Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Vers. 13-21. Punishment of the Towns of Succoth and Pnuel, and Execution of the captured Kings of Midian.

— Vers. 13, 14. Gideon returned victorious from the war, n?Vjy?J2 ^'}.^'}.i "from hy the ascent (or mountain road) of Hecheres," a place in front of the town of Succoth, with which we are not acquainted. This is the rendering adopted by the LXX., the Peshito, and tlie Arabic; but the rest of the early translators have merely guessed at the meaning. The Chaldee, which has been followed by the Rabbins and Luther, has rendered it " before sunset," in utter opposition to the rules of the language; for although cheres is a word used poetically to denote the sun, npyo cannot mean the setting of the!5un. Aquila and Symmachus, on the other hand, confound D^n with D"'in. — Gideon laid hold of a young man of the people of Succoth, and got him to write down for him the princes and elders (magistrates and rulers) of the city, — in all seventy-seven men. 3i=i3*1 1'^''^^?1 is a short expression for "he asked him the names of the princes and elders of the city, and the boy wrote them down." IvKj lit. to him, i.e. for him. — Vers. 15, 16. Gideon then reproached the elders with the insult they had offered him (ver. 6), and had them punished with desert thorns and thistles. "Men of Succoth" (vers. 15a and 16b) is a general expression for "elders of Succoth" (ver. 16a); and elders a general term applied to all the representatives of the city, including the princes, ^n^* C3riQ"in IK'Xj with regard to whom ye have despised me. "lE'K is the accusative of the more distant or second object, not the subject, as Stud, supposes. "And he taught the men of Succoth (i.e. caused them to know, made them feel, punished them) with them (the thorns)." There is no good ground for doubting the correctness of the reading T]^]. The free renderings of the LXX., Vidg., etc., are destitute of critical worth; and JBertheau^s assertion, that if it were the Iliphil it would be written jni"", is proved to be unfounded by the defective writing in Num. xvi. 5, Job xxxii. 7. — Ver. 17. Gideon also inflicted upon Pnuel the punishment threatened in ver. 9. The punishment inflicted by Gideon upon both the cities was well deserved in all respects, and was righteously executed. The inhabitants of these cities had not only acted treacherously to Israel as far as they could, from the most selfish interests, in a holy conflict for the glory of the Lord and the freedom of His people, but in their contemptuous treatment of Gideon and his host they had poured contempt upon the Lord, who had shown them to be His own soldiers before the eyes of the whole nation by the victory which He had given them over the innumerable army of the foe. Having been called by the Lord to be the deliverer and judge of Israel, it was Gideon's duty to punish the faithless cities. — Vers. 18-21. After punishing these cities, Gideon repaid the two kings of Midian, who had been taken prisoners, according to their doings. From the judicial proceedings instituted with regard to them (vers. 18, 19), we learn that these kings had put the brothers of Gideon to death, and apparently not in open fight; but they had murdered them in an unrighteous and cruel manner. And Gideon made them atone for this with their own lives, according to the strict jus talionis. '^2''^, in ver. 18, does not mean where? but " in what condition, of what form, were the men whom ye slew at labor?" i.e. either in the city of Tabor or at Blount Tabor (see chap. iv. 6, and Josh. xix. 22). The kings replied: "As thou so tliey" (those men), i.e. they were all as stately as thou art, " every one like the form of kings sons." T^5<, one, for every one, like ^nx ^i< in 2 Kings xv. 20, or more frequently C^'X alone. As the men who had been slain were Gideon's own brothers, he swore to those who had done the deed, i.e. to the two kings, " As truly as Jehovah liveth, if ye had let them live I should not have put you to death;" and then commanded his first-horn son Jether to slay them, for the purpose of adding the disgrace of falling by the hand of a boy. " But the boy drew not his sword from fear, because he was yet a boy." And the kings then said to Gideon, " Bise thou and stab us, for as the man so is his strength," i.e. such strength does not belong to a boy, but to a man. Thereupon Gideon slew them, and took the little moons upon the necks of their camels as booty. *' The little moons" were crescent-shaped ornaments of silver or gold, such as men and women wore upon their necks (see ver. 26, and Isa. iii. 18), and which they also hung upon the necks of camels, — a custom still prevalent in Arabia (see Schroder, de vestitu mid. hebr. pp. 39, 40, and Wellsted, Eeisen in Arab. i. p. 209).

Vers. 22-32. Gideon's remaining Acts, and Death. — Vers. 22, 23. As Gideon had so gloriously delivered Israel from the severe and long oppression on the part of the JSIidianites, the Israelites offered hira an hereditary crown. " The men of Israel" were hardly all the twelve tribes, but probably only the northern tribes of the western part of the land already mentioned in chap. vi. 35, who had suffered the most severely from the Midianitish oppression, and had been the first to gather round Gideon to make an attack upon the foe. The temptation to accept the government c f Israel was resisted by tliis warrior of God. " Neither I nor my son shall rule over you; Jehovah shall rule over you" was his reply to this offer, containing an evident allusion to the destination and constitution of the tribes of Israel as a nation which Jehovah had chosen to be His own possession, and to which He had just made himself known in so conspicuous a manner as their omnipotent Kuler and King. This refusal of the regal dignity on the part of Gideon is not at variance with the fact, that Moses had already foreseen the possibihty that at some future time the desire for a king would arise in the nation, and had given them a law for the king expressly designed for such circumstances as these (Deut. xvii. 14 sqq.). For Gideon did not decline the honour because Jehovah was King in Israel, i.e. because he regarded an earthly monarchy in Israel as irreconcilable with the heavenly monarchy of Jehovah, but simply because he thought the government of Jehovah in Israel amply sufficient, and did not consider either himself or his sons called to found an earthly monarchy. — Vers. 24 sqq. Gideon resisted the temptation to put an earthly crown upon his head, from true fidelity to Jehovah; but he yielded to another temptation, which this appeal on the part of the people really involved, namely, the temptation to secure to himself for the future the position to which the Lord had called and exalted him. The Lord had called him to be the deliverer of Israel by visibly appearing in His angel, and had not only accepted the gift which he offered Him, as a well-pleasing sacrifice, but had also commanded him to build an altar, and by offering an atoning burntsacrifice to re-establish the worship of Jehovah in his family and tribe, and to restore the favour of God to His people once more. Lastly, the Lord had made His will known to him again and again; whilst by the glorious victory which He had given to him and to his small band over the powerful army of the foe. He had confirmed him as His chosen servant to be the deliverer and judge of Israel. The relation which Gideon thus sustained to the Lord he imagined that he ought to preserve; and therefore, after declining the royal dignity, he said to the people, " / loill request of you one request, that ye give me every one the ring that he has received as booty." This request the historian explains by adding the remark: "/or they (the enemy) had golden rings, for they were Ishmaelites," from whom therefore the Israelites were able to get an abundance of rings as booty. Ishmaelites is the general name for the nomad tribes of Arabia, to whom the Midianites also belonged (as in Gen. xxxvii. 25). — Vers. 25, 26. This request of Gideon's was cheerfully fulfilled: " Tliey spread out the cloth (brought for collecting the rings), and threw into it every one the ring that he had received as hootyT Simlah, the upper garment, was for the most part only a large square piece of cloth. The weight of these golden rings amounted to 1700 shekels, i.e. about 50 lbs., (Ip *T2p) separate from, i.e. beside, the remaining booty, for which Gideon had not asked, and which the Israelites kept for themselves, viz. the little moons, the ear-pendants {netiphoth, lit. little drops, probably pearl-shaped ear-drops: see Isa. iii. 19), and the purple clothes which were worn by the kings of Midian (i.e. which they had on), and also apart from the neck-bands upon the necks of their camels. Instead of the anakoth or necklaces (ver. 26), the saharonim, or little moons upon the necks of the camels, are mentioned in ver. 21 as the more valuable portion of these necklaces. Even at the present day the Arabs are accustomed to ornament the necks of these animals " with a band of cloth or leather, upon which small shells called cowries are strung or sewed in the form of a crescent. The sheiks add silver ornaments to these, which make a rich booty in time of war" {Wellsted, Reise, i. p. 209). The Midianitish kings had their camels ornamented with golden crescents. This abundance of golden ornaments will not surprise us, when we consider that the Arabs still carry their luxurious tastes for such things to a veiy great excess. Wellsted (i. p. 224) states that " the women in Oman spend considerable amounts in the purchase of silver ornaments, and their children are literally laden with them. I have sometimes counted fifteen ear-rings upon each side; and the head, breast, arms, and ankles are adorned with the same profusion." As the Midianitish army consisted of 130,000 men, of whom 15,000 only remained at the commencement of the last engagement, the Israelites may easily have collected 5000 golden rings, or even more, which might weigh 1700 shekels. — Ver. 27. " And Gideon made it into an ephod,*^ i.e. used the gold of the rings obtained from the booty for making an ephod. There is no necessity, however, to understand this as signifying that 1700 shekels or 50 lbs. of gold had been used for the ephod itself, but simply that the making of the ephod was accomphshed with this gold. The word ephod does not signify an image of Jehovah, or an idol, as Gesenius and others maintain, but the shoulder-dress of the high priest, no doubt including the choshen belonging to it, with the Urim and Thummim, as in 1 Sam. xiv. 3, xxi. 10, xxiii. 6, 9, etc. The material for this was worked throughout with gold threads; and in addition to that there were precious stones set in gold braid upon the shoulder-pieces of tlio ephod and upon the choshen, and chains made of gold twist for fastening the choshen upon the ephod (see Ex. xxviii. 6-30). Now, if 50 lbs. of gold could not be used for these things, there were also fourteen precious stones to be procured, and the work itself to be paid for, so that 50 lbs. of gold might easily be devoted to the preparation of this state dress. The large quantity of gold, therefore, does not warrant us in introducing arbitrarily into the text the establishment of a formal sanctuary, and the preparation of a golden image of Jehovah in the form of a bull, as Bertheau has done, since there is no reference to?p3 or ^DDO, as in chap. xvii. xviii.; and even the other words of the text do not point to the founding of a sanctuary and the setting up of an image of Jehovah.^ The expression which follows, inx J2f^1_, does not affirm that " he set it up," but may also mean, " he kept it in his city of Ophrah.^^ 3''Sfn is never used to denote the setting up of an image or statue, and signifies not only to put up, but also to lay down {e.g. chap. vi. 37), and to let a thing stand, or leave behind (Gen. xxxiii. 15). The further I'emark of the historian, " and all Israel went thither a whoring after it, and it became a snare to Gideon and his house" does not presuppose the founding of a sanctuary or temple in Ophrah, and the setting up of a golden calf there. In what the whoring of Israel after the ephod, i.e. the idolatry of the Israelites with Gideon's e])hod which was kept in Ophrah, consisted, cannot be gathered or determined from the use of the ephod in the worship of Jehovah under the Mosaic law. " The breastplate upon the coat, and the holy lot, were no doubt used in connection with idolatry" {Oehler), and Gideon had an ephod made in his town of Ophrah, that he might thereby obtain revelations from the Lord. We certainly are not for a moment to think of an exposure of the holy coat for the people to worship. It is far more probable that Gideon put on the ephod and wore it as a priest, when he wished to inquire and learn the will of the Lord. It is possible that he also sacrificed to the Lord upon the altar that was built at Ophrah (chap. vi. 24). The motive by which he was led to do this was certainly not merely ambition,

