about B.C. 1090. This would give about B.C. 1180 for the birth of Eli, or very shortly after the Israelitish invasion of Canaan. The life of Eli would thus cover almost the whole period of the Judges, and form a single link between the Mosaic age and that of Samuel. In such a case it is not astonishing that the records and traditions of the Mosaic age were preserved at Shiloh. The ark was only seven months among the Philistines (1 Sam. vi. 1), and it was removed from ‘the house of Abinadab’ at Kirjath-jearim some time after the seventh year of David (see, however, 1 Sam. xiv. 18). ‘The sons of Abinadab,’ in 2 Sam. vi. 4, must mean, as is so frequently the case, the descendants of Abinadab.

395. In Zeph. i. 9 there is an allusion to the practice of the Philistine priests of ‘leaping’ over the threshold. For the origin and reason of this sacredness of the threshold see Trumbull, The Threshold Covenant, pp. 10-13, 116-126, 143. ‘In Finland it is regarded as unlucky if a clergyman steps on the threshold when he comes to preach at a church.... In the Lapp tales the same idea appears.’ (Jones and Kropf, Folk-Tales of the Magyars, p. 410.)

396. Philo Byblius according to Euseb., Præp. Evangel. i. 6.

397. That Dagon was worshipped in Canaan before he was adopted by the Philistine emigrants we know, not only from the evidence of geographical names, but also from the fact that one of the Tel el-Amarna correspondents in Palestine was called Dagan-takala.

398. It is noticeable that Zophim in Ramathaim-zophim means ‘Watchmen.’ Poels (Le Sanctuaire de Kirjath-jearim, Louvain, 1894) has, moreover, made it probable that Kirjath-jearim, Mizpeh, Gibeah, Geba, and Gibeon all represent the same place.

399. According to 1 Sam. vii. 2, the victory at Eben-ezer took place ‘twenty years’ after the ark had been removed to Kirjath-jearim. But this is merely the half of an unknown period, and means that the interval of time was not long.

400. 1 Sam. vii. 13, 14. The area of independence, however, must have been very confined, since there was a garrison of the Philistines in ‘the hill of God’ at Gibeah (1 Sam. ix. 5), as well as one at Michmash (1 Sam. xiv. 1).

401. There is no reason for doubting the very explicit statement made in 1 Sam. vii. 14, which explains and limits the preceding verse. Its antiquity is vouched for by the concluding words: ‘And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.’ The term ‘Amorite’ instead of ‘Canaanite’ points to an early date, and the sentence reads like an extract from a contemporary chronicle. The peace was an enforced one, as both Israelites and Canaanites alike were under the yoke of the Philistines.

402. See 2 Kings xviii. 4.

403. 1 Chron. xvi. 39, xxi. 293; 2 Chron. i. 3, 5.

404. Is it an inference from 1 Kings iii. 4? That the Chronicler sometimes drew erroneous inferences from his materials, I have shown in The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, p. 463. It is difficult to understand how ‘fixtures’ like the tabernacle and the altar escaped destruction when the temple at Shiloh was ruined.

405. Kirjath-jearim was a Gibeonite town (Josh. ix. 17).

407. 1 Sam. viii. 2. Joel is called Vashni in 1 Chron. vi. 28, where the Septuagint reads Sani.

408. As has been noticed above (p. 315, note 1), the title of the supreme god of Tyre is evidence that there, too, the state had been originally regarded as a theocracy.

409. The name of Saul corresponds with the Babylonian Savul, a title of the Sun-god, though it might also be explained as a Hebrew word meaning ‘asked for.’ But one of the Edomite kings was also named Saul, and he is stated to have come from ‘Rehoboth (Assyrian Rêbit) by the river’ Euphrates (Gen. xxxvi. 37). This points to a Babylonian origin of the name. Kish, Saul’s father, has also the same name as the Edomite god Qos (in Assyrian Qaus), of which the Canaanitish Kishon is a derivative. As Saul’s successors in Edom were Baal-hanan and Hadad, while Hadad was a contemporary of Solomon, and El-hanan is said in 2 Sam. xxi. 19 to have been the slayer of Goliath, I have proposed (The Modern Review, v. 17, 1884) to see in the Saul and Baal-hanan of Edom the Saul and David of Israel. Saul is said to have fought against Edom (1 Sam. xiv. 47), and Doeg the Edomite was his henchman. But the proposal is excluded by two facts. The kings of Edom recorded in Gen. xxxvi. 31-39 reigned ‘before there was any king over the children of Israel,’ and Saul the son of Kish did not come from the Euphrates.

