As compared with the Northern kingdom, Judah was through most of its history of little account. When it held Edom in subjection its power was Btrengthened, yet even then the scornful fable, in which Joash set Judah against Israel as a thistle
against a cedar, was not without justification. In other things than size and strength the advantage lay with Israel. Life was richer, fuller, and decjier, and that not only social but, what ia more important yet less recognized, religious life. It was not in Judah but in Israel that the great prophets Elijah and Elisha did their work, the schools of the prophets flourished, and the earliest (?) history of the Hebrews was written. Amos, it is true, belonged to Judah, yet even he prophesied to Israel, and his junior contemporary, Ho.sea, was a Northern prophet. It was not till Israel went under that Judah attained its great significance. Yet Judah had advantages of its own. The prestige of the Davidie monarchy secured a permanence of dynasty that was of untold blessing, and saved it from the frequent revolutions and usurpations that tore Israel asunder. Further, while Judah was poorer in great religious teachers, its religion was prolmbly simpler and less corrupt than that ot Israel, though its superiority may be easily exaggerated. Its possession of the temple made for greater purity of worship. Yet it was rather the respite granted after the captivity of the Northern tribes, than any religious superiority of Judah, that left it the sole deijositary of the higher religion of the prophets. This had not struck its roots deep enough into the life of Israel to survive the trans- planting to Assyrian soU. But between 722 and 5S6, under the fostering care of Isaiali and his successors, it had grown strong enough not merely to survive, but to benefit from the shock, and thus Judali became especially the people of revelation.
On the character of the tribe little need be said. It was profoundly modified by its comparative isolation and the independence this conferred, and by the large foreign elements that it had absorbed. It was narrow and provincial, fanatical and tenacious. To slay the prophets and build monuments to them was characteristic of it, as of so many other peoples ; for whUe it was slow to learn and hostile to new truth, yet the truth when learned was changed into hard dogma and erected as a barrier against fresh revelation. The obstinaty with which an old doctrine was insisted on, when no longer applicable, and new truth opposed for its inconsistency with the old, is shown in the opposi- tion to Jeremiah's teaching that Jerus. would be captured and the temple destroyed, based on Isaiali's doctrine of the inviolability of Zion. Yet Judah had this qualification for its task, — it pro- duced many who were fit vehicles of revelation ; it was, in fact, surprisingly rich, especially in its later history, in religious genius, a lovely flower sprinj;ing, indeed, from a dry and unattractive root.
In NT the tribe of Judah is mentioned in Lk P«(?), He 7'*, Rev 7".
Literature. — The Histories of Israel and Judah, e.g. Fwaid, Wellhausen, Kittel, Stade ; Kuenen, Rel. o/ Israd, passim ; Wellhausen, De Gentibu^, etc. See also articles Gekealoot, Israel, and the relevant literature cited under these.
2. Judah, an overseer at the rebuilding of the temide (Ezr 3») = Hodaviah of 2" and Hodevah of Nell 7". 3. A Levite who had married a foreign wife (Ezr 10"^), possibly the same as the Judah of Neh I2'*- ^. 4. An overseer of Jerus. (Neh 11").
A. S. Peake.
JUDAH ' upon (AV) or at (RV) Jordan ' is named in Jos 19" in the statement of the boundaries of the tribe of Naphtali. The MT .Tiin-a is unrepre- sented in the LXX, and Bennett (SBOT, ad loc.) remarks, 'The clause is apparently an unintelli- gible gloss which has crept into the text. The con- text implies that the tribe of Judah is referred to, and this is geographically impossible.' Ewald suggests {Gesch. ii. 380) that the passage is corrupt, and that ' Chinneroth,' or some other word, origm
juD.m
JUDAS OF GALILEE
793
ally occupied the place of 'to Juilali.' Conde: {PEFSt, 1S83, p. 183) su'igests an iiittrcliange of T and 1, and of .t and n, so as to read n-jin for ri-nn, when the passage would ran j^"!:ci .nin^i, the ' Hollow of (?) Jordan,' equivalent to the GhOr, or valley of the Jordan. Tlioinson {LntiU and Book, i. p. 389) suggests that the tomb of Seld YehOda (supposed by Arabs to be son of Jacob) marks the 'Judah on Jordan, towaid the sun-rising.' It is suggested in Speaker's Comm. that the llavvoth- jair were colonized by men of Judah, and might be called 'Judah upon Jordan.' Vou Hauiiicr (A(/. p. 405 tl.) had contended strongly for this idciitilica- tion of ' Judah ' with Havvoth-jair ; and Keil (liih. Cowwn.) adopts the same theory, pointing out that, according to 1 Ch 2^--', Jair on his father's side was descended from Judah through Ue/ron. It cannot be said that any of the hist mentioned theories has the slightest i)robability. Dillui. (nd Joe.) thinks Ewald's view is the best, but allows that it leaves the origin of the present te.xt unexplained.
C. Warren. JUDAH (AV Juda), Lk l".— See J UTAH.