established, at any rate as in the highest degree probable,
and believe that it was Apepi who made the gifted Hebrew his
prime minister, who invited his father and his brethren to
settle in Egypt with their households, and assigned to them
the land of Goshen for their residence."
G. Rawlinson,
History of Ancient Egypt,
chapter 19 (volume 2).
"The new Pharaoh, 'who knew not Joseph,' who adorned the city
of Ramses, the capital of the Tanitic nome, and the city of
Pithom, the capital of what was afterwards the Sethroitic
nome, with temple-cities, is no other, can be no other, than
Ramessu II. or Rameses—the Sesostris of the Greeks, B. C.
1350, of whose buildings at Zoan the monuments and the
papyrus-rolls speak in complete agreement. … Ramessu is the
Pharaoh of the oppression, and the father of that unnamed
princess, who found the child Moses exposed in the bulrushes
on the bank of the river. … If Ramses-Sesostris … must be
regarded beyond all doubt as the Pharaoh under whom the Jewish
legislator Moses first saw the light, so the chronological
relations—having regard to the great age of the two
contemporaries, Ramses II. and Moses—demand that Mineptah
[his son] should in all probability be acknowledged as the
Pharaoh of the Exodus."
H. Brugsch-Bey,
History of Egypt under the Pharaohs,
chapter 14.
The quotations given above represent the orthodox view of
early Jewish history, in the light of modern monumental
studies,—the view, that is, which accepts the Biblical
account of Abraham and his seed as a literal family record,
authentically widening into the annals of a nation. The more
rationalizing views are indicated by the following: "There can
be no doubt … as to the Semitic character of these Hyksos,
or 'Pastors,' who, more than 2,000 years B. C., interrupted in
a measure the current of Egyptian civilisation, and founded at
Zoan (Tanis), near the Isthmus, the centre of a powerful
Semitic state. These Hyksos were to all appearances
Canaanites, near relations of the Hittites of Hebron. Hebron
was in close community with Zoan, and there is a tradition,
probably based upon historical data, that the two cities were
built nearly at the same time. As invariably happens when
barbarians enter into an ancient and powerful civilisation,
the Hyksos soon became Egyptianised. … The Hyksos of Zoan
could not fail to exercise a great influence upon the Hebrews
who were encamped around Hebron, the Dead Sea, and in the
southern districts of Palestine. The antipathy which
afterwards existed between the Hebrews and the Canaanites was
not as yet very perceptible. … There are the best of reasons
for believing that the immigration of the Beni-Israel took
place at two separate times. A first batch of Israelites seems
to have been attracted by the Hittites of Egypt, while the
bulk of the tribe was living upon the best of terms with the
Hittites of Hebron. These first immigrants found favour with
the Egyptianised Hittites of Memphis and Zoan; they secured
very good positions, had children, and constituted a distinct
family in Israel. This was what was afterwards called the
'clan of the Josephel,' or the Beni-Joseph. Finding themselves
well off in Lower Egypt, they sent for their brethren, who,
impelled perhaps by famine, joined them there, and were
received also favourably by the Hittite dynasties. These
new-comers never went to Memphis. They remained in the
vicinity of Zoan, where there is a land of Goshen, which was
allotted to them. …
{1897}
The whole of these ancient days, concerning which Israel
possesses only legends and contradictory traditions, is
enveloped in doubt; one thing, however, is certain, viz., that
Israel entered Egypt under a dynasty favourable to the
Semites, and left it under one which was hostile. The presence
of a nomad tribe upon the extreme confines of Egypt must have
been a matter of very small importance for this latter
country. There is no certain trace of it in the Egyptian
texts. The kingdom of Zoan, upon the contrary, left a deep
impression upon the Israelites. Zoan became for them
synonymous with Egypt. The relations between Zoan and Hebron
were kept up, and … Hebron was proud of the synchronism,
which made it out seven years older than Zoan. The
first-comers, the Josephites, always assumed an air of
superiority over their brethren, whose position they had been
instrumental in establishing. … Their children, born in
Egypt, possibly of Egyptian mothers, were scarcely Israelites.
An agreement was come to, however; it was agreed that the
Josephites should rank as Israelites with the rest. They
formed two distinct tribes, those of Ephraim and Manasseh. …
It is not impossible that the origin of the name of Joseph
(addition, adjunction, annexation) may have arisen from the
circumstance that the first emigrants and their families,
having become strangers to their brethren, needed some sort of
adjunction to become again part and parcel of the family of
Israel."
E. Renan,
History of the People of Israel,
book 1, chapter 10 (volume 1).
See, also, EGYPT: THE HYKSOS, and ABOUT B. C. 1400-1200.
JEWS:
The Route of the Exodus.
It is said of the oppressed Israelites in Egypt that "they
built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses."
(Exodus i. 11.) One of those "treasure cities," or
"store-cities," has been discovered, in a heap of ruins, at a
place which the Arabs call "Tell el Maskhutah," and it was
supposed at first to be the Raamses of the Biblical record.
But explorations made in 1883 by M. Naville seem to have
proved that it is the store-city of Pithom which lies buried
in the mounds at Tell el Maskhutah and that Raamses is still
to be found. As Raamses or Ramses was the starting point of
the Exodus, something of a controversy concerning the route of
the latter turns upon the question. It is the opinion of M.
Naville that Succoth, where the Children of Israel made their
first halt, was the district in which Pithom is situated, and
that the Land of Goshen, their dwelling-place in Egypt, was a
region embracing that district. The site of Pithom, as
identified by Naville, is "on the south side of the sweet
water canal which runs from Cairo to Suez through the Wadi
Tumilât, about 12 miles from Ismailiah." The excavations made
have brought to light a great number of chambers, with massive
walls of brick, which are conjectured to have been granaries
and storehouses, for the provisioning of caravans and armies
to cross the desert to Syria, as well as for the collecting of
tribute and for the warehousing of trade. Hence the name of
store-city, or treasure-city. Under the Greeks Pithom changed
its name to Heroopolis, and a new city called Arsinoë was
built near it.
