to prove a particular theme, but a complete history. The orthography of the book of Ezra, with many phrases characteristic of his age, do not appear in the book of Judges. The prefix d occurs, indeed (v, 7 ; vi, 17 ; vii, 12 ; viii, 26) ; but this cannot be referred to in proof that the language is of the time of Ezra, for it belonged to the dialect of North Palestine, as Ewald and others have proved. Other verbal peculiarities may be ex- plained in a similar manner (see Ottmar, in Henke's Magazin, vol. iv ; De Wette, Lehrhuch der Einleitiing in die Bibel, Berlin, 1833-39). The first sixteen chapters must have been written under Saul, whom the Israelites made their king in the hope of improving their condi- tion. Phrases used in the period of the judges may be traced in them, and the author must consequently have lived near the time Avhen they were yet current. He says that in his time "the Jebusites dwelt with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem" (i, 21) : now this was the case only before David, who conquered the town and drove out the Jebusites. Consequently, the author of the first division of the book of Judges must have lived and wTitten before David, and yet he was acquainted with a regal form of government, which can only point to the reign of Saul. If he had lived under David, he would have mentioned the capture of Jerusa- lem by that monarch, as the nature of his subject did not allow him to pass it over in silence. The omission, moreover, of the history not only of Samuel, but also of Eli, indicates an author who, living in an age very near that of Eli, considered his history as generally known, because so recent.
The exact date of the appendix is more difficult to de- termine, but its author certainly lived in an age consid- erably later than that of the recorded events. That in his time the period of the events which he relates had been long forgotten is, however, hardly a fair inference from the frequent chronological formula, " In those days there was no king in Israel" (xvii, 6); and it is gratu- itous to suppose that certain particulars of his narrative j could no longer be ascertained, and that this caused him 1 to omit the name of the Levite whose history is given in ch. xix. In his time, indeed, the house of God was no longer in Shiloh (xviii, 31) ; and it will be recollect- ed that it was David who brought the ark to Jerusalem. But it must be borne in mind that it had frequently changed places during the Philistine -war, and it re- mained a long time away from Shiloh even after Eli's death. The author knew that the posterity of ,Ionathan were priests of the graven image in Dan, or Laish. "ini- til the day of the captivity of the land" (xviii, 30). This latter circumstance has been assumed hy Le Clerc and others to prove that the appendix was not publish- ed until after the Babylonian captivity, or at least until after that of Israel by Shalmaneser and Esar-haddon. It cannot be understood of the domination of the I'hilis- tines over the Israelites, which would very improperly be called " the captivity of the land," this expression always implying the deportation of the inhabitants of a country. But we may reasonably suppose that this ex- pression was added by a later editor. The circumstance that the author, in mentioning Shiloh, adds, "which is in the land of Canaan" (xxi, 12), and that the topo- graphical description of the site of Shiloh is given (xxi, 19), has led some interpreters to assert that the author of the appendix must have been a foreigner, as to an Israelite such remarks would have appeared trivial (see Brief e einiger Holldndischen Gottesgehhrten iiher R. Si- mon's kritische Gesdiichte des A . T., edited by Le Clerc at Zurich, p. 490). The inference is certainly specious, but, from an examination of the contexts, it appears that in the first passage Shiloh is opposed to Jabesh in Gil- ead, a town without the land of Canaan, and that this led the author to add to Shiloh that it was in Canaan ; while the second passage describes, not the site of Shi- loh, but of a place in its neighborhood, where an annual feast was celebrated, when the daughters of Shiloh came out to dance, to sing, and to play on instruments of ma-
JUDGES, BOOK OF
1077
JUDGES, BOOK OF
sic ; the author thus heightening the interest of his nar- rative by giving a clearer idea of the circumstances of the festival. Neither of these passages, therefore, au- thorizes the inference that he was a foreigner. Under these circumstances, many have been content to conjec- ture that the latter portion of the book was compiled, perhaps by Ezra, out of historical documents originating witli tlie various prophetical characters that appeared from time to time during the earlier period of the He- brew commonwealth, chiefly perhaps Samuel. But if the above reasoning is correct, especially that relating to the unity of the entire book, we do not see why Sam- uel himself may not have added the appendix, substan- tially in its present form, to the former part of the his- torj%