UNDER A NUMBER OF ENERGETIC LEADERS,A JEWISH NATION WAS FINALLY ESTABLISHED IN THE COUNTRY WHICH FORMERLY HAD BELONGED TO THE CANAANITES
The land had been conquered.The original inhabitants had been killed or had been driven into slavery.But much remained to be done before the Jews were really to become the recognised masters of all Palestine,as we now call the western part of Asia along the shores of the Mediterranean.
Joshua had died the peaceful death of old age.The tribes had buried him with great solemnity.Then they decided not to appoint a successor.
Now that the fighting was over,it seemed quite unnecessary to have a commander-in-chief.The high priest at Shiloh would undoubtedly interpret the laws of Jehovah whenever the occasion arose.Meanwhile,the election of a new military leader would only call forth the old rivalry between the different families of prominence.Besides,there had been so much fighting these last years that people wanted to get away from all things military.They dreamed of peace and talked of ploughshares.
But soon it became clear that a nation (a new nation at that),surrounded on all sides by enemies,could not expect to survive unless there was at least a nominal head.
The little kings of Canaan had been an easy match for the well-trained troops of Moses and Joshua.But beyond the western border there lived the mighty rulers of the Mesopotamian valley,and one of those,the ruler of Babylon,was from the beginning a serious menace to the safety of the young Jewish state.
When he marched against Canaan and took several of the outlying districts,the Jews were forced to reconsider their original decision.They were not quite willing to turn their state into a regular kingdom,but they tacitly accepted the absolute rule of a single leader whom they called their “Judge.”(After two or three centuries,the power of the Judges was greatly increased and out of this high office grew the Jewish kingdom of which you shall hear a great deal in the following Chapters.)
The first of these Judges was a certain Othniel.He had made a reputation for himself as the officer under whose command the town of Kirjath-Sepher,the capital of the giant.Anakim had been taken.These same Anakim,a generation before,had frightened the followers of Moses by their size and their strength,but now they were all dead or reduced to poverty,and as harmless as our own Indians.Othniel had another claim to distinction.He had married the daughter of Caleb,who forty years before,together with Joshua,had gone to the land of Eshcol to spy it out for Moses.
Othniel succeeded in driving the Babylonian troops back from Jewish territory,and thereafter,he was the uncrowned king of the nation for almost thirty years.
But when he died,the Jews relapsed into their old habit of indifference.They married the daughters of their heathenish neighbours.They took wives from among the few survivors of the old inhabitants of Canaan.And the children of such unions were apt to learn the language and worship the gods of their mothers.In short,the Jews forgot that Jehovah had been their leader in the days of their hardship and that without Him they were merely a small Semitic tribe which was entirely at the mercy of its more powerful neighbours.
As a result,they soon lost that feeling of a common destiny which had been the first and most important point in the nationalistic programme of Moses.They began to quarrel among themselves and when news of this internal strife reached their ever watchful neighbours,the people of Moab and the people of Ammon and the much dreaded Amalekites made an alliance,and within a short time they reconquered the land which only a few years before they had lost to Joshua.
The Jewish armies were defeated and there followed a new period of slavery.It lasted almost twenty years and during this period,the Hebrew tribes recognised Eglon,the King of Moab,as their master.
It was a certain Ehud,a member of the tribe of Benjamin,who at last delivered his people from their bondage.
Ehud was left-handed.This gave him an unsuspected advantage.He hid a dagger in the right side of his cloak.Of course,no soldier of Eglon's body-guard would look for a sword on the wrong side of a uniform.
Thus prepared,Ehud asked to be admitted into the presence of Eglon.He said that he was the bearer of some secret information and that he must have a few minutes with His Majesty alone.Eglon,suspicious like all Oriental tyrants,expected to hear news of an impending revolt.He sent away his followers.As soon as the door was closed,Ehud drew his dagger.Eglon jumped from his chair and tried to defend himself.It was too late.Ehud's dagger was in his heart.He fell down dead.
That was the signal for a general uprising against the Moabites.When they had been driven away,Ehud,in recognition of his services,was elected to be the Judge of Israel,and once more his people enjoyed a short period of peace and comparative independence.
In rapid succession the Judges thereafter followed each other.Invariably they were men of strong character who spent their days fighting the heathen along the frontier.If they had lived in those early days,I am certain that Captain John Smith and Daniel Boone would have been among the great Jewish Judges.
Unfortunately,border warfare is apt to be very brutal.Whenever the Philistines burned down one Hebrew village,the Jews retaliated by destroying two Philistine villages.Then the Philistines thought it their duty to plunder three Jewish villages and the Jews,on their side,went further and pillaged four Philistine villages.It was an endless chain of mutual murder,during which very little of importance was accomplished.