E. Naville,
The Store-City of Pithom.
"I submit that Goshen, properly speaking, was the land which
afterwards became the Arabian nome, viz., the country round
Saft el Henneh east of the canal Abu-I-Munagge, a district
comprising Belbeis and Abbaseh, and probably extending further
north than the Wadi Tumilat. The capital of the nome was Pa
Sopt, called by the Greeks Phacusa, now Saft el Henneh. At the
time when the Israelites occupied the land, the term 'Goshen'
belonged to a region which as yet had no definite boundaries,
and which extended with the increase of the people over the
territory they inhabited. The term 'land of Ramses' applies to
a larger area, and covers that part of the Delta which lies to
the eastward of the Tanitic branch. … As for the city of
Ramses, it was situate in the Arabian nome. Probably it was
Phacusa."
E. Naville,
Shrine of Saft el Henneh and the Land of Goshen.
The Israelites leaving Succoth, a region which we now know
well, the neighbourhood of Tell-el-Maskhutah, push forward
towards the desert, skirting the northern shore of the gulf,
and thus reach the wilderness of Etham; but there, because of
the pursuit of Pharaoh, they have to change their course, they
are told to retrace their steps, so as to put the sea between
them and the desert. … 'And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying: Speak unto the children of Israel that they turn and
encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over
against Baalzephon; before it shall ye encamp by the sea.' …
The question is now, Where are we to look for Migdol and
Pi-Hahiroth? As for Migdol, the ancient authors, and
particularly the Itinerary, mention a Migdol, or Magdolon,
which was twelve Roman miles distant from Pelusium. It is not
possible to admit that this is the same Migdol which is spoken
of in Exodus, for then it would not be the Red Sea, but the
Mediterranean, which the Israelites would have before them,
and we should thus have to fall in with MM. Schleiden and
Brugsch's theory, that they followed the narrow track which
lies between the Mediterranean and the Serbonian Bog. However
ingenious are the arguments on which this system is based, I
believe it must now be dismissed altogether, because we know
the site of the station of Succoth. Is it possible to admit
that, from the shore of the Arabian Gulf, the Israelites
turned to the north, and marched forty miles through the
desert in order to reach the Mediterranean? The journey would
have lasted several days; they would have been obliged to pass
in front of the fortresses of the north; they would have
fallen into the way of the land of the Philistines, which they
were told not to take; and, lastly, the Egyptians, issuing
from Tanis and the northern cities, would have easily
intercepted them. … All these reasons induce me to give up
definitively the idea of the passage by the north, and to
return to the old theory of a passage of the Red Sea, but of
the Red Sea as it was at that time, extending a great deal
farther northward, and not the Red Sea of to-day, which
occupies a very different position. The word Migdol, in
Egyptian, … is a common name. It means a fort, a tower. It
is very likely that in a fortified region there have been
several places so called, distinguished from each other,
either by the name of the king who built them, or by some
local circumstance; just as there are in Italy a considerable
number of Torre. I should therefore, with M. Ebers, place
Migdol at the present station of the Serapeum. There the sea
was not wide, and the water probably very shallow; there also
the phenomenon which took place on such a large scale when the
Israelites went through must have been well known, as it is
often seen now in other parts of Egypt.
{1898}
As at this point the sea was liable to be driven back under
the influence of the east wind, and to leave a dry way, the
Pharaohs were obliged to have there a fort, a Migdol, so as to
guard that part of the sea, and to prevent the Asiatics of the
desert from using this temporary gate to enter Egypt, to steal
cattle, and to plunder the fertile land which was round
Pithom."
E. Naville,
The Store-City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus
(Egypt Expl. Fund, 1885).
"Modern critics prefer an intelligent interpretation,
according to known natural laws, of the words of Exodus xiv.
21, 22, which lay stress upon the 'east wind' as the direct
natural agent by which the sea bottom was for the time made
dry land. … The theory, which dates from an early period,
that the passage was in some sense tidal, miraculously aided
by the agency of wind, has thus come to be very generally
adopted."
H. S. Palmer,
Sinai
(Ancient History from the Monuments),
chapter 6.
JEWS:
The conquest of Canaan.
"The first essay [west of Jordan] was made by Judah in
conjunction with Simeon and Levi, but was far from prosperous.
Simeon and Levi were annihilated; Judah also, though
successful in mastering the mountain land to the west of the
Dead Sea, was so only at the cost of severe losses which were
not again made up until the accession of the Kenite families
of the south (Caleb). As a consequence of the secession of
these tribes, a new division of the nation into Israel and
Judah took the place of that which had previously subsisted
between the families of Leah and Rachel; under Israel were
included all the tribes except Simeon, Levi, and Judah, which
three are no longer mentioned in Judges v., where all the
others are carefully and exhaustively enumerated. This
half-abortive first invasion of the west was followed by a
second, which was stronger and attended with much better
results. It was led by the tribe of Joseph, to which the
others attached themselves, Reuben and Gad only remaining
behind in the old settlements. The district to the north of
Judah, inhabited afterwards by Benjamin, was the first to be
attacked. It was not until after several towns of this
district had one by one fallen into the hands of the
conquerors that the Canaanites set about a united resistance.