^ Oehler has correctly observed in Ilerzoffs Cyclopadia, that Bertlieau acts very arbitrarily when he represents Gideon as setting up the image of a bull, as Jeroboam did afterwards, since there is nothing to sustain it in the account itself. Why cannot Gideon have worshipped without any image of Jehovah, with the help of the altar mentioned in chap. vi. 24, which was a symbol of Jehovah's presence, and remained standing till the historian's own time?

as Bertheau supposes, impelling the man who, along with his followers, had maintained an independent attitude towards the tribe of Ephraim in the war itself (chap. viii. 1 sqq.), to act independently of the common sanctuary of the congregation which was within the territory of Ephraim, and also of the office of the high priest in the time of peace as well. For there is not the slightest trace to be found of such ambition as this in anything that he did during the conflict with the Midianites. The germs of Gideon's error, which became a snare to him and to his house, lie unquestionably deeper than this, namely, in the fact that the high-priesthood had probably lost its worth in the eyes of the people on account of the worthlessness of its representatives, so that they no longer regarded the high priest as the sole or principal medium of divine revelation; and therefore Gideon, to whom the Lord had manifested himself directly, as He had not to any judge or leader of the people since the time of Joshua, might suppose that he was not acting in viola-> tion of the law, when he had an epliod made, and thus provided himself with a substratum or vehicle for inquiring the will of the Lord. His sin therefore consisted chiefly in his invading the prerogative of the Aaronic priesthood, drawing away the people from the one legitimate sanctuary, and thereby not only undermining the theocratic unity of Israel, but also giving an impetus to the relapse of the nation into the worship of Baal after his death. This sin became a snare to him and to his house.

The history of Gideon is concluded in vers. 28-32. — ^Ver. 28. The Midianites had been so humiliated that they lifted up their head no more, and the land of Israel had rest forty years " in the days of Gideon" i.e. as long as Gideon lived. — ^Vers. 29 sqq. Before the account of his death, a few other notices respecting his family are introduced for the purpose of preparing the way for the following history of the doings of his sons, in which the sin of Gideon came to a head, and the judgment burst upon his house. '^And Jerubbaal, the son of Joash, went and dwelt in his house." Both the word ^^.^1, which simply serves to bring out the fact more vividly (see the remarks on Ex. ii. 1), and also the choice of the name Jerubbaal, merely serve to give greater prominence to the change, from the heat of the war against the Midianites to the quiet retirement of domestic life. Instead of accepting the crown that was offered him and remaining at the head of the nation, the celebrated Baal-fighter retired into private life again. In addition to the seventy sons of his many wives, there was a son bom to him by a concubine, who lived at Shechem and is called his maid-servant in chap. ix. 18, and to this son he gave the name of Abimelech, i.e. king's father. iOB^nx DK»1 is not the same as 'iloii^nN: snp, to give a person a name, but signifies to add a name, or give a surname (see Neh. ix. 7, and Dan. v. 12 in the Chaldee). It follows from this, that Abimelech received this name from Gideon as a cognomen answering to his character, and therefore not at the time of his birth, but when he grew up and manifested such qualities as led to the expectation that he would be a king's father. — Ver. 32. Gideon died at a good old age (see Gen. xv. 15, xxv. 8), and therefore also died a peaceful death (not so his sons; see chap, ix.), and was buried in his father's grave at Ophrah (chap. vi. 11).

Vers. 33-35 form the introduction to the history of Gideon's sons. — Ver. 33. After Gideon's death the Israelites fell once more into the Baal-worship which Gideon had rooted out of his father's city (chap. vi. 25 sqq.), and worshipped Baal-herith as their God, Baal-berith, the covenant Baal (equivalent to El-herith, the covenant god, chap. ix. 46), is not Baal as the god of covenants, but, according to Gen. xiv. 13, Baal as a god in covenant, i.e. Baal with whom they had made a covenant, just as the Israelites had their faithful covenant God in Jehovah (see Movers, Phoniz. i. p. 171). The worship of Baal-berith, as performed at Shechem according to chap. ix. 46, was an imitation of the worship of Jehovah, an adulteration of that worship, in which Baal was put in the place of Jehovah (see Hengstenherg, Dissertations on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. p. 81). — Vers. 34, 35. In this relapse into the worship of Baal they not only forgot Jehovah, their Deliverer from all their foes, but also the benefits which they owed to Gideon, and showed no kindness to his house in return for all the good which he had shown to Israel. The expression Jeruhhaal- Gideon is chosen by the historian here, not for the purely outward purpose of laying express emphasis upon the identity of Gideon and Jerubbaal (^Bei'- theau), but to point to what Gideon, the Baal-fighter, had justly deserved from the people of Israel.

After the death of Gideon, Abimelech, his bastard son, opened a way for himself to reign as king over Israel, by murdering his brethren with the help of the Shechemites (vers. 1-6). For this grievous wrong Jotham, the only one of Gideon's seventy sons who escaped the massacre, reproached the citizens of Shechem in a parable, in which he threatened them with punishment from God (vers. 7-21), wliich first of all fell upon Shechem within a very short time (vers. 22-49), and eventually reached Abimelech himself (vers. 50-57).

Vers. 1-6. Having gone to Shechem, the home of his mother (chap. viii. 31), Abimelech applied to his mother's brothers and the whole family (all the relations) of the father's house of his mother, and addressed them thus: " Speak, I pray you, in the ears of all the lords of Shechem^^ i.e. speak to them publicly and solemnly. D2^ vya, the lords, i.e. the possessors or citizens of Shechem (compare ver. 46 with ver. 49, where T^yo 7^3 is interchangeable with p^ip ""t^^N; also chap. xx. 5, and Josh. xxiv. 11): they are not merely Canaanitish citizens, of whom there were some still living in Shechem according to ver. 28, but all the citizens of the town; therefore chiefly Israelites. " What is better for you, that seventy men rule over you, all the sons of Jerubhaal, or (only) one man (i.e. Abimelech)? and remember that I am your flesh and bone^' (blood relation, Gen. xxix. 14). The name " sons of Jerubhaal," i.e. of the man who had destroyed the altar of Baal, was just as little adapted to commend the sons of Gideon to the Shechemites, who were devoted to the worship of Baal, as the remark that seventy men were to rule over them. No such rule ever existed, or was even aspired to by the seventy sons of Gideon. But Abimelech assumed that his brothers possessed the same thirst for ruling as he did himself; and the citizens of Shechem might be all the more ready to put faith in his assertions, since the distinction which Gideon had enjoyed wgs thoroughly adapted to secure a prominent place in the nation for his sons. — Ver. 3. When his mother's brethren spake to the citizens of Shechem concerning him, i.e. respecting him and his proposal, their heart turned to Abimelech. — Ver. 4. They gave him seventy shekels of silver from the house of Baal-berith, i.e. from the treasury of the temple that was dedicated to the covenant Baal at Shechem, as temple treasures were frequently applied to political purposes (see 1 Kings xv. 18). With this money Abimelech easily hired light and desperate men, who followed him (attached themselves to him); and with their help he murdered his brethren at Ophrah, seventy men, with the exception of Jotham the youngest, who had hidden himself. The number seventy, the total number of his brethren, is reduced by the excer>- tion mentioned immediately afterwards to sixty-nine who were really put to death. P"""], empty, i.e. without moral restraint. THb, lit. gurgling up, boiling over; figuratively, hot, desperate men. " Upon (against) one stone," that is to say, by a formal execution: a bloody omen of the kingdom of the ten tribes, which was afterv.'ards founded at Shechem by the Ephraimite Jeroboam, in which one dynasty overthrew another, and generally sought to establish its power by exterminating the whole family of the dynasty that had been overthrown (see 1 Kings xv. 27 sqq., 2 Kings x. 1 sqq.). Even in Judah, Athaliah the worshipper of Baal sought to usurp the government by exterminating the whole of the descendants of her son (2 Kings xi.). Such fratricides have also occurred in quite recent times in the Mohammedan countries of tlie East. — Ver. 6. " Then all the citizens of Shechem assembled together, and all the house of Millo, and made Ahirnelech king at the memorial terebinth at Shechem." Millo is unquestionably the name of the castle or citadel of the town of Shechem, which is called the tower of Shechem in vers. 46-49. The word Millo (Chaldee ^n^n) signifies primarily a rampart, inasmucli as it consisted of two walls, with the space between them filled with rubbish. There was also a Millo at Jerusalem (2 Sam. v. 9; 1 Kings ix. 15). " All the house of Millo " are all the inhabitants of the castle, the same persons who are described in ver. 46 as " all the men (baale) of the tower." The meaning of 2Jfp p7SI is doubtful. 3^0, the thing set up, is a military post in Isa. xxix. 3; but it may also mean a monument or memorial, and here it probably denotes the large stone set up as a memorial at Shechem under the oak or terebinth (see Gen. xxxv. 4). The inhabitants of Shechem, the worshippers of Baal-berith, carried out the election of Abimelech as king in the very same place in which Joshua had held the last national assembly, and had renewed the covenant of Israel with Jehovah the true covenant God (Josh. xxiv. 1, 25, 26). It was there in all probability that the temple of Baal-berith was to be found, namely, according to ver. 46, near the tower of Shechem or the citadel of Millo.

Vers. 7-21. When Jotham, who had escaped after the murder, was told of the election which had taken place, he went to the top of Mount Gerizim, which rises as a steep wall of rock to the height of about 800 feet above the valley of Shechem on the south side of the city {Rob. iii. p. 96), and cried with a loud voice, " Hearken to me, ye lords of Shechem, and God will also hearken to you." After this appeal, which calls to mmd the language of the prophets, he uttered aloud a fable of the trees which wanted to anoint a king