410. 1 Sam. ix. 3. In 1 Sam. x. 14-16, Saul’s uncle takes the place of his father.

411. Much has been made of the supposed fact that Saul had never heard of Samuel, and did not know that he was a seer. But the narrative only says that Saul’s slave informed him that a seer was in the town, without mentioning his name; and if Saul had never previously seen Samuel, he would naturally not recognise him in the crowd.

412. That the prophets were at Gibeah is shown by the fact that ‘the hill of God,’ where they met Saul, was also where ‘the garrison of the Philistines’ was (1 Sam. x. 5, xiii. 2, 3).

413. It has been usually supposed from this verse that ‘Gibeah of Saul’ was the original home of Saul’s family. But as the family burial-place was at Zelah (2 Sam. xxi. 14), this can hardly have been the case. Gibeah was the scene of Jonathan’s first success against the Philistines, and it was here that Saul fixed his residence during the latter years of his life.

414. Cp. Judg. xix. 29, where the Levite similarly cuts up his concubine and sends the pieces to the several tribes of Israel.

415. See my Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, pp. 463-4. When Ahab came to the help of the Syrians against the Assyrian king Shalmaneser, his whole force consisted of only ten thousand men and two thousand chariots, and ‘Assur-natsir-pal thinks it a subject of boasting that he had slain fifty or one hundred and seventy-two of the enemy in battle.’ The whole of the country population of Judah carried into captivity by Sennacherib was only two hundred thousand one hundred and fifty, which would give at most an army of fifty thousand men. The Egyptian armies, with which the victories of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties were gained, were of small size. One of them, in the time of the nineteenth dynasty, contained only three thousand one hundred foreign mercenaries and one thousand nine hundred native troops (Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. tr., p. 542). At the same time, we must not forget that if there were fifty thousand available fighting men in Judah in the time of Hezekiah, there would have been about three hundred and fifty thousand among the other seven tribes a few generations earlier. Consequently the calculation given in the text of 1 Sam. xi. 8 is approximately correct as a mere calculation. Between available and actual fighting men there was, of course, a great difference. In the second year of Saul’s reign, when his authority was established, he was not able to muster more than three thousand fighting men (1 Sam. xiii. 2). A larger body, indeed, had flocked to him, but they were an undisciplined, unarmed multitude, who had to be dismissed to their homes.

416. As the Hebrew netsîb signifies a ‘governor’ as well as a ‘fortified post’ or ‘garrison,’ many writers have maintained that the netsîb in ‘the Hill of God’ at Gibeah was the Philistine official. But Jonathan would not have required a thousand men in order to destroy a single official and the few soldiers who might have been with him.

417. The Hebrews had, of course, no means of ascertaining the exact numbers of the enemy. The number of chariots is quite impossible, and they would have been useless in the mountainous country. In the great battle in which Meneptah saved Egypt from the combined armies of the Libyans and their northern allies, nine thousand three hundred and seventy-six prisoners in all were taken, while the slain amounted to six thousand three hundred and sixty-five Libyans and two thousand three hundred and seventy of their Mediterranean confederates. To these must be added nine thousand one hundred and eleven Maxyes. And yet it does not seem that any of the invaders escaped from the battle.

418. 1 Sam. xiii. 6, 7. For the distinction that is here drawn between ‘the men of Israel’ and ‘the Hebrews,’ see above, p. 6.

419. The identification is uncertain, as it depends on the position to be assigned to Gibeah.

420. Ahimelech (1 Sam. xxii. 9, 11, 20) is here called Ahiah, perhaps out of reluctance to apply the term Melech, ‘King,’ with its heathen associations, to Yahveh.

421. Here called by its old name of Beth-On, which the Massoretic punctuation has transformed into Beth-Aven.

422. Some of the literary critics have started the gratuitous supposition that a prisoner was substituted for Jonathan, though the fact was suppressed by the later Hebrew historian. It is perhaps natural that those who re-write history should have a poor opinion of the trustworthiness of their predecessors.