They were, however, decisively repulsed by Joshua in the
neighbourhood of Gibeon [or Beth-horon]; and by this victory
the Israelites became masters of the whole central plateau of
Palestine. The first camp, at Gilgal, near the ford of Jordan,
which had been maintained until then, was now removed, and the
ark of Jehovah brought further inland (perhaps by way of
Bethel) to Shiloh, where henceforwards the headquarters were
fixed, in a position which seemed as if it had been expressly
made to favour attacks upon the fertile tract lying beneath it
on the north. The Bne Rachel now occupied the new territory
which up to that time had been acquired—Benjamin, in
immediate contiguity with the frontier of Judah, then Ephraim,
stretching to beyond Shiloh, and lastly Manasseh, furthest to
the north, as far as to the plain of Jezreel. The centre of
gravity, so to speak, already lay in Ephraim, to which
belonged Joshua and the ark, It is mentioned as the last
achievement of Joshua that at the waters of Merom he defeated
Jabin, king of Hazor, and the allied princes of Galilee,
thereby opening up the north for Israelitish settlers. …
Even after the united resistance of the Canaanites had been
broken, each individual community had still enough to do
before it could take firm hold of the spot which it had
searched out for itself or to which it had been assigned. The
business of effecting permanent settlement was just a
continuation of the former struggle, only on a diminished
scale; every tribe and every family now fought for its own
hand after the preliminary work had been accomplished by a
united effort. Naturally, therefore, the conquest was at first
but an incomplete one. The plain which fringed the coast was
hardly touched; so also the valley of Jezreel with its girdle
of fortified cities stretching from Acco to Bethshean. All
that was subdued in the strict sense of that word was the
mountainous land, particularly the southern hill-country of
'Mount Ephraim'; yet even here the Canaanites retained
possession of not a few cities, such as Jebus, Shechem,
Thebez. It was only after the lapse of centuries that all the
lacunæ were filled up, and the Canaanite enclaves made
tributary. The Israelites had the extraordinarily
disintegrated state of the enemy to thank for the ease with
which they had achieved success."
J. Wellhausen,
Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah,
chapter 2.
"Remnants of the Canaanites remained everywhere among and
between the Israelites. Beside the Benjamites the Jebusites (a
tribe of the Amorites) maintained themselves, and at Gibeon,
Kirjath-jearim, Chephirah, and Beeroth were the Hivites, who
had made peace with the Israelites. In the land of Ephraim,
the Canaanites held their ground at Geser and Bethel, until
the latter—it was an important city—was stormed by the
Ephraimites. Among the tribe of Manasseh the Canaanites were
settled at Beth Shean, Dan, Taanach, Jibleam, Megiddo and
their districts, and in the northern tribes the Canaanites
were still more numerous. It was not till long after the
immigration of the Hebrews that they were made in part
tributary. The land of the Israelites beyond the Jordan, where
the tribe of Manasseh possessed the north, Gad the centre, and
Reuben the south as far as the Arnon, was exposed to the
attacks of the Ammonites and Moabites, and the migratory
tribes of the Syrian desert, and must have had the greater
attraction for them, as better pastures were to be found in
the heights of Gilead, and the valleys there were more
fruitful. To the west only the tribe of Ephraim reached the
sea, and became master of a harbourless strip of coast. The
remaining part of the coast and all the harbours remained in
the hands of the powerful cities of the Philistines and the
Phenicians. No attempt was made to conquer these, although
border-conflicts took place between the tribes of Judah, Dan,
and Asher, and Philistines and Sidonians. Such an attempt
could only have been made if the Israelites had remained
united, and even then the powers of the Israelites would
hardly have sufficed to overthrow the walls of Gaza, Ascalon,
and Ashdod, of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus. Yet the invasion of
the Israelites was not without results for the cities of the
coast: it forced a large part of the population to assemble in
them, and we shall see … how rapid and powerful is the
growth of the strength and importance of Tyre in the time
immediately following the incursion of the Israelites, i. e.,
immediately after the middle of the thirteenth century.
{1899}
As the population and in consequence the power of the cities
on the coast increased, owing to the collection of the ancient
population on the shore of the sea, those cities became all
the more dangerous neighbours for the Israelites. It was a
misfortune for the new territory which the Israelites had won
by the sword that it was without the protection of natural
boundaries on the north and east, that the cities of the
Philistines and Phenicians barred it towards the sea, and in
the interior remnants of the Canaanites still maintained their
place. Yet it was a far more serious danger for the immigrants
that they were without unity, connection, or guidance, for
they had already given up these before the conflict was ended.
Undoubtedly a vigorous leadership in the war of conquest
against the Canaanites might have established a military
monarchy which would have provided better for the maintenance
of the borders and the security of the land than was done in
its absence. But the isolated defence made by the Canaanites
permitted the attacking party also to isolate themselves. The
new masters of the land lived, like the Canaanites before and
among them, in separate cantons; the mountain land which they
possessed was much broken up, and without any natural centre,
and though there were dangerous neighbours, there was no
single concentrated aggressive power in the neighbourhood, now
that Egypt remained in her borders. The cities of the
Philistines formed a federation merely, though a federation
far more strongly organised than the tribes of the Israelites.
Under these circumstances political unity was not an
immediately pressing question among the Israelites."
M. Duncker,
History of Antiquity,
book 2, chapter 11 (volume 1).
H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
book 2, section 2, C.
JEWS:
Israel under the Judges.
The wars of the Period.
Conquest of Gilead and Bashan.
Founding of the kingdom.
"The office which gives its name to the period [between the
death of Joshua and the rise of Samuel] well describes it. It
was occasional, irregular, uncertain, yet gradually tending to
fixedness and perpetuity. Its title is itself expressive. The
Ruler was not regal, but he was more than the mere head of a
tribe, or the mere judge of special cases. We have to seek for
the origin of the name, not amongst the Sheykhs of the Arabian
desert, but amongst the civilised settlements of Phœnicia.
'Shophet,' 'Shophetim,' the Hebrew word which we translate
'Judge,' is the same as we find in the 'Suffes,' 'Suffetes,'
of the Carthaginian rulers at the time of the Punic wars. As
afterwards the office of 'king' was taken from the nations
round about, so now, if not the office, at least the name of
'judge' or 'shophet' seems to have been drawn from the
Canaanitish cities, with which for the first time Israel came
into contact. … Finally the two offices which, in the
earlier years of this period, had remained distinct—the High
Priest and the Judge—were united in the person of Eli."
Dean Stanley,
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,
lecture 13.