OA er them, — a fable of true prophetic significance, and the earliest with which we are acquainted (vers. 8-15). To the appeal which is made to them in succession to become king over the trees, the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine all reply: Shall we give up our calling, to bear valuable fruits for the good and enjoyment of God and men, and soar above the other trees? The briar, however, to which the trees turn last of all, is delighted at the unexpected honour that is offered it, and says, " Will ye in truth anoint me king over you? Then come and trust in my shadow; but if not^ let jire go out of the briar and consume the cedars of Lebanon.*' The rare form 'l^iTp (Chethib, vers. 8, 12) also occurs in 1 Sam. xxviii. 8, Isa. xxxii. 11, Ps. xxvi. 2: see Ewald, § 228, b.). *37D (ver. 10) is also rare (see Ewald, § 226, b.). The form *^^nn (vers. 9, 11, 13), which is quite unique, is not ^'Ilophal or HipMl, comjx)unded of ''^^'^ or '^[l!]i[|" (Ewald, § 51, c), for neither the ITophal nor the Hiphil of *nn occurs anywhere else; but it is a simple Kalj and theobscure o sound is chosen instead of the a sound for the sake of euphony, i.e. to assist the pronunciation of the guttural syllables which follow one after another. The meaning of the fable is very easy to understand. The olive tree, fig tree, and vine do not represent different historical persons, such as the judges Othniel, Deborah, and Gideon, as the Babbins affirm, but in a perfectly general way the nobler famiUes or persons who bring forth fruit and blessing in the calling appointed them by God, and promote the prosperity of the people and kingdom in a manner that is well-pleasing to God and men. Oil, figs, and wine were the most valuable productions of the land of Canaan, whereas the briar was good for nothing but to bum. The noble fruit-trees would not tear themselves from the soil in which they had been planted and had borne fruit, to soar (!5V, float about) above the trees, Le. not merely to rule over the trees, but obire et circumagi in rebus eorum curandis. ^ includes the idea of restlessness and insecurity of existence. The explanation given in the BerUb. Bible, " We have here what it is to be a king, to reign or be lord over many others, namely, very frequently to do nothing else than float about in such restlessness and distraction of thoughts, feelings, and desires, that very little good or sweet fruit ever falls to the ground," if not a truth without exception so far as royalty is concerned, is at all events perfectly true in relation to what Abimelech aimed at and attained, to be a king by the will of the people and nol by the grace of God. Wherever the Ijord does im^ found the monarchy, or the king himself does not lay the foundations of his government in God and the grace of God, he is never anything but a tree, moving about above other trees without a firm root in a fruitful soil, utterly unable to bear fruit to the glory of God and the good of men. The expression " all the trees''^ is to be carefully noticed in ver. 14. " All the trees" say to the briar, Be king over us, whereas in the previous verse only " the trees" are mentioned. This implies that of all the trees not one was willing to be king himself, but that they were unanimous in transferring the honour to the briar. The briar, which has nothing but thorns upon it, and does not even cast sufficient shadow for any one to lie down in its shadow and protect himself from the burning heat of the sun, is an admirable simile for a worthless man, who can do nothing but harm. The words of the briar, " Trust in my shadow" seek refuge there, contain a deep irony, the truth of which the Shechemites were very soon to discover. " A nd if not" i.e. if ye do not find the protection you expect, fire will go out of the briar and consume the cedars of Lebanon, the largest and noblest trees. Thorns easily catch fire (see Ex. xxii. 5). The most insignificant and most worthless- man can be the cause of harm to the mio-htiest and most distinguished.

In vers. 16-20 Jotham gives the application of his fable, for there was no necessity for any special explanation of it, since it was perfectly clear and intelligible in itself. These verses form a long period, the first half of which is so extended by the insertion of parentheses introduced as explanations (vers. 17, 18), that the commencement of it (ver. 16) is taken up again in ver. 19a for the purpose of attaching the apodosis. " If ye have acted in truth and sincerity, and (i.e. when ye) made Abimelech king; if ye have done well to Jeruhhaal and his house, and if ye have done to him according to the doing of his hands... as my father fought for you... but ye have risen up to-day against my father s house, and have slain... if (I say) ye have acted in truth and sincerity to Jeruhhaal and his house this day: then rejoice in Abimelech...." iC'DS 'Hr^'?, to throw away his life, i.e. expose to death. *i.33Pj '•^ from before him" serves to strengthen the ^y^"?. Jotham imputes the slaying of his brothers to the citizens of Shechem, as a crime which they themselves had committed (ver. 18), because they had given Abimelech money out of their temple of Baal to carry out his designs against the sons of Jerubbaal (ver. 4). In this reproach he had, strictly speaking, already pronounced sentence upon their doings When, therefore, he proceeds still further in ver. 19, "If ye have acted in truth towards Jenibbaal... then rejoice," etc., this turn contains the bitterest scorn at the faithlessness manifested towards Jerubbaal. In that case nothing could follow but the fulfilment of the threat and the bursting forth of the fire. In carrying out this point the application goes beyond the actual meaning of the parable itself. Not only will fire go forth from Abimelech and consume the lords of Shechem and the inhabitants of Millo, but fire will also go forth from them and devour Abimelech himself. The fulfilment of this threat was not long delayed, as the following history shows (vers. 23 sqq.). — Ver. 21. But Jotham fled to Beer, after charging the Shechemites with their iniquity, and dwelt there before liis brother Abimelech Q' before," i.e. " for fear of." — Jerome). Beer in all probability is not the same place as Beeroth in the tribe of Benjamin (Josh. ix. 17), but, according to the Onom. (s. v. Bripa), a place eight Roman miles to the north of Eleutheropolis, situated in the plain; at present a desolate village called el Bireh, near the mouth of the Wady es Surar, not far from the former Beth-shemesh (Rob. Pal. ii. p. 132).

Vers. 22-24. Abimelech's reign lasted three years. "^B^, from "yp, to govern, is used intentionally, as it appears, in the place of ^''PH) because Abimelech's government was not a monarchical reign, but simply a tyrannical despotism. " Over Israel^'' that is to say, not over the whole of the twelve tribes of Israel, but only over a portion of the nation, possibly the tribes of Ephraim and half ^lanasseh, which acknowledged his sway. — Vers. 23, 24. Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem, so that they became treacherous towards him. " ^n evil spirit" is not merely " an evil disposition," but an evil demon, which produced discord and strife, just as an evil spirit came upon Saul (1 Sam. xvi. 14, 15, xviii. 10); not Satan himself, but a supernatural spiritual power which was under his influence. This evil spirit God sent to pimish the wickedness of Abimelech and the Shechemites. Elohim, not Jehovah, because the working of the divine justice is referred to here. " That the wickedness to the seventy sons of Jerubbaal might come, and Hieir blood (the blood of these sons that had been shed), to lay it upon Abimelech." "And their blood'^ is only a more precise definition of " the wickedness to the seventy sons;" and " to lay it" is an explanation of the expression " might come." The introduction of 2''*^, however, brings an anakolouthon into the construction, since the transitive D\^ presupposes Elohim as the subject and DOT as the object, whereas the parallel DIDn is the subject to the intransitive t^i^P: that the wickedness might come, and that God might lay the blood not only upon Abimelech, the author of the crime, but also upon the lords of Shechem, who had strengthened his hands to slay his brethren; had supported him by money, that he might be able to hire worthless fellows to execute his crime (vers. 4, 5).

Vers. 25-29. The faithlessness of the Shechemites towards Abimelech commenced by their placing Hers in wait for him (i^, dat. incomrn., to his disadvantage) upon the tops of the mountains (Ebal and Gerizim, between which Shechem was situated), who plundered every one who passed by them on the road. In what way they did harm to Abimelech by sending out Hers in wait to plunder the passers-by, is not very clear from the brevity of the narrative. The general effect may have been, that they brought his 'government into discredit with the people by organizing a system of robbery and plunder, and thus aroused a spirit of discontent and rebellion. Possibly, however, these highway robbers were to watch for Abimelech himself, if he should come to Shechem, not only to plunder him, but, if possible, to despatch him altogether. This was made known to Abimelech. But before he had put down the brigandage, the treachery broke out into open rebellion. — Ver. 26. Gaal, the son of Ebed, came to Shechem with his brethren. "^^V with 3, to pass over into a place. Who Gaal was, and whence ho came, we are not informed. Many of the mss. and early editions, e.g. the Syriac and Arabic, read " son of Eber," instead of " son of Ebed." Judging from his appearance in Shechem, he was a knight-errant, who went about the country with his brethren, i.e. as captain of a company of freebooters, and was welcomed in Shechem, because the Shechemites, who were dissatisfied with the rule of Abimelech, hoped to find in him a man who would be able to render them good service in their revolt from Abimelech. This may be gathered from the words " and the lords of Shechem trusted in him." — ^Ver. 27. At the vintage they prepared Dy^?"?, " praiseofferings," with the grapes which they had gathered and pressed, eating and drinking in the house of their god, i.e. the temple of Baal-berith, and cursing Abimelech at these sacrificial meals, probably when they were excited with wine. Dv^ipn signifies, according to Lev. xix. 24, praise-offerings of the fruits which newly-planted orchards or vineyards bore in the fourth year. The presentation of these fruits, by which the vineyard or orchard was sanctified to the Lord, /^as associated, as we may learn from the passage before us, with sa(*^ificial meals. The Shechemites held a similar festival in the temple of their covenant Baal, and in his honour, to that which the law prescribes for the Israelites in Lev. xix. 23-25. — Vers. 28, 29. At this feast Gaal called upon the Shechemites to revolt from Abimelech. " Who is Abimelech," he exclaimed, "and icho Shechem, that we serve him? Is he not the son of Jerubbaal, and Zehul his oficer? Serve the men of Hamor, the father of Shechem! and why should we, we serve him (Abimelech) t" The meaning of these words, which have been misinterpreted in several different wavs, is very easily seen, if we bear in mind (1) that *p (who is?) in this double question cannot possibly be used in two different and altogether opposite senses, such as " how insignificant or contemptible is Abimelech," and " how great and mighty is Shechem," but that in both instances it must be expressive of disparagement and contempt, as in 1 Sam. xxv, 10; and (2) that Gaal answers his own questions. Abimelech was regarded by him as contemptible, not because he was the son of a maid-servant or of very low birth, nor because he was ambitious and cruel, a parricide and the murderer of his brethren (Rosenmiiller), but because he was a son of Jerubbaal, a son of the man who destroyed the altar of Baal at Shechem and restored the worship of Jehovah, for which the Shechemites themselves had endeavoured to slay him (chap. vi. 27 sqq.). So also the meaning of the question. Who is Shechem? may be gathered from the answer, " and Zebul his officer." The use of the personal ^ (who) in relation to Shechem may be explained on the ground that Gaal is speaking not so much of the city as of its inhabitants. The might and greatness of Shechem did not consist in the might and authority of its prefect, Zebul, who had been appointed by Abimelech, and whom the Shechemites had no need to ser\'e. Accordingly there is no necessity either for the arbitrary paraphrase of Shechem, given in the Sept., viz. v«o<? Sv)(ifi (son of Shechem); or for the perfectly arbitrary' assumption of Bertheau, that Shechem is only a second name for Abimelech, who was a descendant of Shechem; or even for the solution proposed by Rosenmuller, that Zebul was " a man of low birth and obscure origin," which is quite incapable of proof. To Zebul, that one man whom Abimelech had appointed prefect of the city, Gaal opposes " the men of Hamor, the father of Shechem" as those whom the Shechemites should serve (i.e. whose followers they should be). ITamor was the name of the Hivite prince who had founded the city of

Shecliem (Gen. xxxlli. 19, xxxiv. 2; compare Josh. xxiv. 32). The " men of Hamor " were the patricians of the city, who " derived their origin from the noblest and most ancient stock of Hamor " {liosenmuller). Gaal opposes them to Abimelech and his representative ZebuL^ In the last clause, " why should we serve him " (Abimelech or his officer Zebul)? Gaal identifies himself with the inhabitants of Shechem, that he may gain them fully over to his plans. — Ver. 29. " 0 that this people,^' continued Gaal, " were in my hand" i.e. could I but rule over the inhabitants of Shechem, " then would I remove (drive away) Abimelech." Pie then exclaimed with regard to Abimelech (j i^^, as in ver. 54b, Gen. xx. 13, etc.), " Increase thine army and come out! " Pleated as he was with wine, Gaal was so certain of victory that he challenged Abimelech boldly to make war upon Shecliem. nan^ imper. Piel with Seghol. HNVj imperative, with n— of motion or emphasis.

