who delivered Israel from the Philistines, v.31. It would seem that iii.12, iv.1, vi.1, x.6, xiii.1, are all Deut. passages, accounting for the distress which fell in each case upon Israel by the assumption that they had again done the evil in the eyes of Jehovah,' i.e. had relapsed into idolatry; whereas in all probability, the older story supposed them to practise idolatrous worship all along, since Joash, Gideon's father, had an altar of Baal, vi.25,—Gideon himself had an idolatrous ephod, viii.27, -Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt-offering to Jehovah, xi.31,39,-Micah had 'a graven image and a molten image,' 'a House of God, an ephod and teraphim,' xvii.4,5,— which the children of Dan adopted for themselves, xviii.1720.

74. It is noticeable how this writer strives in various ways to account for the anomalous fact, that Canaanites had been suffered by Joshua to live on in the land after the conquest, especially the Philistines, Phoenicians, and Syrians, iii.3, who remained independent of Israel down even to his own time-in direct opposition to the express commands of Jehovah, as laid down in D.vii.2, xx.16,17. He says at one time that they were not driven out all at once, lest the land should become desolate and the beast of the field multiply against' Israel, E.xxiii.29, D.vii.22,-at another, that they were left to 'prove Israel,' whether they would be obedient or not, Ju.ii.22,23,—again, that they were left to teach Israel war, such as before knew nothing thereof,' Ju.iii.1,2. The Jehovist simply says that Israel' could not drive them out,' J.xiii.13, xv.63, xvii.12, comp. Ju.i.19,27,34,35. In iii.5,6, however, D. describes the bitter consequences of this free intercourse with the Canaanite people, just exactly as he does in E.xxxiv.16, D.vii.3,4, J.xxiii.12, 1K. xi.1-8.

75. As before observed (69), Ju.vi.7-10 is also Deuteronomistic (App.136), as appears at once from the expression in

6

v.8, house of servants,' which is only used by the Deuteronomist and Jeremiah. So viii.27,—

' and all Israel went-a-whoring after it, and it became for Gideon and for his house a snare,'

is plainly a Deut. addition. The expression 'go-a-whoring after' an idol has occurred nowhere up to this point in the Bible except in passages belonging either to D., viz. E.xxxiv. 15,16, Ju.ii.17, comp. Jer.ii.20, iii.1-9, xiii.27, or to L.L., viz. L.xvii.7, xx.5, N.xiv.33, xv.39, D.xxxi.16; and the phrase used here of this ephod, as an incentive to idolatry, become a snare,' is employed in this sense only in E.xxiii.33, xxxiv.12, D.vii.16, J.xxiii.13, Ju.ii.3, all Deut. passages, and in Ps.cvi.36, which Psalm, as all interpreters conclude, and as indeed appears from v.47, is post-exilic.

6

And the same is true of viii.33–35 (App.137) and x.6,10– 16 (App.138).

Also, when we compare viii.22,23, with 1S.viii.7, x.19, xii. 12, all due (as we suppose) to D., and observe that in v.24 the words of v.23 are repeated, and Gideon said unto them,' it seems probable that v.22,23, belongs to the same writer. In x.7 we have the exact counterpart to iii.8 of the older narrative.

Thus we have secured for D. Ju.ii.1-5,7,10-23, iii.1-7,12, iv.1, vi.1,7-10, viii.22,23,276,33-35, x.6,10-16, xiii.1; and there may still be some other passages belonging to him in the Book of Judges.

76. Again, Ju.xviii.30 is clearly an interpolation

And the children of Dan set-up for them the graven-image, and Jonathan, son of Gershom, son of [Manasseh] Moses (105), he and his sons, were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land'

which anticipates the statement of the older narrative in v.31

'And they placed for them the graven-image of Micah which he had made all the days of the House of Elohim being at Shiloh,'

but carries the worship at Dan down to the Captivity of Israel,—either that under Tiglath-Pileser, B.C. 740, 2K.xv.29, or the final captivity under Shalmaneser, xvii.6, B.C. 721, not long before which, as we know from Am.viii.14, the calf-worship was still carried on at Dan and men still

'sware by the sin of Samaria, and said, As thy Elohim, O Dan, liveth!'

This, however, would seem to be a note of the L.L.; since we find nowhere any reference to the offspring of the sons of Moses, except in 1Ch.xxiii.15,16, xxvi.24, where we read of 'Shebuel, son of Gershom, son of Moses.'