"The first war mentioned in the days of the Judges is with the
Syrians, at a time when the Israelites, or a northern portion
of them, were held in servitude for eight years by a king
whose name, Cushan-rish-athaim, which may be translated the
'Most Wicked Negress,' seems to place him in the region of
imaginary tradition rather than of history. … The next war
mentioned was an invasion by the Moabites, who, being joined
with a body of Ammonites, and Amalakites, harassed the
Israelites of the neighbourhood of Gilgal and Jericho. …
After a servitude of 18 years under the Moabites, Ehud, a
Benjamite, found an opportunity of stabbing Eglon, the king of
Moab; and shortly afterwards the Benjamites were relieved by a
body of their neighbours from the hill country of Ephraim. The
Israelites then defeated the Moabites, and seized the fords of
the Jordan to stop their retreat, and slew them all to a man.
While this war was going on on one side of the land, the
Philistines from the south were harassing those of the
Israelites who were nearest to their country. … The history
then carries us back to the northern Israelites, and we hear
of their struggle with the Canaanites of that part of the
country which was afterwards called Galilee. These people were
under a king named Jabin, who had 900 chariots of iron, and
they cruelly oppressed the men of Naphtali and Zebulun, who
were at that time the most northerly of the Israelites. After
a suffering of 20 years, the two tribes of Zebulun and
Naphtali, under the leadership of Barak, rallied against their
oppressors, and called to their help their stronger
neighbours, the men of Ephraim. The tribe of Ephraim was the
most settled portion of the Israelites, and they had adopted
some form of government, while the other tribes were
stragglers scattered over the land, every man doing what was
right in his own eyes. The Ephraimites were at that time
governed, or, in their own language, judged, by a brave woman
of the name of Deborah, who led her followers, together with
some of the Benjamites, to the assistance of Barak, the leader
of Zebulun and Naphtali; and, at the foot of Mount Tabor, near
the brook Kishon, their united forces defeated Sisern, the
general of the Canaanites. Sisera fled, and was murdered by
Jael, a woman in whose tent he had sought for refuge. … The
next war that we are told of is an invasion by the Midianites
and Amalakites and Children of the East. They crossed the
Jordan to attack the men of Manasseh, who were at the same
time struggling with the Amorites, the natives who dwelt
amongst them. Gideon, the leader of Manasseh, called together
the fighting men of his own tribe, together with those of
Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali. The men of Gilead, who had come
over to help him, seem to have deserted him. Gideon, however,
routed his enemies, and then he summoned the Ephraimites to
guard the fords of the Jordan, and to cut off the fugitives.
… This victory of Gideon, or Jerubbaal, as he was also
named, marked him out as a man fit to be the ruler of Israel,
and to save them from the troubles that arose from the want of
a single head to lead them against the enemies that surrounded
them and dwelt among them. Accordingly, he obtained the rank
of chief of all the northern Israelites. Gideon had dwelt at
Ophrah, in the land of Manasseh; but his son Abimelech, who
succeeded him in his high post, was born in Shechem, in the
land of Ephraim, and had thus gained the friendship of some of
that tribe. Abimelech put to death all but one of his
brethren, the other sons of Gideon, and got himself made king
at Shechem; and he was the first who bore that title among the
Israelites.
{1900}
But his thus violently seizing upon the power was the cause of
a long civil war between Ephraim and Manasseh, which ended in
the death of the usurper Abimelech, and the transfer of the
chieftainship to another tribe. Tola, a man of Issachar, was
then made Judge, or ruler of the northern tribes. … After
Tola, says the historian, Jair of Gilead judged Israel. …
Jair and his successors may have ruled in the east at the same
time that Deborah and Gideon and their successors were ruling
or struggling against their oppressors in the west. Jephtha of
Gilead is the next great captain mentioned. … The Ammonites,
who dwelt in the more desert country to the east of Gilead,
had made a serious incursion on the Israelites on both sides
of the Jordan; and the men of Gilead, in their distress, sent
for Jephtha, who was then living at Tob, in Syria, whither he
had fled from a quarrel with his brethren. … It seems that
the Ammonites invaded Gilead on the plea that they had
possessed that land before the Israelites arrived there, to
which Jephtha answered that the Israelites had dispossessed
the Amorites under Sihon, king of Heshbon, and that the
Ammonites had not dwelt in that part of the country. In
stating the argument, the historian gives a history of their
arrival on the banks of the Jordan. On coming out of Lower
Egypt, they crossed the desert to the Red Sea, and then came
to Kadesh. From thence they asked leave of the Edomites and
Moabites to pass through their territory; but, being refused,
they went round Moab till they came to the northern bank of
the river Arnon, an eastern tributary of the Jordan. There
they were attacked by Sihon, king of the Amorites; and on
defeating him they seized his territory, which lay between the
Arnon and the Jabbok. There the Israelites had dwelt quietly
for 300 years, without fighting against either the Moabites or
the Ammonites, who were both too strong to be attacked. This
is a most interesting narrative, both for what it tells and
for what it omits, as compared with the longer narrative in
the Pentateuch. … It omits all mention of the delivery of
the Law, or of the Ark, or of any supernatural events as
having happened on the march, and of the fighting with Og,
king of Bashan. Og, or Gog, as it is spelled by other writers,
was the name of the monarch whose imaginary castles, seen upon
the mountains in the distance, the traveller thought it not
wise to approach. They were at the limits of all geographical
knowledge. At this early time this fabulous king held Mount
Bashan; in Ezekiel's time he had retreated to the shores of
the Caspian Sea; and ten centuries later the Arabic travellers
were stopped by him at the foot of the Altai Mountains, in
Central Asia. His withdrawing before the advance of
geographical explorers proves his unreal character. He is not
mentioned in this earlier account of the Israelites settling
in the land of the Amorites; it is only in the more modern
narrative in the Book of Numbers that he is attacked and
defeated in battle, and only in the yet more modern Book of
Deuteronomy that we learn about his iron bedstead of nine
cubits in length."