Vers. 30-45. This rebellious speech of Gaal was reported to Abimelech by the town-prefect Zebul, who sent messengers to him TO'inSj either with deceit (^^"!^ from i^^"^), i.e. employing deceit, inasmuch as he had listened to the speech quietly and with apparent assent, or " in Tormah^'' the name of a place, nDin being a misspelling for noiK = n^ins (ver. 41). The &ept. and Chaldee take the word as an appellative = iv /c/3u^^, secretly; so also do Rashi and most of the earlier commentators, whilst R. Kimchi the elder has decided in favour of the second rendering as a proper name. As the word only occurs here, it is impossible to decide with certainty in favour of either view. D''"iV D3n, behold they stir up the city against thee (Q^")V from "i=i5f in the sense of "1"^^). — Ver. 32. At the same time he called upon Abimelech to draw near, with tiie people that he had with him, during the night, and to lie in wait in the field (^1^, to place one's self in ambush), and the next morning to spread out with his army against the town; and when Gaal went out with his followers, he was to do to him " as his hand should find," i.e. to deal with him as he best could and would under the circumstances. (On this formula, see at 1 Sam. x. 7, xxv. 8.) —

^ Bertheau maintains, though quite erroneously, that serving the men of Hamor is synonymous with serving Abimelech. But the very opposite of this is so clearly implied in the words, that there cannot be any doubt on the question. All that can be gathered from the words is that there were remnants of the Hivite (or Canaanitish) population still living in Shechem, and therefore that the Canaanites had not been entirely exterminated, — a fact which wouW sufficiently explain tne revival of the worship of Baal there.

Yer. 34. On receiving this intelligence, Abimelech rose up during the night with the people that were with him, i.e. with such troops as he had, and placed four companies ("heads" as in chap. vii. 16) in ambush against Shechem. — Vers. 35, 36. When Gaal went out in the morning with his retinue upon some enterprise, which is not more clearly defined, and stood before the citj gate, Abimelech rose up with his army out of the ambush. On seeing this people, Gaal said to Zebul (who must therefore have come out of the city with him): " Behold, people come down from the tops of the mountains.^' Zebul replied, for the purpose of deceiving him and making him feel quite secure, " T7ioii loosest upon the shadow of the mountains as men." — Ver. 37. But Gaal said again, ^^ Behold, people come down from the navel of the land^ i.e. from the highest point of the surrounding country, " and a crowd comes hy the way of the vrizardts terebinths" — a place in the neighbourhood of Shechem that is not mentioned anywhere else, and therefore is not more precisely known. — Ver. 38. Then Zebul declared openly against Gaal, and reproached him with his foolhardy speech, whilst Abimelech was drawing nearer with his troops: " Where is thy mouth now with which thou saidst. Who is Abimelech? Is not this the people that thou hast despised? Go out now and fight with him!" — Vers. 39 sqq. Then Gaal went out " before the citizens of Shechem;" i.e. not at their head as their leader, which is the meaning of ^.3Sp in Gen. xxxiii. 3, Ex. xiii. 21, Num. x. 35, etc., — for, according to vers. 33-35, Gaal had only gone out of the town with his own retinue, and, according to vers. 42, 43, the people of Shechem did not go out till the next day, — but " in the sight of the lords of Shechem," so that they looked upon the battle. But the battle ended unfortunately for him. Abimelech put him to flight {K11 as in Lev. xxvi. 36), and there fell many slain up to the gate of the city, into which Gaal had fled with his followers. — ^Ver. 41. Abimelech did not force his way into the city, but remained (2!?^., lit. sat down) with his army in Arumah, a place not mentioned again, which was situated, according to ver. 42, somewhere in the neighboui'hood of Shechem. It cannot possibly have been the place called 'Pov/jA 17 Kal "Apifut in the Onom. of Eusebius, which was named 'Pefi<^i<i in his day, and was situated in the neighbourhood of Diospolis (or Lydda). Zebul, however, drove Gaal and his brethren {i.e. his retinue) out of Shechem. — Vers. 42-45. The next day the people of Shechem went into the field, apparently not to make war upon Abimelech, but to work in the field, possibly to continue the vintage. But when Abimelecli was informed of it, he divided the people, i.e. his own men, into three companies, which he placed in ambush in the field, and then fell upon the Shechemites when they had come out of the city, and slew them. — Ver. 44. That is to say, Abimelecli and the companies with him spread themselves out and took their station by the city gate to cut off the retreat of the Shechemites into the city, whilst the other two companies fell upon all who were in the field, and slew them. — Ver. 45. Thus Abimelech fought all that day against the city and took it; and having slain all the people therein, he destroyed the city and strewed salt upon it. Strewing the ruined city with salt, which only occurs here, was a symbolical act, signifying that the city was to be turned for ever into a barren salt desert. Salt ground is a barren desert (see Job xxxix. 6, Ps. cvii. 34).

Vers. 46-49. When the inhabitants of the castle of Shechem ("lords of the tower of Shechem" = "all the house of Millo," ver. 6) heard of the fate of tlie town of Shechem, they betook themselves to the hold of the house (temple) of the covenant god (Baal-berith), evidently not for the purpose of defending themselves there, but to seek safety at the sanctuary of their god from fear of the vengeance of Abimelech, towards whom they also had probably acted treacherously. The meaning of the word nnv, which answers to an Arabic word signifying arx, palatium, omnis structura elatior, cannot be exactly determined, as it only occurs again in 1 Sam. xiii. 6 in connection with caves and clefts of the rock. According to ver. 49, it had a roof which could be set on fire. The meaning " tower " is only a conjecture founded upon the context, and does not suit, as n"'nv is distinguished from ^"^30. — Ver. 47. As soon as this was announced to Abimelech, he went with all his men to Mount Zalmon, took hatchets in his hand, cut down branches from the trees, and laid them upon his shoulders, and commanded his people to do the same. These branches they kiid upon the hold, and set the hold on fire over them (the inhabitants of the tower who had taken i*efuge there), so that all the people of the tower of Shechem (about one thousand persons) perished, both men and women. Mount Zalmon, which is mentioned again in Ps. Ixviii. 15, was a dark, thickly-wooded mountain near Shechem, — a kind of " Black Forest," as Luther has rendered the name. The plural kardumotJi, " axes," may be explained on the ground that Abimelech took axes not only for himself but for his people also. ^0 in a relative sense, as in Num. xxiii. 3 (see Ewald, § 331, h.^.

Vers. 50-57. At length the fate predicted by Jotham (ver. 20) overtook Abimelech. — Vers. 50, 51. He went from Shechem to Thebez, besieged the town, and took it. Thehez, according to the Onom. thirteen miles from Neapolis (Shechem) on the road to Scythopolis (Beisan), has been preserved in the large village of Tubas on the north of Shechem (see Mob. Pal. iii. p. 156, and Bibl. Res. p. 305). This town possessed a strong tower, in which men and women and all the inhabitants of the town took refuge and shut themselves in. But when Abimelech advanced to the tower and drew near to the door to set it on fire, a woman threw a millstone down upon him from the roof of the tower and smashed his skull, whereupon he called hastily to the attendant who carried his weapons to give him his death-blow with his sword, that men might not say of him " a woman slew him." M^ rPB^ the upper millstone which was turned round, lapis vector (see Deut. xxiv. 6).)*^")n: from IT), with a toneless {, possibly to distinguish it from p.^1 (from }*^i). i^?3?3, an unusual form for W^273, which is found in the edition of Norzi (Mantua, 1742). — Yer. 55. After the death of Abimelech his army was dissolved, ^^"f^, B'*** are the Israelites who formed Abimelech's army. In vers. 56, 57, the historian closes this account with the remark, that in this manner God recompensed Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem, who had supported him in the murder of his brothers (ver. 2), according to their doings. After the word "rendered*^ in ver. 56 we must supply "upon his head," as in ver. 57. Thus Jotham's curse was fulfilled upon Abimelech and upon the Shechemites, who had made him king.

Of these two judges no particular deeds are mentioned, no doubt because they performed none. — Vers. 1, 2. Tola arose after Abimelech's death to deliver Israel, and judged Israel twenty-three years until his death, though certainly not all the Israelites of the twelve tribes, but only the northern and possibly also the eastern tribes, to the exclusion of Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin, as these southern tribes neither took part in Gideon's war of freedom nor stood under Abimelech's rule. To explain the clause " there arose to defend (or save) Israel," when nothing had been said about any fresh oppression on the part of the foe, we need not assume, as Rosenmttller does, " that the Israelites had been constantly harassed by their neighbours, who continued to suppress the liberty of the

Israelites, and from whose stratagems or power the Israelites were delivered by the acts of Tola;" but Tola rose up as the deliverer of Israel, even supposing that he simply regulated the affairs of the tribes who acknowledged him as their supreme judge, and succeeded by his efforts in preventing the nation from falling back into idolatry, and thus guarded Israel from any fresh oppression on the part of hostile nations. Tola was the son of Paah, the son of Dodo, of the tribe of Issachar. The names Tola and Puah are already met with among the descendants of Issachar, as founders of families of the tribe of Issachar (see Gen. xlvi. 13, Num. xxvi. 23, where the latter name is written n^Q), and they were afterwards repeated in the different households of these families. Dodo is not an appellative, as the Sept. translators supposed (uto? irarpaheki^ov avTov), but a proper name, as in 2 Sam. xxiii. 9 (Keri), 24, and 1 Chron. xi. 12. The town of Shamir, upon the mountains of Ephraim, where Tola judged Israel, and was afterwards buried, was a different place from the Shamir upon the mountains of Judah, mentioned in Josh xv. 48, and its situation (probably in the territory of Issachar) is- still unknown. — Vers. 3 sqq. After him Jair the Gileadite (born in Gilead) judged Israel for twenty-two years. Nothing further is related of him than that he had thirty sons who rode upon thirty asses, which was a sign of distinguished rank in those times when the Israelites had no horses. They had thirty cities (the second D''"i^y in ver. 4 is another form for D''"iy, from a singular *l^y = l"*!?, a city, and is chosen because of its similarity in sound to ^'^'j'^V, asses). These cities they were accustomed to call Havvoth-jair unto this day (the time when our book was written), in the land of Gilead. The DHP before ^X'}!?''. is placed first for the sake of emphasis, " even these they call" etc. This statement is not at variance with the fact, that in the time of Moses the Manassite Jair gave the name of Havvoth-jair to the towns of Bashan which had been conquered by him (Num. xxxii. 41; Deut. iii. 14); for it is not affirmed here, that the thirty cities which belonged to the sons of Jair received this name for the first time from the judge Jair, but simply that this name was brought into use again by the sons of Jair, and was applied to these cities in a peculiar sense. (For further remarks on the Havvoth-jair, see at Deut. iii. 14.) The situation of Camon, where Jair was buried, is altogether uncertain. Josephus (Ant. v. 6, 6) calls it a city of Gilead, though probably only on account of the assumption, that it would not be likely that Jair the Gileadite, who possessed so many cities in Gilead, should be buried outside Gilead. But this assumption is a very questionable one. As Jair judged Israel after Tola the Issacharite, the assumption is a more natural one, that he lived in Canaan propoi* Yet Reland (Pal. ill. p. 679) supports the opinion that it was in Gilead, and adduces the fact that Polyhius (Hist. v. 70, 12) mentions a town called Ka/Movv, bj the side of Pella and Gefrun, as having been taken by Antiochus. On the other hand, Eusehhis and Jerome (in the Ouom.) regard our Camon as being the same as the KcofjLT) Kafjifxcova iv t&) fxeyaXm irehlw, six Roman miles to the north of Legio {Lejun), on the way to Ptolemais, which would be in the plain of Jezreel or Esdraelon. This is no doubt applicable to the Kvafiiov of Judith vii. 3; but whether it also applies to our Camon cannot be decided, as the town is not mentioned again.

