We observe in the first place that the book has two commencements, each of which connects it directly with the book of Joshua (chap. i. 1; ii. 6). But in i. 1 the connexion is merely apparent. The events related in chap, i. are there said to have taken place after the death of Joshua, but in reality the chapter, covers the same ground with the book of Joshua, giving a brief account of the conquest of Canaan, which in some particulars repeats the statements of the previous book, while in others it is quite independent. It is impossible to regard the warlike expeditions described in this chapter as supplementary campaigns undertaken after Joshua’s death; they are plainly represented as the first efforts of the Israelites to gain a firm footing in the centre of the land (at Hebron, Debir, Bethel), in the very cities which Joshua in the book that bears his name is related to have subdued (Josh. x. 39). And this is confirmed by the circumstance that in Judges il 1 the “angel of Jehovah,” who, according to Exod. xiv. 24, xxiii. 20, xxxii. 34, xxxiii. 2, 7 sq., must be viewed as having his local manifestation at the headquarters of the host of Israel, is still found at Gilgal and not at Shiloh (Josh, xviii. ]). Here then we have an account of the first settlement of Israel west of the Jordan which is parallel to the book of Joshua, but makes no mention of Joshua himself, and places the tribe of Judah in the front. The author of the chapter cannot have had Joshua or his history in his eye at all, and the passage, Josh. XV. 13-19, which corresponds to Judg. i. 10-15, 20, is either derived from our chapter or from an earlier source common to both. It follows from these considerations that the words “Now after the days of Joshua” in Judg. i. 1 are from the hand of the editor, who desired to make the whole book of Judges, including chap, i., read continuously with that which now precedes it in the canon of the earlier prophets.

There are other signs of more than one pen having been engaged on Judges i. Compare, for example, ver. 8 with ver. 21, and see for the details, which are too complicated to bo discussed here, Graf, Ber Stamm Simeon, 1866; Wellhausen-Bleek, Einleitung, p. 182; Wellhausen, Geschichte, i. 366; Meyer, “Die Eroberung Palästina’s” in Stade’s Zeitschrift, 1881, Hft. i. The chapter was written after Israel had become strong enough to make the Canaanite cities tributary (ver. 28), that is, in the time of the kingship. Meyer, following hints by Wellhausen, brings arguments to show that the original author is the Jahwist of the Pentateuch, of whose work there is but little trace among the sources of Joshua, though it cannot have closed without speaking of the conquest.

The second and main section of our book (chap. ii. 6-xvi.) stands on quite another footing. The opening verses ii. 6-9 repeat the closing words of Joshua’s history (Josh, xxiv. 28-31), and so link what follows to the book of Joshua as strictly as the first words of Ezra connect that book with the last verses of Chronicles. According to Josh, xxiv. the people “served Jehovah” during the lifetime of the great conqueror and his contemporaries. In Judg. ii. this statement is repeated, and the writer proceeds to explain that subsequent generations fell away from the faith, and served the gods of the nations among which they dwelt. The worship of other gods is represented, not as something which went on side by side with Jehovah worship (compare x. 6), but as a revolt against Jehovah, periodically repeated and regularly chastised by foreign invasion. The history, therefore, falls into recurring cycles, each of which begins with religious corruption, followed by chastisement, which continues till Jehovah in answer to the groans of His oppressed people raises up a judge to deliver Israel, and recall them to the true faith. On the death of the judge, if not sooner, the corruption spreads anew and the same vicissitudes follow. This religious explanation of the course of the history, formally expounded at the outset and repeated in more or less detail from chapter to chapter (most fully in chap, x.), determines the form of the whole narrative, which is grouped round six principal judges, Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. The intervals between the great judges are filled up by the history of Gideon’s son Abimelech and of six minor heroes —Shamgar (following Ehud), Tola and Jair (following Abimelech), Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon (between Jephthah and Samson). The minor judges are not represented as having any immediate religious importance. The cycles of revolt, chastisement, and deliverance are six, not twelve.

To the unity of religious pragmatism in the main stock of the book of Judges corresponds a unity of chronological scheme. The judges, in spite of the fact that most of them had clearly no more than a local influence, are all represented as successive rulers, and the history is dated by the years of each judgeship and those of the intervening periods of oppression. Here, however, a difficulty arises. The fourth year of Solomon is, according to 1 Kings vi. 1, the 480th from the exodus. These 480 years are 12 generations of 40 years each. The larger numbers which make up this total are also mainly reckoned by forties. Moses, Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, and the Philistine oppression, in which, according to Judg. xv. 20, Samson’s judgeship was but an incident, make up together 7 × 40 years. Again, David has 40 years, and Samuel (who arose to close the Philistine interregnum twenty years after the death of Eli, and continued in office till he was quite old) cannot have ruled much less than a normal generation. Finally Joshua, who died at the age of 110, ruled 30 years, if in point of age he was a man of the same standing with Caleb (Josh, xiv. 10). Add to these 30 years 6 for Jephthah and 4 for Solomon and we get 10 × 40. There remain but 80 years for the elders who outlived Joshua, the interregna or times of oppression previous to the Philistine period, the minor judges, and Saul. But the interregna alone are 71 years, and the minor judges 70, or with Abimelech 73 or 74. It is plain that there is no room for both in the chronological scheme, and the two series correspond so nearly that they must be held to be alternative items in the reckoning, leaving a slightly different length for Saul’s brief reign. But as a matter of fact the minor judges are not so placed in the narrative as to coincide with the periods of oppression. Thus the apparent consecutiveness of the narrative breaks down. The minor judges really lie outside of the chronological scheme of the history as well as of the system of religious cycles; and we infer that even the main stock of the book of Judges is not all constructed by one hand or on a uniform plan.

