Take any scene, almost and, but for the names perhaps more felt than seen. at random, from this period; and Eastern coloring, it might be from the tenth or twelfth century. The house of Micah and his Levite set forth the exact likeness of the feudal castle and feudal chieftain of our early civilization. The Danites, eager to secure to their enterprise the sanction of a sacred personage and of sacred images, are the forerunners of that strange mixture of faith and superstition, which prompted in the Middle Ages so many pious thefts of relics, so many extortions of unwilling benedictions. The Levite bribed by the promise of a higher office is, as we have already observed, the likeness of the faithless guardian of a venerated shrine tempted by the vacant Abbacy in some neighboring monastery to betray the sacred treasure committed to him. In Micah and his armed men pursuing their lost teraphim, and repulsed with rough taunts by the stronger band, we read the victory obtained by the suocessful relic-stealers over their less ready or less powerful rivals. The whole story of the Benjamite war has been introduced as a medieval tale into a celebrated historical romance,' perhaps with questionable propriety, but in such exact conformity to the cos tume and fashion of the time, as to furnish of itself a proof of the graphic faithfulness of the sacred narrative, which could lend itself so readily to the metamorphosis. The summons of the tribes by the bones of the murdered victim, and of the slaughtered animal, is the same as the summons of the Highland clans by the fiery cross dipped in blood. The vows of monastic life, the vows of celibacy, the vows of pilgrimage, which exercise so large an influence over 1 See Scott's Ivanhoe, c. xv. - mediæval life, have their prototypes in the vows al ready noticed in the early struggles of Israel — the same excuses, the same evils, and many of the same advantages. The insecurity of communication - the danger of violence by night is the same in both periods. The very roads fall, if one may so say, into the same track. "The highways become unoccupied, and the travellers," alike in Judæa and in England, "walk along the by-ways," under the skirt of the hills and through the dark lanes which may screen them from notice. We are struck at Ascalon and in the plains of Philistia by finding the localities equally connected with the history of Richard Coeur-de-Lion and of Samson; but they are, in fact, united by moral and historical, far more than by any mere local, coincidences. In both ages there is the same long crusade against the unbelievers. The Moors in Spain, the Tartars in Russia, play the very same part as the Canaanites and Philistines in Palestine. The caves of Palestine furnish the same refuge as the caves of Asturias. Priests and Levites wander to and fro over Palestine: mendicant friars and sellers of indulgences over Europe. Hophni and Phinehas become at Shiloh the prototypes of the bloated pluralists of the Mediaval Church of Europe. "In those days there was no king in Israel," there was no settled government in Christendom, all things were as yet in chaos and confusion. Yet the germs of a better life were everywhere at work. In the one, the Judge, as we have seen was gradually blending into the hereditary King. In the other, the feudal chief was gradually passing into the constitutional sovereign. The youth of Samuel, the childhood of David, were nursed under I Judg. v. 6. this wild system. The schools of the prophets, the universities of Christendom, owe their first impulse to this first period of Jewish and of Christian History. The age of the Psalmists and Prophets was an immense advance upon the age of the Judges. Yet Psalmists and Prophets look back with exultation and delight to the day when the rod of the oppressor was broken,' when the hosts of Sisera perished at Endor, when Zeba and Zalmunna were swept away as the stubble before the wind. Our age is an immense advance upon the age of chivalry and the Crusaders; but it is well, from time to time, to be reminded that there are virtues in chivalry and in barbarism, as well as in reason and civilization; and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has taught us that even the most imperfect of the champions of ancient times may be ranked in the cloud of the witnesses of faith, "God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us might not be made perfect."" 1 Isaiah ix. 4; x. 26; Ps. lxxxiii. 9–11. 2 Heb. xi. 40. LECTURE XIV. DEBORAH. THE great war of the earlier period of the history is heralded by two or three lesser conflicts. Othniel only appears as the last of the generation Othniel. of conquerors. In him the Lion of Judah, which had won the southern portion of Palestine under Caleb, appears for the last time, till the resuscitation of the warlike spirit of the tribe by David. All the other indications of its history during this period are peaceful; the pastoral simplicity of Boaz and Ruth, its absence from the gathering under Barak, its retiring demeanor in the story of Samson. The enemy whom Othniel attacked is also a solitary exception. Chushan-Rishathaim is the only invader from the remote East till the decline of the monarchy, and his name has as yet received no illustration from the Assyrian monuments or history. The story of Ehud throws a broader light over the Ehud. darkness of the time. The Moabite armies, the most civilized of the Transjordanic nations, exasperat ed, perhaps, by the increasing inroads of Gad and Reuben, place themselves at the head of the more nomadic tribes of Ammon and Amalek, cross the Jordan, and (like the Israelites on their first passage) establish themselves at Gilgal and Jericho. Beyond the 1 Judg. iii. 9. mountain barrier they did not reach; but their dominion extended itself over the neighboring tribe of Benjamin, and a village bearing the name of the "hamlet of the Ammonites "3 was probably the memorial of this conquest. From Benjamin, accordingly, a yearly tribute was exacted. There was in the tribe a youth of the name of Ehud, who had acquired a fame for prophetic power in the country. He was naturally intrusted with the charge of carrying the tribute to the Moabite fortress. After he had delivered the gifts, he paid a visit to the sacred enclosure" or "images" at Gilgal, left his two attendants, and returned, with his increased knowledge of the localities, to the presence of the king. The whole scene is full of the contrast between the slight, wily, agile Israelite, and the corpulent, credulous, unwieldy Moabite. The king is seated in a chamber on the roof of the house for the sake of catching a cool air in the sultry atmosphere of the Jordan valley, with his attendants around him. Ehud announces that he has a secret oracle to disclose. The king, with an instantaneous "Hush!"8 orders his attendants to withdraw. Ehud, still fearing lest his blow should miss its aim, repeats the announcement of the divine message. This was to raise the king from his sitting posture, and expose him to the stroke more easily. Eglon falls into the snare. With the respect always paid in the East to a sacred personage, he rises and comes towards the assassin. In that moment, from 1 Judg. iii. 13. 2 Ibid. 26. 3 Josh. xviii. 24. the word translated " quarries," Judg. iii. 19, 26. 6 Joseph. Ant. v. 4, § 2; oùv dvoir 4 Joseph. Ant. v. 4, § 2; νεανίας, οἰκέταις. νεανίσκος. 5 This seems to be the meaning of 7 Judg. iii. 17. 8 Ibid. 19 (Hebrew). |