424. 1 Sam. x. 8, compared with xiii. 8-15.

425. 1 Sam. xiii. 14. Though Saul’s kingdom did ‘not continue,’ it nevertheless lasted some time, and was not overthrown at Michmash, as those who heard Samuel’s words must have expected. As David was not anointed until some years later, he cannot be ‘the man’ after Yahveh’s ‘heart,’ whom the seer had in his mind at the time.

426. The nakhal (A.V. ‘valley’) is probably the Wadi el-Arîsh, which lay on the way to the Shur or line of fortifications that protected the eastern side of the Delta. Havilah, the ‘sandy’ desert, corresponds with the Melukhkha or ‘Salt’ desert of the Babylonian inscriptions. The ‘city of Amalek’ may have been El-Arîsh, if this were not in Egyptian hands at the time.

427. The Israelites had been stirred to vengeance by the murderous raids of the Bedâwin at a time when the Philistine invasion had made them too weak to defend themselves (1 Sam. xv. 33).

428. For ‘Edom’ we should probably read ‘Aram,’ as is demanded by the geographical order of the list of countries which runs from south to north. In 2 Sam. viii. 13, ‘Aram’ has been substituted for ‘Edom,’ which was still read by the Chronicler (1 Chron. xviii. 12), and the marriage of David with the daughter of the king of Aram-Geshur (2 Sam. iii. 3) implies hostility between Saul and the Geshurites.

429. The ‘critics’ have decided that the list of Saul’s wars has been ‘borrowed’ from the history of David. In this case, however, we should have heard of ‘the king’ of Zobah, not of ‘the kings.’ We happen to know that Saul fought against Ammon. Had the fact not been mentioned, the ‘critics’ would have maintained, as in the case of Moab and Zobah, that such a war never took place. The argument from silence may simplify the process of reconstructing history, but from a historical point of view it is worthless.

430. Saul showed himself in other cases such a scrupulous observer of the Law that we can well understand his obeying the precept of Deuteronomy that the king should not ‘multiply’ horses or wives (Deut. xviii. 16, 17).

431. 1 Sam. xxii. 6.

432. It is clear, however, from 1 Sam. xxi. 9, that there must be some mistake here, since the sword of Goliath was laid up at Nob while Saul was king.

433. This must be an exaggeration, since David, who was not above the ordinary size, afterwards used his sword (1 Sam. xxi. 9).

434. The narrative goes on to say that ‘David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his armour in his tent.’ This verse is given in the Septuagint, though the next nine verses are omitted. But the statement cannot be right. Jerusalem was not captured by David until many years after the battle in the valley of Elah, and the shepherd lad had no tent of his own at the time.

435. 1 Chron. xx. 5. ‘Beth-lehemite’ is turned into ‘Lahmi,’ the name of the ‘brother’ of Goliath, and the unintelligible Yaare-oregim becomes Yair. Oregim, ‘weavers,’ however, has crept in from the end of the verse, and the original reading of 1 Sam. xxi. 19 must have been, ‘El-hanan, the son of Yaari (the forester) the Beth-lehemite, slew Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.’

436. 1 Kings xix. 15, 16; 2 Kings ix. 2, 3. Ahijah, however, did not anoint Jeroboam when he suggested to him that he should head a revolt of the ten tribes against the house of David. When David was made king at Hebron he was anointed by ‘the men of Judah,’ not by a prophet (2 Sam. ii. 4), and no mention is made of a prophet or priest when he was anointed ‘king over Israel’ (2 Sam. v. 3).

437. We must remember that in any case the act of anointing would have been a secret, and that consequently an erroneous account of it might easily have been set on foot.

438. 1 Sam. xviii. 6. The singular ‘Philistine’ has to be noted, as if there was a reference in it to the overthrow of Goliath. Cf. xix. 5.

439. See above, p. 342.

440. It is also possible that chapter xx. ought to precede chapter xix.

442. Hitzig identified the name of Achish with that of the Homeric Ankhisês. Whether this is so or not, Dr. W. Max Müller is probably right in seeing the same name in that of a native of Keft, or the northern coast of Syria, mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus where it is written Akashau (Spiegelberg in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, viii. p. 384).