S. Sharpe,
History of the Hebrew Nation,
pages 4-9.
"At the close of the period of the Judges the greater part of
the Israelites had quite lost their pastoral habits. They were
an agricultural people living in cities and villages, and
their oldest civil laws I are framed for this kind of life.
All the new arts which this complete change of habit implies
they must have derived from the Canaanites, and as they
learned the ways of agricultural life they could hardly fail
to acquire many of the characteristics of their teachers. To
make the transformation complete only one thing was lacking
—that Israel should also accept the religion of the
aborigines. The history and the prophets alike testify that to
a great extent they actually did this. Canaanite sanctuaries
became Hebrew holy places, and the vileness of Canaanite
nature-worship polluted the Hebrew festivals. For a time it
seemed that Jehovah, the ancestral God of Israel, who brought
their fathers up out of the house of bondage and gave them
their goodly land, would be forgotten or transformed into a
Canaanite Baal. If this change had been completed Israel would
have left no name in the world's history; but Providence had
other things in store for the people of Jehovah. Henceforth
the real significance of Israel's fortunes lies in the
preservation and development of the national faith, and the
history of the tribes of Jacob is rightly set forth in the
Bible as the history of that divine discipline by which
Jehovah maintained a people for Himself amidst the seductions
of Canaanite worship and the ever-new backslidings of Israel.
… In the end Jehovah was still the God of Israel, and had
become the God of Israel's land. Canaan was His heritage, not
the heritage of the Baalim, and the Canaanite worship appears
henceforth, not as a direct rival to the worship of Jehovah,
but as a disturbing element corrupting the national faith,
while unable to supplant it altogether. This, of course, in
virtue of the close connection between religion and national
feeling, means that Israel had now risen above the danger of
absorption in the Canaanites, and felt itself to be a nation
in the true sense of the word. We learn from the books of
Samuel how this great advance was ultimately and permanently
secured. The earlier wars recorded in the book of Judges had
brought about no complete or lasting unity among the Hebrew
tribes. But at length a new enemy arose, more formidable than
any whom they had previously encountered. The Philistines from
Caphtor, who, like the Israelites, had entered Canaan as
emigrants, but coming most probably by sea had displaced the
aboriginal Avvim in the rich coastlands beneath the mountains
of Judah (Deuteronomy ii. 23; Amos ix. 7), pressed into the
heart of the country, and broke the old strength of Ephraim in
the battle of Ebenezer. This victory cut the Hebrew
settlements in two, and threatened the independence of all the
tribes. The common danger drew Israel together."
W. Robertson Smith,
The Prophets of Israel,
lecture 1.
JEWS:
The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
"No one appeared again in the character at once of judge and
warrior, to protect the people by force of arms. It was the
Levite Samuel, a prophet dedicated to God even before his
birth, who recalled them to the consciousness of religious
feeling. He succeeded in removing the emblems of Baal and
Astarte from the heights, and in paving the way for renewed
faith in Jehovah. … It was the feeling of the people that
they could only carry on the war upon the system employed by
all their neighbors.
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They demanded a king—a request very intelligible under
existing circumstances, but one which nevertheless involved a
wide and significant departure from the impulses which had
hitherto moved the Jewish community and the forms in which it
had shaped itself. … The Israelites demanded a king, not
only to go before them and fight their battles, but also to
judge them. They no longer looked for their preservation to
the occasional efforts of the prophetic order and the
ephemeral existence of heroic leaders. … The argument by
which Samuel, as the narrative records, seeks to deter the
people from their purpose, is that the king will encroach upon
the freedom of private life which they have hitherto enjoyed,
employing their sons and daughters in his service, whether in
the palace or in war, exacting tithes, taking the best part of
the land for himself, and regarding all as his bondsmen. In
this freedom of tribal and family life lay the essence of the
Mosaic constitution. But the danger that all may be lost is so
pressing that the people insist upon their own will in
opposition to the prophet. Nevertheless, without the prophet
nothing can be done, and it is he who selects from the youth
of the country the man who is to enjoy the new dignity in
Israel. … At first the proceeding had but a doubtful result.
Many despised a young man sprung from the smallest family of
the smallest tribe of Israel, as one who could give them no
real assistance. In order to make effective the conception of
the kingly office thus assigned to him, it was necessary in
the first place that he should gain for himself a personal
reputation. A king of the Ammonites, a tribe in affinity to
Israel, laid siege to Jabesh in Gilead, and burdened the
proffered surrender of the place with the condition that he
should put out the right eyes of the inhabitants. … Saul,
the son of Kish, a Benjamite, designated by the prophet as
king, but not as yet recognized as such, was engaged, as
Gideon before him, in his rustic labors, when he learned the
situation through the lamentations of the people. … Seized
with the idea of his mission, Saul cuts in pieces a yoke of
oxen, and sends the portions to the twelve tribes with the
threat, 'Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after
Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen.' … Thus urged,
… Israel combines like one man; Jabesh is rescued and Saul
acknowledged as king. … With the recognition of the king,
however, and the progress of his good-fortune, a new and
disturbing element appears. A contest breaks out between him
and the prophet, in which we recognize not so much opposition
as jealousy between the two powers. … On the one side was
the independent power of monarchy, which looks to the
requirements of the moment, on the other the prophet's
tenacious and unreserved adherence to tradition. … The
relations between the tribes have also some bearing on the
question. Hitherto Ephraim had led the van, and jealously
insisted on its prerogative. Saul was of Benjamin, a tribe
nearly related to Ephraim by descent. He had made the men of
his own tribe captains, and had given them vineyards. On the
other hand, the prophet chose Saul's successor from the tribe
of Judah. This successor was David, the son of Jesse. … In
the opposition which now begins we have on the one side the
prophet and his anointed, who aim at maintaining the religious
authority in all its aspects, on the other the champion and
deliverer of the nation, who, abandoned by the faithful, turns
for aid to the powers of darkness and seeks knowledge of the
future through witchcraft. Saul is the first tragic personage
in the history of the world. David took refuge with the
Philistines. Among them he lived as an independent military
chieftain, and was joined not only by opponents of the king,
but by others, ready for any service, or, in the language of