The third stage in the period of the judges, which extended from the death of Jair to the rise of Samuel as a prophet, was a time of deep humiliation for Israel, since the Lord gave up His people into the hands of two hostile nations at the same time, on account of their repeated return to idolatry; so that the Ammonites invaded the land from the east, and oppressed the Israelites severely for eighteen years, especially the tribes to the east of the Jordan; whilst the Philistines came from the west, and extended their dominion over the tribes on this side, and brought them more and more firmly under their j'oke. It is true that Jephthah delivered his people from the oppression of the Ammonites, in the power of the Spirit of Jehovah, having first of all secured the help of God through a vow, and not only smote the Ammonites, but completely subdued them before the Israelites. But the Philistine oppression lasted forty years; for although Samson inflicted heavy blows upon the Philistines again and again, and made them feel the superior power of the God of Israel, he was nevertheless not in a condition to destroy their power and rule over Israel. This was left for Samuel to accomplish, after he had converted the people to the Lord their God.

Israets renewed Apostasy and consequent Punishment.- - Chap. X. 6-18.

As the Israelites forsook the Lord their God again, and served the gods of the surrounding nations, the Lord gave them up to the power of the Philistines and Ammonites, and left them to groan for eighteen years under the severe oppression of the Ammonites, till they cried to Him in their distress, and He sent them deliverance through Jephthah, though not till He had first of all charged them with their sins, and they had put away the sti'ange godrt, This section fomns the introduction, not only to the history of Jephthah (chap. xi. 1-xii. 7) and the judges who followed him, viz. Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon (chap. xii. 8-15), but also to the history of Samson, who began to deliver Israel out of the power of the Philistines (chap, xiii.-xvi.). After the fact has been mentioned in the introduction (in ver. 7), that Israel was given up into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites at the same time, the Ammonitish oppression, which lasted eighteen years, is more particularly described in vers. 8, 9. This is followed by the reproof of the idolatrous Israelites on the part of God (vers. 10-16); and lastly, the history of Jephthah is introduced in vers. 17, 18, the fuller account being given in chap. xi. Jephthah, who judged Israel for six years after the conquest and humiliation of the Ammonites (chap. xii. 7), was followed by the judges Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon, who judged Israel for seven, ten, and eight years respectively, that is to say, for twenty-five years in all; so that Abdon died forty-nine years (18 + 6+25) after the commencement of the Ammonitish oppression, i.e. nine years after the termination of the forty years' rule of the Philistines over Israel, which is described more particularly in chap. xiii. 1, for the purpose of introducing the history of Samson, who judged Israel twenty years under that rule (chap. xv. 20, xvi. 31), without bringing it to a close, or even surviving it. It was only terminated by the victory which Israel achieved under Samuel at Ebenezer, as described in 1 Sam. vii.

Vers. 6-16. In the account of the renewed apostasy of the Israelites from the Lord contained in ver. 6, seven heathen deities are mentioned as being served by the Israelites: viz., in addition to the Canaanitish Baals and Astartes (see at chap. ii. 11, 13), the gods of Aram, i.e. Syria, who are never mentioned by name; of Sidon, i.e., according to 1 Kings xi. 5, principally the Sidonian or Phoenician Astarte; of the Moabites, i.e. Chemosh (1 Kings xi. 33), the principal deity of that people, which was related to Moloch (see at Num. xxi. 29); of the Ammonites, i.e. Milcom (1 Kings xi. 5, 33) or Moloch (see at Lev. xviii. 21); and of the Philistines, i.e. Dagon (see at chap. xvi. 23). If we compare the list of these seven deities with vers. 11 and 12, where we find seven nations mentioned out of whose hands Jehovah had delivered Israel, the correspondence between the number seven in these two cases and the significant use of the number are unmistakeable. Israel had balanced the number of divine deliverances by a similar number of idols which it served, so that the measure of the nation's iniquity was filled up in the same proportion as the measure of the delivering grace of God. The number seven is employed in the Scriptures as the stamp of the works of God, or of the perfection created, or to be created, by God on the one hand, and of the actions of men in their relation to God on the other. The foundation for this was the creation of the world in seven days. — On ver. 7, see chap. ii. 13, 14. The Anmnonites are mentioned after the Philistines, not because they did not oppress the Israelites till afterwards, but for purely formal reasons, viz. because the historian was about to describe the oppression of the Ammonites first. In ver. 8 the subject is the " children of Ammon," as we may see very clearly from ver. 9. " They (the Ammonites) ground and crushed the Israelites in the same year^^ i.e. the year in which God sold the Israelites into their hands, or in which they invaded the land of Israel. YT\ and YT\ are synonymous, and are simply joined together for the sake of emphasis, whilst the latter calls to mind Deut. xxviii. 33. The duration of this oppression is then added: " Eighteen years (they crushed) all the Israelites, who dwelt on the other side of the Jordan in the land of the Amorites" i.e. of the two Amoritish kings Sihon and Og, who (dwelt) in Gilead. Gilead, being a more precise epithet for the land of the Amorites, is used here in a wider sense to denote the whole of the countiy on the east of the Jordan, so far as it had been taken from the Amorites and occupied by the Israelites (as in Num. xxxii. 29, Deut. xxxiv. 1: see at Josh. xxii. 9). — Ver. 9. They also crossed the Jordan, and made war even upon Judah, Benjamin, and the house of Ephraim (the families of the tribe of Ephraim), by which Israel was brought into great distress, "ly^l, as in chap. ii. 15. — Vers. 10-14. When the Israelites cried in their distress to the Lord, " We have sinned against Thee, namely, that ice have forsaken our God and served the Baals," the Lord first of all reminded them of the manifestations of His grace (vers. 11, 12), and then pointed out to them their faithless apostasy and the worthlessness of their idols (vers. 13, 14). ""^i, " and indeed that" describes the sin more minutely, and there is no necessity to remove it from the text, — an act which is neither warranted by its absence from several mss. nor by its omission from the Sept., the Syriac, and the Vulgate. Baalim is a general term used to denote all the false gods, as in chap. ii. 11. This answer on the part of God to the prayer of the Israelites for help is not to be regarded as having been given through an extraordinary manifestation (theophany), or through the medium of a prophet, for that would certainly have been recorded; but it was evidently given in front of the tabernacle, where the people had called upon the Lord, and either came through the high priest, or else through an inward voice in which God spoke to the hearts of the people, i.e. through the voice of their own consciences, by which God recalled to their memories and impressed upon tlieir hearts first of all His own gracious acts, and then their faithless apostasy. There is an anakolouthon in the words of God. The construction which is commenced with onV'?'? is dropped at 'ii1 D"'3n^V1 in ver. 12; and the verb ''^V^'^, which answers to the beginning of the clause, is brought up afterwards in the form of an apodosis with DariK ny''C^ixi. ^' Did I not deliver you (1) from the Egyptians (cf. Ex. i.-xiv.); (2) from the Amorites (cf. Num. xxi. 3); (3) from the Ammonites (who oppressed Israel along with the Moabites in the time of Ehud, chap. iii. 12 sqq.); (4) from the Philistines (through Shamgar: see 1 Sam. xii. 9, where the Philistines are mentioned between Sisera and Moab); (5) from the Sidonians (among whom probably the northern Canaanites under Jabin are included, as Sidon, according to chap, xviii. 7, 28, appears to have exercised a kind of principality or protectorate over the northern tribes of Canaan); (6) from the Amalehites (who attacked the Israelites even at Horeb, Ex. xvii. 8 sqq., and afterwards invaded the land of Israel both with the Moabites, chap. iii. 13, and also Avith the Midianites, chap. vi. 3); and (7) from the Midianites?" (see chap. vi. vii.). The last is the reading of the LXX. in Cod Al. and Fa^, viz. Mahiafi', whereas Aid. and Compl. read Xavadp, also the Vulgate. In the Masoretic text, on the other hand, we have Maon. Were this the original and true reading, we might perhaps think of the Mehunim, who are mentioned in 2 Chron, xxvi. 7 along with Philistines and Arabians (cf. 1 Chron. iv. 41), and are supposed to have been inhabitants of the city of Maan on the Syrian pilgrim road to the east of Petra (Burckhardt, Syr. pp. 734 and 1035: see Ewald, Gesch. i. pp. 321, 322). But there is very little probability in this supposition, as we cannot possibly see how so small a people could have oppressed Israel so grievously at that time, that the deliverance from their oppression could be mentioned here; whilst it would be very strange that nothing should be said about the terrible oppression of the Midlanites and the wonderful deliverance from that oppression effected bj Gideon. Consequently the Septuagint (MaBuifi) appears to have preserved the original text. — Yer. 13. Instead of thanking the Lord, however, for these deliverances by manifesting true devotedness to Him, Israel had forsaken Him and served other gods (see chap. ii. 13). — Vers. 14 sqq. Therefore the Lord would not save them any more. They might get help from the gods whom they had chosen for themselves. The Israelites should now experience what Moses had foretold in his song (Deut. xxxii. 37, 38). This divine threat had its proper effect. The Israelites confessed their sins, submitted thoroughly to the chastisement of God, and simply prayed for salvation; nor did they content themselves with merely promising, they put away the strange gods and served Jehovah, i.e. they devoted themselves again with sincerity to His ser\'ice, and so were seriously converted to the living God. " Then loas Bis (Jehovah's) soul impatient ("•Vi?^, as in Num. xxi. 4) because of the troubles of Israel;^ i.e. Jehovah cotdd no longer look down upon the misery of Israel; He was obliged to help. The change in the purpose of God does not imply any changeableness in the divine nature; it simply concerns the attitude of God towards His people, or the manifestation of the divine love to man. In order to bend the sinner at all, the love of God must withdraw its helping hand and make men feel the consequences of their sin and rebelliousness, that they may forsake their evil ways and turn to the Lord their God. AVhen this end has been attained, the same divine love manifests itself as pitying and helping grace. Punishments and benefits flow from the love of God, and have for their object the happiness and well-being of men.