And Ju.xx.27,28a, seems to be by the same hand

'And there was the ark of the Covenant of Elohim in those days, and Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, standing before it in those days.'

It interrupts the narrative and is altogether unnecessary, since the ark was not needed in order to enquire of Jehovah,' Ju. xi.11(102), 18.x.22, xxiii.9, xxx.7, comp. xxviii.6, and no reference is made to its being at hand for the purpose in v.18,23, of this very same narrative, where it was needed quite as much, or quite as little, as here; comp. ark of the Covenant of ELOHIM,' 1Ch.xvi.6, and for Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron,' comp. Ezr.vii.5, also E.vi.25, N.xxv.7, 11, xxxi.6, J.xxii. 13,31,32, 1Ch.ix.20.

77. Ju.xxi.5-14. KEIL observes, iii.p.352, note,—

'BERTHEAU'S view that Ju.xxi.15-23 contains a narrative altogether independent of what precedes, and that, consequently, there lie before us in xxi “two originally quite different accounts of the way in which the 600 Benjamites obtained their wives,” not only wants all tenable ground, but stands in direct contradiction with v.14 and v.22. That v.14, "and even so they sufficed not for them," points to the narrative which follows in v.15-23, can no more be denied by BERTHEAU than that v.22, "for we have not taken each his wife in the war," refers to the preceding narrative in v.1-14.'

Ans. But surely the proceedings against Jabesh in v.6-14,-when 12,000 Israelites were sent to massacre the inhabitants of one of their own towns, 'with the women and the children,' who had not broken out into open war with the rest, like the Benjamites, but had merely been indifferent to the guilt of the men of

Gibeah,-could hardly be described as a 'war.' The reference in v.22 seems to be rather to the war with Benjamin described in xx, and the elders mean to say, We have taken nothing for ourselves in the war: we have captured no women, whom we might (but for our oath) have given to the Benjamites. Nor did ye give these to them; if so, ye would have transgressed: but they were taken by force.'

Certainly v.14 points to the narrative which follows: but this may be due to an interpolator. And there does, in fact, seem to be good ground for Bertheau's view; since v.15,16, 18, simply repeat v.6,7 in very similar words; and v.17, as well as v.23, plainly implies that wives were needed for all the 600 escaped' of Benjamin, whereas according to v.14 twothirds of the whole number had been already supplied. The original narrative appears to be contained in v.1-4,15-25, and v.6-14 is a later interpolation,-perhaps, by the L.L., since the phrase in v.12, 'Shiloh which is in the land of Canaan,' occurs only besides in J.xxi.2, xxii.9, comp. xxii.10. Moreover, the proceeding in v.10-12 corresponds very closely to that pursued in the case of Midian in N.xxxi.17,18: comp. also the 12,000 warriors in N.xxxi.5 with Ju.xxi.10.

And, possibly, there are other insertions of the L.L. in the books of Judges and Samuel, as there are certainly such in the two books of Kings (52).

69

CHAPTER V.

THE AGE OF THE BOOK OF JUDGES.

78. We are now in a position to examine the history contained in Judges-2Kings for traces of an acquaintance on the part of its writers with the different portions of the Pentateuch, taking care to distinguish from the older narrative those parts which are due to D. and to the L.L. The insertions of the latter, as we have seen, are chiefly in the Pentateuch. But D., that is, as we believe, Jeremiah, when he revised the original Jehovistic narrative, Genesis-Kings, both before the Captivity and after it (VI.31), made interpolations everywhere both in the Pentateuch and in the later history, writing almost the whole of the present Book of Deuteronomy and the greater part of the two Books of Kings.

Thus the Law of Moses' is mentioned or referred to in Ju. iii.4, 1K.ii.3, viii.53,56, all which we have seen to be Deut. passages (73,18,31). Moses' himself is named in 1K.viii.9, also due to D. (31), as having put the stone-tables in the ark, as related in D.x.5; and 'Moses and Aaron' are named, as having been sent to bring Israel forth out of Egypt, 18.xii.6,8, also due to D. (68), as Moses and Samuel' are named in Jer.xv.1; whereas the mention of Moses' father-in-law' in Ju.i.16, iv.11, refers to the O.S. in N.x.29-32.

79. Again, Ju.ii.6,7,8, in which Joshua' is named, is merely copied from J.xxiv.28,31,29, respectively; and since J.xxiv.31 (=Ju.ii.7) belongs to D., it is plain that he must have been the copyist. So, too, Ju.i.10-15 appears to be a