the original, 'men armed with bows, who could use both the
right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows
out of a bow.' … In any serious war against the Israelites,
such as actually broke out, the Sarim of the Philistines would
not have tolerated him amongst them. David preferred to engage
in a second attack upon the Amalekites, the common enemy of
Philistines and Jews. At this juncture Israel was defeated by
the Philistines. The king's sons were slain; Saul, in danger
of falling into the enemy's hands, slew himself. Meanwhile
David with his freebooters had defeated the Amalekites, and
torn from their grasp the spoil they had accumulated, which
was now distributed in Judah. Soon after, the death of Saul is
announced. … David, conscious of being the rightful
successor of Saul—for on him too, long ere this, the unction
had been bestowed—betook himself to Hebron, the seat of the
ancient Canaanitish kings, which had subsequently been given
up to the priests and made one of the cities of refuge. It was
in the province of Judah; and there, the tribe of Judah
assisting at the ceremony, David was once more anointed. This
tribe alone, however, acknowledged him; the others, especially
Ephraim and Benjamin, attached themselves to Ishbosheth, the
surviving son of Saul. … The first passage of arms between
the two hosts took place between twelve of the tribe of
Benjamin and twelve of David's men-at-arms. It led, however,
to no result; it was a mutual slaughter, so complete as to
leave no survivor. But in the more serious struggle which
succeeded this the troops of David, trained as they were in
warlike undertakings of great daring as well as variety, won
the victory over Ishbosheth; and as the unanointed king could
not rely upon the complete obedience of his
commander-in-chief, who considered himself as important as his
master, David, step by step, won the upper hand. … The
Benjamites had been the heart and soul of the opposition which
David experienced. Nevertheless, the first action which he
undertook as acknowledged king of all the tribes redounded
specially to their advantage, whilst it was at the same time a
task of the utmost importance for the whole Israelitish
commonwealth. Although Joshua had conquered the Amorites, one
of their strongholds, Jebus, still remained unsubdued, and the
Benjamites had exerted all their strength against it in vain.
It was to this point that David next directed his victorious
arms. Having conquered the place, he transferred the seat of
his kingdom thither without delay [see JERUSALEM]. This seat
is Jerusalem; the word Zion has the same meaning as Jebus."
L. von Ranke,
Universal History:
The Oldest Historical Groups of Nations,
chapter 2.
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"After Saul's death it was at first only in Judah, where David
maintained his government, that a new Kingdom of Israel could be
established at all, so disastrous were the consequences of the
great Philistine victory. The Philistines, who must have already
conquered the central territory, now occupied that to the
north, also, while the inhabitants of the cities of the great
plain of Jezreel and of the western bank of the Jordan, fled,
we are very distinctly informed, across the river."
H. Ewald,
History of Israel,
book 3.
But Abner, the strong warrior and the faithful kinsman of
Saul's family, took Ishbosheth, the oldest surviving son of
his dead king, and throned him in the city of Mahanaim, beyond
the Jordan, proceeding gradually to gather a kingdom for him
by reconquest from the Philistines. Thus the Israelite nation
was first divided into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah,
and there was bitter war between them. But that first division
was not to endure long. Abner and Ishbosheth fell victims to
treachery, and the tribes which had held by them offered
allegiance to David, who then became king over "all Israel and
Judah." By the conquest of the city of Jebus from its
Canaanite founders and possessors, he acquired a new,
impregnable capital, which, under the name of Jerusalem, grew
to be the most reverently looked upon of all the cities of the
world. "History has been completely distorted in representing
David as the head of a powerful kingdom, which embraced nearly
the whole of Syria. David was king of Judah and of Israel, and
that was all; the neighboring peoples, Hebrews, Canaanites,
Arameans and Philistines, as far as Mahul Hermon and the
desert, were sternly subjected, and were more or less its
tributaries. In reality, with the exception, perhaps, of the
small town of Ziklag, David did not annex any non-Israelite
country to the domain of Israel. The Philistines, the
Edomites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Arameans of
Zoba, of Damascus, of Rehob and of Maacah were, after his day,
very much what they were before, only a little weaker.
Conquest was not a characteristic of Israel; the taking
possession of the Canaanite lands was an act of a different
order, and it came to be more and more regarded as the
execution of a decree of Iahveh. As this decree did not extend
to the lands of Edom, of Moab, of Ammon and of Aram, the
Israelites deemed themselves justified in treating the
Edomites, the Moabites, the Ammonites and the Arameans with
the utmost severity, in carrying off their precious stones and
objects of price, but not in taking their land, or in changing
their dynasty. None of the methods employed by great empires
such as Assyria was known to these small peoples, which had
scarcely got beyond the status of tribes. They were as cruel
as Assur, but much less politic and less capable of a general
plan. The impression produced by the appearance of this new
royalty was none the less extraordinary. The halo of glory
which enveloped David remained like a star upon the forehead
of Israel."
E. Renan,
History of the People of Israel,
book 3, chapter 4 (volume 2).
David died about 1000 B. C. and was succeeded by his son
Solomon, whose mother, Bathsheba, secured the throne for him
by intrigue. "Solomon was a younger son, to whom the throne
had been allotted contrary to ordinary laws of succession,
whilst Adonijah, whom a portion of the people had recognised
as king, was considered the rightful heir. So long as the
latter lived. Solomon's government could not be on a firm
basis, and he could never feel himself secure. Adonijah had
therefore to be removed; the leader of the body guard,
Benaiah, forcibly entered his house and killed him. As an
excuse for this act of violence, it was asserted that Adonijah
had attempted to win the hand of Abishag, the young widow of
David, and thus had revealed his traitorous intention of
contesting the throne with his brother. No sooner had he
fallen than Joab, the former adherent of Adonijah, feared that
a similar fate would overtake him. This exemplary general, who
had contributed so considerably to the aggrandisement of the
people of Israel and to the power of the house of David, fled
to the altar on Mount Zion, and clung to it, hoping to escape
death. Benaiah, however, refused to respect his place of
refuge, and shed his blood at the altar. In order to excuse
this crime, it was circulated that David himself, on his
death-bed, had impressed on his successor the duty of
preventing Joab's grey head from sinking in peace to its last
rest. … Adonijah's priestly partisan, Abiathar, whom Solomon
did not dare to touch, was deprived of his office as high
priest, and Zadok was made the sole head of the priesthood.