Vers. 17, 18. These vei*ses form the introduction to the account of the help and deliverance sent by God, and describe the preparation made by Israel to fight against its oppressors. The Ammonites " let themselves be called together" i.e. assembled together (Pi*^, as in chap. vii. 23), and encamped in Gilead, i.e. in that portion of Gilead of which they had taken possession. For the Israelites, i.e. the tribes to the east of the Jordan (according to ver. 18 and chap, xi. 29), also assembled together in Gilead and encamped at Mizpeh, i.e. Eamath-mizpeh or Ramoth in Gilead (Josh. xiii. 26, xx. 8), probably on the site of the present Szalt (see at. Deut. iv. 43, and the remarks in the Commentary on the Pent. vol. i. p. 300), and resolved to look round for a man who could begin the war, and to make him the head over all the inhabitants of Gilead (the tribes of

Israel dwelling in Perea). The "princes of Gilead" are in apposition to " the peopUr "The people, namely, the princes of Gilead," i.e. the heads of tribes and families of the Israelites to the east of the Jordan. "Head" is still further defined in chap. xi. 6, 11, as " captain" or " head and captain."

Yers. 1-11. Election of Jephthah as Prince and Judge OF Israel. — ^Yers. 1-3. The account begins with his descent and early mode of life. " Jephthah (LXX. 'Ie(f)6a) the Gileadite was a brave hero" (see chap. vi. 12, Josh. i. 14, etc.); but he was the son of a harlot, and was begotten by Gilead, in addition to other sons who were born of his wife. Gilead is not the name of the country, as Bertheau supposes, so that the land is mythically personified as the forefather of Jephthah. Nor is it the name of the son of Machir and grandson of Manasseh (Num. xxvi. 29), so that the celebrated ancestor of the Gileadites is mentioned here instead of the unknown father of Jephthah. It is really the proper name of the father himself; and just as in the case of Tola and Puah, in chap. x. 1, the name of the renowned ancestor was repeated in his descendant. We are forced to this conclusion by the fact that the wife of Gilead, and his other sons by that wife, are mentioned in ver. 2. These sons drove their half-brother Jephthah out

1 On the nature of the sources from which the author drew this tolerablyelaborate history of Jephthah, all that can be determined with certainty is, that they sprang from some contemporary of this judge, since they furnish so clear and striking a picture of his life and doings. Bertheau's hypothesis, that the section extending from chap. xi. 12 to ver. 28 is founded upon some historical work, which is also employed in Num. xxi., Deut. ii. iii., and here and there in the book of Joshua, has really no other foundation than the unproved assumption that the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua were written towards the close of the period of the kings. For the marked agreement between Jephthah's negotiations with the king of the Ammonites concerning the possession of the land to the east of the Jordan, and the account given in the Pentateuch, especially in Num. xx. xxi., may be explained very simply and very perfectly, on the supposition that the author possessed the Pentateuch itself. And the account which is wanting in the Pentateuch, namely, that Israel petitioned the king of Moab also for permission to go through his land (ver. 17), may have been added from oral tradition, as those glorious victories gained by Israel under Moses were celebrated in verse by contemporaneous poets (see Num. xxi. 14, 17, 27); and this certainly contributed not a little to keep alive the memory of those events in the nation for centuries long.

of the house because of his inferior birth, that he might not share with them in the paternal inheritance; just as Ishmael and the sons of Keturah were sent away by Abraham, that they might not inherit along with Isaac (Gen. xxi. 10 sqq., xxv. 6). — Ver. 3. Jephthah departed from his brothers into the land of Toh, i.e., according to 2 Sam. X. 6, 8, a district in the north-east of Perea, on the border of Syria, or between Syria and Ammonitis, called Tca^iov in 1 Mace. V. 13, or more correctly Tov^iv, according to 2 Mace. xii. 17, where loose men gathered round him (cf. chap. ix. 4), and " went out with him," viz. upon warlike and predatory expeditions like the Bedouins. — Vers. 4-6. But when the Ammonites made war upon Israel some time afterwards, the elders of Gilead (= " the princes of Gilead," chap. x. 18) went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob, to make this brave warrior their leader. In ver. 4 the account of the war between the Ammonites and Israel, which is mentioned in chap. x. 17, is resumed, and its progress under Jephthah is then more fully described. "In process of time" (2^*?'?, a diebus, i.e. after the lapse of a long period, which cannot be more precisely defined), sc. after the expulsion of Jephthah from his home (see chap. xiv. 8, xv. 1, Josh, xxiii. 1). TV? signifies a leader in war (Josh. X. 24), and is therefore distinguished in ver. 11 from C'N"), a chief in peace and war. — Ver. 7. Jephthah expressed to the elders his astonishment that they had formerly hated and expelled him, and now came to him in their distress, sc. to make him their leader in time of war. Thus he lays his expulsion upon the shoulders of the elders of Gilead, although it was only by his brethren that he had been driven away from his father's house, inasmuch as they had either approved of it, or at all events had not interfered as magistrates to prevent it. We cannot indeed infer from this reproach, that the expulsion and disinheriting of Jephthah was a legal wrong; but so much at all events is implied, namely, that Jephthah looked upon the thing as a wrong that had been done to him, and found the reason in the hatred of his brethren. The ^losaic law contained no regulation upon this matter, since the rule laid down in Deut. xxi. 15-17 simply applied to the sons of different wives, and not to a son by a harlot. — Ver. 8. The elders replied, " Tlierefore (p?, because we have formerly done thee wrong) ice have note come to thee again to make thee our head, if thou comest icith us and fightest against the Ammonites." The clauses J^^^'^^ Ij'PDr^'!, and n^'n^, which are formally co-ordinate, are logically to be subordinated to one another, the first two expressing the condition, the third the consequence, in this sense, ^^ If tlioxi go with us andJigJit,... tliou shall he head to us, namely, to all the inhabitants of Gilead" i.e. to the two tribes and a half on the east of the Jordan. — Ver. 9. Jephthah assented to this: " If ye will take me hack to make war upon the Ammonites, and Jehovah shall give them up to me (lit. ' before me,' as in Josli. X. 12, Deut. ii. 31, etc.), I will he your head." " 7" is emphatic as distinguished from ye; and there is no necessity to regard the sentence as a question, with which the expression in ver. 10, " accord ing to thy words," which presuppose an affirmative statement on the part of Jephthah, and not a question, would be altogether irreconcilable.— Ver. 10. The elders promised this on oath. " Jehovah he hearing between us,'" i.e. be hearer and judge of the things concerning which we are negotiating; " truly according to thy word so will we do" (K? DS, a particle used in connection with an oath). — Ver. 11. Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, " and the people (i.e. the inhabitants of Gilead) made him head and captain, and Jephthah spoke all his words before Jehovah at Mizpeh;" i.e. he repeated in a solemn assembly of the people, before God at Mizpeh, the conditions and obligations under which he would accept the honour conferred upon him. " Before Jehovah''^ does not necessarily presuppose the presence of the ark at Mizpeh; nor can we possibly assume this, since the war was resolved upon primarily by the eastern tribes alone, and they had no ark at all. It merely affirms that Jephthah performed this act, looking up to God, the omnipresent head of Israel. Still less do the words warrant the assumption that there was an altar in Mizpeh, and that sacrifices were offered to confirm the treaty, of which there is not the slightest indication in the text. " ' Before Jehovah' implies nothing more than that Jephthah confirmed all his words by an oath" (Hengstenberg, Diss. ii. pp. 35, 36).

Vers. 12-28. Jephthah's Negotiations with the King of THE Ammonites. — Ver. 12. Before Jephthah took the sword, he sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites, to make complaints to him of his invasion of the land of the Israelites. " What have toe to do with one another (' what to me and thee?' see Josh. xxii. 24, 2 Sam. xvi. 10), that thou hast come to me to fight against my land?" Jephthah's ambassadors speak in the name of the nation; hence the singulars " me" and " my land." — Ver. 13. The king of the Ammonites replied, that when Israel came up out of Egypt, they had taken away his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok (on the north), and to the Jordan (on the west), and demanded that they should now restore these lands in peace. The plural t[?^X (them) refers ad sensinn to the cities and places in the land in question. The claim raised by the king of the Ammonites has one feature in it, which appears to have a certain colour of justice. The Israelites, it is true, had only made war upon the two kings of the Amorites, Sihon and Og, and defeated them, and taken possession of their kingdoms and occupied them, without attacking the Ammonites and Moabites and Edomites, because God had forbidden their attacking these nations (Deut. ii. 5, 9, 19); but one portion of the territory of Sihon had formerly been Moabitish and Ammonitish property, and had been conquered by the Amorites and occupied by them. According to Num. xxi. 26, Sihon had made war upon the previous king of Moab, and taken away all his land as far as the Arnon (see the comm. on this passage). And although it is not expressly stated in the Pentateuch that Sihon had extended his conquests beyond Moabitis into the land of the Ammonites, which was situated to the east of Moab, and had taken a portion of it from them, this is pretty clearly indicated in Josh. xiii. 25, since, according to that passage, the tribe of Gad received in addition to Jaezer and all the towns of Gilead, half the land of the children of Ammon, namely, the laud to the east of Gilead, on the western side of the upper Jabbok (Nahr Amman: see at Josh. xiii. 26).^ — Vers. 14, 15. Jephthah then sent ambassadors again to explain to him the true state of the case, namely, that Israel had neither taken away the land of Moab nor the land of the Ammonites. As a proof of this, Jephthah adduced the leading facts connected with the journey of the Israelites through the desert of Arabia to Canaan, by

^ The explanation which Masius gives of this passage (^Eatenus moao stcrsvm in Galaaditidem exporrectam jacuisse Gaditarum haereditatem, quatenus dimidia Ammonitarum ditio Galaaditidem ah oriente amhiebat) is not sufficiently in keeping with the words, and too unnatural, to be regarded as correct, as it is by Reland (Pal. ill. p. 105) and Hengstenherg (Dissertations on the Pentateuch, ii. p. 29); and the reasons assigned by Masius, viz. " that the Israelites were prohibited from occupying the laud of the Ammonites," and " the Ammonites are not mentioned in Num. xxi. 26," are too weak to establish anything. The latter is an argumentum e silentio, which loses all pigniiicance when we bear in mind, that even the allusion to the land of the Moabites in Num. xxi. 26 is only occasioned by the prominence given to Heshbon, and the poetical saying founded upon its fall. But the prohibition against taking the land of the Ammonites from them had just as much force in relation to the land of the Moabites, and simply referred to such land as these tribes still possessed in the time of Moses, and not to that which the Amorites had taken from them.