The religious interpretation of the history corresponds with the prophetic teaching of the 8th century b.c. The use of Baal as a title peculiar to false deities as opposed to Jehovah hardly fits an earlier date than the time of Hosea, and the hostile attitude taken up towards the ashera (sacred tree or pole) was not shared by the religious leaders of the period of Jehu. Critics have spoken of chaps, ii. and X. as Deuteronomic, and no doubt the last hand that touched all the earlier historical books and reduced them to unity may be so named; but the main ideas are not necessarily so late, and are rather akin to the non-Levitical Elohist, the author of Josh, xxiv. In particular the worship of the high places is not condemned, nor is it excused as is done in 1 Kings iii. 2.

But the sources of the narrative are obviously much older than the theological exposition of its lessons. The composer of the book has generally transcribed them with little change, so that in reading the story of each great deliverance vouchsafed to Israel we feel ourselves in living contact with the earliest strain of Hebrew patriotism and religion. In this respect the book of Judges is one of the most valuable and interesting in the Old Testament. The song of Deborah and the history of Abimelech carry us back to the beginnings of national life in Israel, when Judah lived outside the main current of the history—the tribe is not even named by Deborah—and when Israelite and Canaanite populations existed side by side and struggled together for supremacy. In these chapters Israel is still in some sense a nation foreign to Canaan, and Jehovah Himself has His seat not on the mountains of Israel but beyond the fields of Edom on the southern heights of Sinai. The importance of such documents for the scientific historian lies not so much in the events they record as in the unconscious witness they bear to the state of things in which the narrator or poet lived. From this point of view all parts of the book are by no means of equal value, and in some instances, particularly in the histories of Deborah and Gideon, critical analysis appears to show that two narratives of different age have been fused together, the older story giving more prominence to ordinary human motives and combinations, while the later version is coloured by religious reflexion, and shows the characteristic tendency of the Old Testament to retell the fortunes of Israel in a form that lays ever increasing weight on the work of Jehovah for His people. The history of the minor judges is plainly not related from such lively and detailed remin iscence as gives charm to the longer episodes of the book; and some of the names, as Nöldeke (op. cit.) and others have shown, are those of personified families or communities rather than of individuals. This indeed is a characteristic feature of the earlier Hebrew history, which older expositors failed to recognize, but which modern science can no longer ignore.

The third and last part of the book embraces chaps, xvii.-xxi., and consists of two narratives independent of one another and of the main stock of the book, with which they are not brought into any chronological connexion. The first narrative, that of Micah and the Danites, belongs to the most primitive strata of the Old Testament history, and is of the highest interest both as a record of the state of religion and for the accurate picture it gives of the way in which one tribe passed from the condition of an invading band into settled possession of land and city. The history of the Levite and the Benjamites is of quite another character, and presupposes a degree of unity of feeling and action among the tribes of Israel which it is not easy to reconcile with the rest of the book. In its present form this episode appears to be not very ancient; it resembles the book of Ruth in giving a good deal of curious archaeological detail (the feast at Shiloh) in a form which suggests that the usages referred to were already obsolete when the narrative was composed.

Literature.— On questions of introduction the latest and best investigations are those of Wellhausen in Bleek’s Einleitung, 4th ed., Berlin, 1878, and in his Geschichte, chap. vii. For the historical questions compare also Ewald’s Geschichte, vol. ii. The most useful modern commentary is that of Studer, Bern, 1835. Later works are those of Bertheau, Leipsic, 1845; Keil, Leipsic, 1863, English translation, 1865; Cassel, in Lange’s Bibelwerk, Bielefeld, 1865; in the Speakers Commentary ; and in Reuss’s Bible. On the song of Deborah see Ewald, Dichter, i. 1, p. 173; Böttcher, ATliche Bühnendichtungen, Leipsic, 1850; Kemink, De Carm. Deb., Utrecht, 1840; Meier, Deboralied, Tübingen, 1859. (W. R. S. )

BOOK OF, a canonical book of the Old Testament, containing the history of the Israelitish judges, of whom we have been speaking in the preceding article. The author is not known. It is probable the work did not come from any single hand, being rather a collection of several little histories, which at first were separate, but were afterward collected by Ezra or Samuel into a single volume; and, in all likelihood, were taken from the ancient journals, annals, or memoirs, composed by the several judges. The antiquity of this book is unquestionable, as it must have been written before the time of David, since the description, Judges i, 21, was no longer true of Jerusalem after he had taken possession of it, and had introduced a third class of inhabitants of the tribe of Judah. Eichorn acknowledges that it does not bear the marks of subsequent interpolation. Dr. Patrick is of opinion that the five last chapters are a distinct history, in which the author gives an account of several memorable transactions, which occurred in or about the time of the judges; whose history he would not interrupt by intermixing these matters with it, and therefore reserved them to be related by themselves in the second part, or appendix.