His descendants were invested with the dignity of high priest
for over a thousand years, whilst the offspring of Abiathar
were neglected. The Benjamite Shimei, who had attacked David
with execrations on his flight from Jerusalem, was also
executed, and it was only through this three-fold deed of
blood that Solomon's throne appeared to gain stability.
Solomon then directed his attention to the formation of a
court of the greatest magnificence."
H. Graetz,
History of the Jews,
volume 1, chapter 9.
"The main characteristic of Solomon's reign was peace. The
Philistines, allies of the new dynasty, and given profitable
employment by it as mercenaries, were no longer tempted to
cross the frontier. … The decay of military strength was
only felt in the zone of countries which were tributary to the
kingdom. Hadad, or Hadar, the Edomite, who had been defeated
by Joab and had taken refuge in Egypt, having heard of David's
death, and that of Joab as well, left Pharaoh, whose
sister-in-law he had married. We have no details of this war.
… We only know that Hadad braved Israel throughout the whole
of Solomon's reign, that he did it all the injury he could,
and that he was an independent ruler over a great part at all
events of Edom. A still more formidable adversary was Rezon,
son of Eliadah, an Aramean warrior who, after the defeat of
his lord, Hadadezer, king of Zobah, had assembled about him
those who had fled before the sword of David. … A lucky
'coup-de-main' placed the city of Damascus at their mercy, and
they succeeded in maintaining themselves there. During the
whole of Solomon's reign Rezon continued to make war against
Israel. The kingdom of Zobah does not appear, however, to have
been re-established. Damascus became henceforth the centre and
capital of that part of Aramea which adjoined Mount Hermon.
David's horizon never extended beyond Syria. With Solomon,
fresh perspectives opened up for the Israelites, especially
for Jerusalem. Israel is no longer a group of tribes,
continuing to lead in its mountains the patriarchal life of
the past. It is a well-organised kingdom, small according to
our ideas, but rather large judged by the standard of the day.
The worldly life of the people of Iahveh is about to begin. If
Israel had no other life but that it would not have found a
place in history. … An alliance with Egypt was the first
step in that career of profane politics which the prophets
afterwards interlarded with so much that was impossible. …
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The king of Egypt gave Gezer as a dowry to his daughter, and
married her to Solomon. … It is not too much to suppose that
the tastes of this princess for refined luxury had a great
influence upon the mind of her husband. … The relations of
Solomon with Tyre exercised a still more civilising influence.
Tyre, recently separated from Sidon, was then at the zenith of
its activity, and, so to speak, in the full fire of its first
foundation. A dynasty of kings named Hiram, or rather Ahiram,
was at the head of this movement. The island was covered with
constructions imitated from Egypt. … Hiram is the close ally
of the king of Israel; it is he who provides Solomon with the
artists who were lacking at Jerusalem; the precious materials
for the buildings in Zion; seamen for the fleet of Eziongeber.
The region of the upper Jordan, conquered by David, appears to
have remained tributary to Solomon. What has been related as
to a much larger extension of the kingdom of Solomon is
greatly exaggerated. … The fables as to the pretended
foundation of Palmyra by Solomon come from a letter
intentionally added to the text of the ancient historiographer
by the compiler of the Chronicles. The construction of Baalbec
by Solomon rests upon a still more inadmissible piece of
identification. … In reality, the dominion of Solomon was
confined to Palestine. … What was better than peoples kept
under by force, the Arab brigands were held in check from
pillage. The Amalekites, the Midianites, the Beni-Quedem and
other nomads were confronted with an impassable barrier all
around Israel. The Philistines preserved their independence.
… When it is surmised that Solomon reigned over all Syria,
the size of his kingdom is exaggerated at least fourfold.
Solomon's kingdom was barely a fourth of what is now called
Syria. … Solomon … built 'cities of store,' or warehouses,
the commercial or military object of which cannot well be
defined. There was, more especially, a place named Tamar, in
the direction of Petra, of which Solomon made a city, and
which became a calling-place for the caravans. … With very
good reason, too, Solomon had his attention constantly fixed
upon the Red Sea, a broad canal which placed the dawning
civilisation of the Mediterranean in communication with India,
and thus opened up a new world, that of Ophir. The Bay of Suez
belonged to Egypt, but the Gulf of Akaba was, one may say, at
the mercy of anyone who cared to take it. Elath and
Asiongaber, according to all appearances, had been of very
little importance in earlier times. Without regularly
occupying the country, Solomon secured the route by the Valley
of Araba. He built a fleet at Asiongaber, though the
Israelites had never much liking for the sea. Hiram provided
Solomon with sailors, or, what is more probable, the two
fleets acted together. On leaving the Straits of Aden, they
went to Ophir, that is to say, to Western India, to Guzarate,
or to the coast of Malabar."
E. Renan,
History of the People of Israel,
book 3, chapter 10 (volume 2).