which this assertion was confirmed, in exact agreement with the accounts of the Pentateuch respecting the matter in dispute.— - Vers. 16, 17. On leaving Egypt, Israel passed through the desert to the Red Sea, and came to Kadesh (Num. xx. 1). They then sent messengers to the king of Edom, to obtain permission to pass through his land; and this the king of Edom refused (Num. xx. 14-21). They also sent to the king of Moab, who sent back a similar refusal. The embassy to the king of Moab is not mentioned in the Pentateuch, as it had no direct bearing upon the further course of the Israelites (see Pentateuch, vol. iii. p. 132, note 2). " And Israel abode in Kadesh'^ (word for word, as in Num. xx. lb), and " then passed through the desert,"" namely to Mount Hor, then down the Arabah to the Red Sea, and still farther past Oboth to Ijje-abarim in the desert (Num. xx. 22-xxi. 11). In this way they went round the land of Edom and the land of Moab (3b^, like 320 in Num. xxi. 4); and came from the east to the land of Moab (i.e. along the eastern boundary, for Ijje-abarim was situated there, according to Num. xxi. 11); and encamped on the other side of the Arnon (Num. xxi. 13), i.e. on the upper course of the Arnon where it still flows through the desert (see Pent. iii. p. 144). On this march, therefore, they did not enter the territory of Moab, as the Arnon formed the boundary of Moab, i.e. the boundary between Moab and the territory of the Amorites (Num. xxi. 13). — Vers. 19-22 ai'e almost verbatim the same as Num. xxi. 21-25. Israel then sent messengers to Sihon the king of the Amorites at Heshbon, to ask permission to pass through his land. " Into my plar.e^' i.e. into the land of Canaan, that Jehovah has appointed for me. But Sihon " trusted not Israel to pass through his land" i.e. he did not trust to the assurance of Israel that they only wanted to pass peaceably through his land, but supposed the petition to cover an intention to take forcible possession of it. (In Num. xxi. 23 we have }ri3 K? instead of ]''^^[} ^v.) He did not confine himself, therefore, to a refusal of the permission they asked for, but collected his men of war, and marched against the Israelites to the desert as far as Jahza, on the east of Medeba and Dibon (see at Num. xxi. 23), and fought with them. But he was defeated, and lost all his land, from the Arnon (Mojeb) on the south to the Jabbok (Zerka) on the north, and from the desert on the east to the Jordan on the west, of which the Israelites took possession. — Vers. 23, 24. From these facts Jephthah drew this simple but indisputable conclusion: *' Jehovah the God of Israel has rooted out the Amorites before His people Israel, and thou wilt take possession of it (viz. the land of the Amorites)." The suffix to ''^•^h-n refers to 'I'osn, the Amorites, i.e. their land. The construction of w^^ with the accusative of tlie people (as in Deut. ii. 12, 21, 22, ix. 1) may be explained on the simple ground, that in order to take possession of a country, it is necessary first of all to get the holders of it into your power. Jephthah then proved still further how unwarrantable the claim of the king of the Ammonites was, and said to him (ver. 24), " Is it not the fact {^\}., nonjie), that what thy god Chemosh gives thee for a possession, of that thou takest possession; and all that Jehovah makes oicnerless before us, of that we take possession?" — an appeal the validity of which could not be disputed. For Chemosh, see at Num. xxi. 29. The verb ST^in combines the three meanings: to drive out of a possession, to deprive of a possessor, and to give for a possession; inasmuch as it is impossible to give a land for a possession without driving away or exterminating its former possessor. — Ver. 25. But not contenting himself with this conclusive deduction, Jephthah endeavoured to remove the lost appearance of right from the king's claim by a second and equally conclusive argument. " And noio art thou better than Balak son of Zippor, the king of Moab? Did he strive (ni"», inf. abs. of i*"! or 3n) with Israel, or did he fight against them?" By the repetition of nnin (ver. 25, cf. ver. 23), the new argument is attached to the previous one, as a second deduction from the facts already described. Balak, the king of the ^loabites, had indeed bribed Balaam to destroy Israel by his cm'ses; but he did so not so much with the intention of depriving them of the territory of the Amorites which they had conquered, as from the fear that the powerful Israelites might also conquer his still remaining kingdom. Balak had neither made war upon Israel on account of the territory which they had conquered from the Amorites, nor had he put forward any claim to it as his own property, which he certainly might have done with some appearance of Justice, as a large portion of it had formerly belonged to the Moabites (see Num. xxi. 2Q and the comm. on this passage). If therefore Balak the king of the Moabites never thought of looking upon this land as being still his property, or of asking it back from the Israelites, the king of the Ammonites had no right whatever to lay claim to the land of Gilead as belonging to him, or to take it away from the Israelites by force, especially after the lapse of 300 years. " As Israel dwells in Heshbon,... and in all the cities by the side of the Arnonfor three hundred years, why have ye not taken away (these towns and lands) within that time' (i.e. during these 300 years)? If the Ammonites had had any right to it, they oucht to liave asserted their claim in Moses' time. It was much too late now, after the expiration of 300 years. For " if no prescriptive right is to be admitted on account of length of time, and if long possession gives no title, nothing would ever be held in safety by any people, and there w^ould be no end to wars and dissension" (Clericus). On Heshbon and its daughters, see at Num. xxi. 25. Aroer (liV"]y, another form for "iJpV, or possibly only a copyist's error) is Aroer of Gad, before Rahhah (Josh. xiii. 25), and is to be sought for in the Wady Nahr Amman, on the north-east of Amman (see at Josh. I. c), not Aroer of Keuben, on the border of the valley of Arnon (Num. xxxii. 34; Deut. ii. 36, iv, 48; Josh, xii. 2, xiii. 9). This is evident from the fact, that it is distinguished from " all the cities on the side Q'y, ^V, see at Num. xxxiv. 3) of the Arnon," which included. Aroer of Reuben. Aroer of Gad, with its daughter towns, was probably Ammonitish territory before the time of Sihon. On the 300 years, a round number that comes very near the reality, see the ChronoL p. 285. — Ver. 27. After Jephthah had adduced all that could be said, to prove that the Israelites were the rightful possessors of the land of Gilead,^ he closed with these words: " / {i.e. Israel, whose cause Jephthah was pleading) have not sinned against thee, hut thou doest me wrong in that thou makest war against me. Let Jehovah the Judge he judge this day (now) hetween the children of Israel and the children of Amm^n." God should decide between the two nations, by giving the victory in war to the side whose cause was the just one. — Ver. 28. But the king of the Ammonites did not hearken to the words of Jephthah " which he had sent to him," i.e. had instructed his messengers to address to him; so that it was necessary that Jehovah should decide for Israel in battle.

— As the negotiations with the king of the Ammonites were fruitless, Jephthah had no other course left than to appeal to the sword. — Ver. 29. In the power of the Spirit of Jehovah which came upon him (see chap. iii. 10), he passed through Gilead (the land of the tribes of Reuben and Gad between the Arnon and the Jabbok)

^ " Jephthah urged everything that could be pleaded in support of their prescriptive right: possession, length of time, the right of conquest, and undisputed occupation."— Rosenmiiller.

and Manasseh (northern Gilead and Bashan, wliich the half tribe of Manasseh had received for a possession), to gather together an army to battle, and then went with the assembled army to ^lizpeh- Gilead, i.e. Eamoth-mizpeh, where the Israelites had already encamped before his call (chap. x. 17), that he might thence attack the Ammonites, "i?!' (to pass over) with an accusative signifies to come over a person in a hostile sense. — ^Vers. 30, 31. Before commencing the war, however, he vowed a vow to the Lord: " // Thou givest the Ammonites into my hand, he icho comelh to meet me out of the doors of my house, when I return safely (in peace, shalom) from the Ammonites, shall belong to the Lord, and I will offer him for a burnt-offering.'" By the words T^'X i^^'^'Cj " he that goeth out," even if Jephthah did not think "only of a man, or even more definitely still of some one of his household," he certainly could not think in any case of a head of cattle, or one of his flock. " Going out of the doors of his house to meet him" is an expression that does not apply to a herd or flock driven out of the stall just at the moment of his return, or to any animal that might possibly run out to meet him. For the phrase r\ifr\p? Na*^ is only applied to men in the other passages in which it occurs.^ Moreover, Jephthah no doubt intended to impose a very difficult vow upon himself. And that would not have been the case if he had merely been thinking of a sacrificial animal. Even without any vow, he would have offered, not one, but many sacrifices after obtaining a victory.^ If therefore he had had an animal sacrifice in his mind, he would certainly have vowed the best of his flocks. From all this there can be no doubt that Jephthah must have been thinking of some human being as at all events included in his vow; so that when he declared that he would dedicate that which came out of his house to meet him, the meaning of the vow cannot

^ Augustine observes in his Qusest. xlix. in I. Jud.: " He did not vow in

these words that he would offer some sheep, which he might present as a holocaust, accordiug to the law. For it is not, and was not, a customary thing for sheep to come out to meet a victorious general returning from the war. Nor did he say, I will offer as a holocaust wAatever shall come out of the doors of my house to meet me; but he says, ' TFAoever comes out, I will offer A/m;' so that there can be no doubt whatever that he had then a human being in his mind."

- " What kind of vow would it be if some great prince or general should say, ' 0 God, if Thou wiit give me this victory, the first calf that meets me shall be Thine!' Parturiunt monies, nascetur ridiculus musT — Pfeiffer, duhia vex. p. 356.

have been any other than that he would leave the choice of the sacrifice to God himself. " In his eagerness to smite the foe, and to thank God for it, Jephthah could not think of any particular object to name, which he could regard as great enough to dedicate to God; he therefore left it to accident, i.e. to the guidance of God, to determine the sacrifice. He shrank from measuring what was dearest to God, and left this to God himself" (P. Cassel in Herzog's Real-encycl.). Whomsoever God should bring to meet him, he would dedicate to Jehovah, and indeed, as is added afterwards by way of defining it more precisely, he would offer him to the Xford as a burnt-offering. The 1 before I'T'riyJ'.']' is to be taken as explanatory, and not as disjunctive in the sense of " or^* which 1 never has. But whether Jephthah really thought of his daughter at the time, cannot be determined either in the affirmative or negative. If he did, he no doubt hoped that the Lord would not demand this hardest of all sacrifices. — Vers. 32, 33. After seeking to ensure the help of the Lord by this vow", he went against the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hand, so that Jephthah smote them in a very great slaughter " from Aroer (or Nahr AmmSn; see ver. 28) to the neighbourhood of ('till thou come to;' see at Gen. x. 19) Minnith, (conquering and taking) twenty cities, and to Abel Keramim (of the vineyards)." Minniih, according to the Onom. {s. V. Mennith), was a place called Manith in the time of Eusehius, four Roman miles from Heshbon on the road to Philadelphia, with which the account given by Buckingham of the ruins of a large city a little to the east of Heshbon may be compared (see v. Raum. Pal. p. 265). The situation of Abel Keramim (plain of the vineyards: Luther and Eng. Ver.) cannot be determined with the same certainty. Eusebius and Jerome mention two places of this name {Onom. s. V. Abel vinearum), a villa Abela vinetis consita {KWfiij afM7re> o(f)6po<; "A^eX) seven Roman miles from Philadelphia, and a civitas nomine Abela vini fertiUs twelve Roman miles to the east of Gadara, and therefore in the neighbourhood of the Mandhur. Which of the two is referred to here remains uncertain, as we have no precise details concerning the battle. If the northern Abela should be meant, Jephthah would have pursued the foe first of all towards the south to the neighbourhood of Heshbon, and then to the north to the border of Bashan. Through this victory the Ammonites were completely subdued before the Israelites.

Vers. 34-40. Jephthah's Vow. — Vers. 34, 35. TVTien the victorious hero returned to Mizpeh, his daughter came out to meet him " with timbrels and in dances" i.e. at the head of a company of women, who received the conqueror with joyous music and dances (see at Ex. xv. 20): "and she icas the only one; he had neither son nor daughter beside her." ^sp cannot mean ew se, no other child of his own, though he may have had children that his wives had brought him by other husbands; but it stands, as the greater Masora has pointed it, for nSQJp, " besides her," the daughter just mentioned, — the masculine being used for the feminine as the nearest and more gsneral gender, simply because the idea of " child" was floatinor before the author's mind. At such a meeting Jephthah was violently agitated. Tearing his clothes (as a sign of his intense agony; see at Lev. x. 6), he exclaimed, " 0 my daughter! thou hast brought me very low; it is thou who troublest me" {lit. thou art among those who trouble me, thou belongest to their class, and indeed in the fullest sense of the word; this is the meaning of the so-called 2 essentice: see Ges. Lehrgeb. p. 838, and such passages as 2 Sam. xv. 31, Ps. liv. 6, Iv. 19, etc.): " / have opened my mouth to the Lord (i.e. have uttered a vow to Him: compare Ps. Ixvi. 14 with Num. xxx. 3 sqq., Deut. xxiii. 23, 24), and cannot turn it," i.e. revoke it. — Ver. 36. The daughter, observing that the vow had reference to her (as her father in fact had, no doubt, distinctly told her, though the writer has passed this over because he had already given the vow itself in ver. 31), replied, " Do to me as has gone out of thy mouth (i.e. do to me what thou hast vowed), since Jehovah has procured the vengeance upon thine enemies the Ammonites^ She then added (ver. 37), "Let this thing be done for me (equivalent to. Let this only be granted me); let me alone two months and I will go" i.e. only give me two months to go, " that I may go down to the mountains (i.e. from Mizpeh, which stood upon an eminence, to the surrounding mountains and their valleys) and betcail my virginity, I and my friends." D'Sna does not mean "youth" (2^"!''^^), but the condition of virginity (see Lev. xxi. 13). The Kethibh 'n^^l is a less common form of 'riijn (K&ri). — Ver. 38. The father granted this request. — Ver. 39. At the end of two months she returned to her father again, " and he did to her the vow that he had vowed, and she knew no man" In consequence of this act of Jephthah and his daughter, " it became an ordinance (a standing custom) in Israel: from year to year (see Ex. xiii. 10) the daughters of Israel go to praise the daughter of Jephthah the

Gileadite four days in the year." nsjn does not mean Oprjvetv, to lament or bewail (LXX., Chald., etc.), but to praise, as R. Tanchum and others maintain.

With regard to Jephthalis vow, the view expressed so distinctly by Joseplms and the Chaldee was the one which generally prevailed in the earlier times among both Rabbins and fathers of the church, viz. that Jephthah put his daugliter to death and burned her upon the altar as a bleeding sacrifice to Jehovah. It was not till the middle ages that Mos. and Dav, KimcJd and certain other Eabbins endeavoured to establish the view, that Jephthah merely tledicated his daughter to the service of the sanctuary of Jehovah in a lifelong virginity. And lastly, Ludov. Cappellus, in his Diatriba de voto Jephtce, Salm. 1683 (which has been reprinted in his Notce critic, in Jud. xi., and the Critici Sacri, tom. i.), has expressed the opinion that Jephthah put his daughter to death in honour of the Lord according to the law of the ban, because human beings were not allowed to be offered up as burnt-sacrifices. Of these different opinions the third has no foundation in the text of tlie Bible. For supposing that Jephthah had simply vowed that on his return he would offer to the Lord whatever came to meet him out of his house, with such restrictions only as were involved in the very nature of the case, — viz. offering it as a burnt-offering if it were adapted for this according to the law; and if it were not, then proceeding with it according to the law of the ban, — the account of the fulfilment of this vow would certainly have defined with greater precision the manner in which he fulfilled the vow upon his daughter. The words " he did to her his vow which he had vowed," cannot be understood in any other way than that he offered her as n^iy, i.e. as a burnt-offering, to the Lord. Moreover, the law concerning the ban and a vow of the ban could not possibly give any individual Israelite the right to ban either his own child or one of his household to the Lord, without opening a very wide door to the crime of murder. The infliction of the ban upon any man presupposed notorious wickedness, so that burnt-offering and ban were diametrically opposed the one to the other. Consequently the other two views are the only ones which can be entertained, and it is not easy to decide between thefn. Although the words " and I offer him as a burnt-offering " appear to favour the actual sacrifice so strongly, that Luther s marginal note, "some affirm that he did not sacrifice her, but the text is clear enough," is perpetually repeated with peculiar emphasis; yet, on looking more closely into tlie matter, we find insuperable difficulties in the way of the literal interpretation of the words. Since t^V^ IS^'X i*)»*i'!} cannot be taken impersonally, and therefore when Jephthah uttered his vow, he must at any rate have had the possibility of some human being comincr to meet him in his mind; and since the two clauses " he shall he the Lord's,^' and " I to ill offer him up for a humt-offering^^ cannot be taken disjunctively in such a sense as this, it shall either be dedicated to the Lord, or, if it should be a sacrificial animal, I will offer it up as a burnt-offering, but the second clause simply contains a more precise definition of the first, — Jephthah must at the veiy outset have contemplated the possibility of a human sacrifice. Yet not only were human sacrifices prohibited in the law under pain of death as an abomination in the sight of Jehovah (Lev. xviii. 21, xx. 2-5; Deut. xii. 31, xviii. 10), but they were never heard of among the Israelites in the early times, and were only transplanted to Jerusalem by the godless kings Ahaz and Manasseh.^ If Jephthah therefore vowed that he would offer a human sacrifice to Jehovah, he must either have uttered his vow without any reflection, or else have been thoroughly depraved in a moral and religious sense. But what we know of this brave hero by no means warrants any such assumptions. His acts do not show the slightest trace of impetuosity and rashness. He does not take to the sword at once,- but waits till his negotiations with the king of the Ammonites have been without effect. Nor does he utter his vow in the midst of the confusion of battle, so that we might fancy he had made a vow in the heat of the conflict without fully weighing his words, but he uttered it before he set out against the Ammonites (see vers. 30 and 32). So far as the religious training of Jephthah was concerned, it is true that he had led the life of a freebooter during his exile from his country and home, and before his election as the leader of the Israelites; but the analogous circumstances connected with David's life preclude us from in-

^ " Human sacrifices do not even belong to heathenism generally, but to the darkest night of heathenism. They only occur among those nations which are the most thoroughly depraved in a moral and religious sense." This remark of Hengstenberg (Diss. iii. p. 118) cannot be set aside by a reference to Euseb. praep. ev. iv. 16; Baur, Symb. ii. 2, pp. 293 sqq.; Lasaulx, Siihnopfer der Griechen und Romer, 1841, pp. 8-12; GhiUany, die ifenschenopfer der alten Hebraer, 1842, pp. 107 sqq., as Kurtz supposes, since the uncritical character of the proofs collected together in these writings is very obvious on a closer inspection, and Eusehius has simply taken his examples from Porphyry, and other writing of a very recent date.

ferring either moral depravity or religious barbarism from this. When David was obliged to fly from liis country to escape from Saul, he also led a life of the same kind, so that all sorts of people came to him, not pious and virtuous people, but all who were in distress and had creditors, or were embittered in spirit (1 Sam. xxii. 2); and yet, even under these circumstances, David lived in the law of the Lord. Moreover, Jephthah was not destitute of the fear of God. This is proved first of all by the fact, that when he had been recalled from his exile he looked to Jehovah to give him the victory over the Ammonites, and made a treaty with the elders of Gilead " before Jehovah " (vers. 9 and 10); and also by the fact, that he sought to ensure the help of God in war through the medium of a vow. And again, we have no right to attribute to him any ignorance of the law. Even if Kurtz is correct in his opinion, that the negotiations with the king of the Ammonites, which show the most accurate acquaintance with the Pentateuch, "were not carried on independently and from his own knowledge of the law, and that the sendincj of messenijers to the hostile king was resolved upon in the national assembly at Mizpeh, with the priests, Levites, and elders present, so that the Levites, who knew the law, may have supplied any defects in his own knowledge of the law and of the early history of his people; a private Israelite did not need to study the whole of the law of the Pentateuch, and to make himself master of the whole, in order to gain the knowledge and conviction that a human sacrifice was irreconcilable with the substance and spirit of the worship of Jehovah, and that Jehovah the God of Israel was not a Moloch. And again, even if we do not know to what extent the men and fathers of families in Israel were acquainted and familiar with the contents of the Mosaic law, the opinion is certainly an erroneous one, that the Israelites derived their knowledge of the law exclusively from the public reading of the law at the feast of tabernacles in the sabbatical year, as enjoined in Deut. xxxi. 10 sqq.; so that if this public reading, which was to take place only once in seven years, had been neglected, the v/hole nation would have been left without any instruction whatever in the law. The reason for this Mosaic precept was a totally different one from that of making the people acquainted with the contents of the law (see the commentary on this passage). And again, though we certainly do not find the law of the Lord so thoroughly pervading the religious consciousness of the people, received as it were in succum et sanguinem, in the lime of the judges, that they were able to resist the bewitching power of nature-worship, but, on the contrary-, we find theui repeatedly falling away into the worship of Baal; yet we discover no trace whatever of human sacrifices even in the case of those who went a whoring after Baalim. And although the theocratical knowledge of the law seems to have been somewhat corrupted even in the case of such men as Gideon, so that this judge had an unlawful ephod made for himself at Ophrah; the opinion that the Baal-worship, into which the Israelites repeatedly fell, was associated with human sacrifices, is one of the many erroneous ideas that have been entertained as to the development of the religious life not only among the Israelites, but among the Canaanites, and which cannot be supported by historical testimonies or facts. That the Canaanitish worship of Baal and Astarte, to which the Israelites were addicted, required no human sacrifices, is indisputably evident from the fact, that even in the time of Ahab and his idolatrous wife Jezebel, the daughter of the Sidonian king Ethbaal, who raised the worship of Baal into the national religion in the kingdom of the ten tribes, persecuting the prophets of Jehovah and putting them to death, there is not the slightest allusion to human sacrifices. Even at that time human sacrifices were regarded by the Israelites as so revolting an abomination, that the two kings of Israel who besieged the king of the Moabites — not only the godly Jehoshaphat, but Jehoram the son of Ahab and Jezebel — withdrew at once and relinquished the continuance of the war, when the king of the Moabites, in the extremity of his distress, sacrificed his son as a burnt-offering upon the wall (2 Kings iii. 26, 27). With such an attitude as this on the part of the Israelites towards human sacrifices before the time of Ahaz and Mauasseh, who introduced the worship of Moloch into Jerusalem, we cannot, without further evidence, impute to Jephthah the offering of a bloody human sacrifice, the more especially as it is inconceivable, with the diametrical opposition between the worship of Jehovah and the worship of Moloch, that God should have chosen a worshipper of Moloch to carry out His work, or a man who was capable of vowing and offering a human-being sacrifice. The men whom God chose as the recipients of His revelation of mercy and the executors of His will, and whom He endowed with His Spirit as judges and leaders of His people, were no doubt affected with infirmities, faults, and sins of many kinds, so that they could fall to a very great depth; but nowhere Is it stated that the Spirit of