The government of Solomon was extravagant and despotic; it
imposed burdens upon the people which were borne impatiently
until his death; and when his son Rehoboam refused to lessen
them, the nation was instantly broken again on the lines of
the earlier rupture. The two tribes of Judah and Benjamin,
only, remained faithful to the house of David and constituted
the kingdom of Judah. The other ten tribes made Jeroboam their
king and retained the name of Israel for their kingdom. The
period of this division is fixed at 978 B. C. Jerusalem
continued to be the capital of the kingdom of Judah. In the
kingdom of Israel several changes of royal residence occurred
during the first half century, until Samaria was founded by
King Omri and thenceforth became the capital city. "Six miles
from Shechem, in the same well-watered valley, here opening
into a wide basin, rises an oblong hill, with steep yet
accessible sides, and a long level top. This was the mountain
of Samaria, or, as it is called in the original, Shômeron, so
named after its owner Shemer, who there lived in state, and
who sold it to the King for the great sum of two talents of
silver."
Dean Stanley,
Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,
lectures 29-30 (volume 2).
For two centuries, until the overthrow of the kingdom, Samaria
continued to be the queen of the land, and the seat of
government, often giving its name to the whole state, so that
the kings were called "Kings of Samaria." "Under the dynasties
of Omri and Jehu [10th-8th centuries, B. C.] the Northern
Kingdom took the leading part in Israel; even to the Judæan
Amos it was Israel 'par excellence.' Judah was not only
inferior in political power, but in the share it took in the
active movements of national life and thought. In tracing the
history of religion and the work of the prophets, we have been
almost exclusively occupied with the North; Amos himself, when
charged with a message to the whole family that Jehovah
brought up out of Egypt, leaves his home to preach in a
Northern sanctuary. During this whole period we have a much
fuller knowledge of the life of Ephraim than of Judah; the
Judæan history consists of meagre extracts from official
records, except where it comes into contact with the North,
through the alliance of Jehoshaphat with Ahab; through the
reaction of Jehu's revolution in the fall of Athaliah, the
last scion of the house of Ahab, and the accompanying
abolition of Baal worship at Jerusalem, or, finally, through
the presumptuous attempt of Amaziah to measure his strength
with the powerful monarch of Samaria. While the house of
Ephraim was engaged in the great war with Syria, Judah had
seldom to deal with enemies more formidable than the
Philistines or the Edomites; and the contest with these foes,
renewed with varying success generation after generation,
resolved itself into a succession of forays and blood-feuds
such as have always been common in the lands of the Semites
(Amos i.), and never assumed the character of a struggle for
national existence. It was the Northern Kingdom that had the
task of upholding the standard of Israel; its whole history
presents greater interest and more heroic elements; its
struggles, its calamities, and its glories were cast in a
larger mould. It is a trite proverb that the nation which has
no history is happy, and perhaps the course of Judah's
existence ran more smoothly than that of its greater neighbor,
in spite of the raids of the slave-dealers of the coast, and
the lawless hordes of the desert. But no side of national
existence is likely to find full development where there is
little political activity; if the life of the North was more
troubled, it was also larger and more intense.
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Ephraim took the lead in literature and religion as well as in
politics; it was in Ephraim far more than in Judah that the
traditions of past history were cherished, and new problems of
religion became practical and called for solution by the word
of the prophets. So long as the Northern Kingdom endured Judah
was content to learn from it for evil or for good. It would be
easy to show in detail that every wave of life and thought in
Ephraim was transmitted with diminished intensity to the
Southern Kingdom. In many respects the influence of Ephraim
upon Judah was similar to that of England upon Scotland before
the union of the crowns, but with the important difference
that after the accession of Omri the two Hebrew kingdoms were
seldom involved in hostilities. … The internal condition of
the [Judæan] state was stable, though little progressive; the
kings were fairly successful in war, though not sufficiently
strong to maintain unbroken authority over Edom, the only
vassal state of the old Davidic realm over which they still
claimed suzerainty, and their civil administration must have
been generally satisfactory according to the not very high
standard of the East; for they retained the affections of
their people, the justice and mercy of the throne of David are
favourably spoken of in the old prophecy against Moab quoted
in Isaiah XV., xvi., and Isaiah contrasts the disorders of his
own time with the ancient reputation of Jerusalem for fidelity
and justice (i. 21). … The religious conduct of the house of
David followed the same general lines. Old abuses remained
untouched, but the cultus remained much as David and Solomon
had left it. Local high places were numerous, and no attempt
was made to interfere with them; but the great temple on Mount
Zion, which formed part of the complex of royal buildings
erected by Solomon, maintained its prestige, and appears to
have been a special object of solicitude to the kings, who
treated its service as part of their royal state. It is common
to imagine that the religious condition of Judah was very much
superior to that of the North, but there is absolutely no
evidence to support this opinion."
W. Robertson Smith,
The Prophets of Israel,
lecture 5.
In the year B. C. 745 the throne of Assyria was seized by a
soldier of great ability, called Pul, or Pulu, who took the
name of Tiglath-pileser III. and who promptly entered on an
ambitious career of conquest, with imperial aims and plans.
"In B. C. 738 we find him receiving tribute from Menahem of
Samaria, Rezon of Damascus, and Hiram of Tyre. … The throne
of Israel was occupied at the time by Pekah, a successful
general who had murdered his predecessor, but who was
evidently a man of vigour and ability. He and Rezon
endeavoured to form a confederacy of the Syrian and
Palestinian states against their common Assyrian foe. In order
to effect their object they considered it necessary to
displace the reigning king of Judah, Ahaz, and substitute for
him a creature of their own. … They were aided by a party of
malcontents in Judah itself (Isaiah viii. 6), and the position
of Ahaz seemed desperate. … In this moment of peril Isaiah
was instructed to meet and comfort Ahaz. He bade him 'fear
not, neither be fainthearted,' for the confederacy against the
dynasty of David should be broken and overthrown. … But Ahaz
… had no faith either in the prophet or in the message he
was commissioned to deliver. He saw safety in one course
only—that of invoking the assistance of the Assyrian king,
and bribing him by the offer of homage and tribute to march
against his enemies. In vain Isaiah denounced so suicidal and
unpatriotic a policy. In vain he foretold that when Damascus
and Samaria had been crushed, the next victim of the Assyrian