The Pulpit Commentary — Judges — Section 4

jnLlge, as eh. iii. 10; vi. 34; xi. 29, &c, In other ptt&mges whe1·e the word of God :omes to men it is not clear whether it is through prophets, through an ephod, or by direct operation of the Holy Ghost (see eh. ii. 20 ; vi. 25 ; x. 11 ; clz;c. ). It is also worthy of observation that there are in this book many direct rofcr- ences to the law and the books of llfoses. The inquiry of the Lord (eh. i. 1; xx. 27) ; the mention of the commandments "which God gave by the hand of Mllses '' (eh. iii. 4); the allusion to the exodus, and to the very words of Exod. xx. 2 (eh. vi. s, 13) ; the dismissal by Gideon of all that were fearful according to Dent. xx. B (eh. vii. 3); the lengthened reference to the history in Numb. and Dent. (eh. xi. 15- 26); the institution of Nazarites (eh. xiii. 5; xvi. 17); the mention of the tabernacle and the ark (eh. x:viii. 31; x:x. 27, 28); the reference to the high priest and to the Levites as the ministers of God (eh. xvii. 13; xix. 18; xx. 28), are among the many proofs that the law of Moses was known to the writer or compiler of the Book of Judges. We must look, therefore, to some other cause for the singular silence in this history concerning t~e services of the tabernacle, and the high priests after l'hinehas, and that change in the line of the high priests which must have taken ,, lace in the time of the judges between Phinehas of the line of Eleazar and Eli of the line of Ithamar. There must have been in all probability two or three high priests between Phinehas and Eli, whose names are not recorded, at least not as high priests. Josephus, however, says that Abishua (whose name is corrupted by him into J osepus) was high priest .after Phinehas, and that Eli succeeded J osepus, being the first high priest of the house of Ithamar, and that the other descendants of Phinehas named in the genealogy of the high priests (1 Chron. vi. 4-8) remained in private life till Zadok was made high priest by David. How- ever this may be, it is certainly strange that not a single allusion to a high priest occurs in the whole book except that one in eh. xx. 28, while Phinehas was still alive. Perhaps the explanation is, that in the de-centralisation of Israel above ,poken of the central worship at Shiloh lost its influence (as Jerusalem did after the ten tribes had revolted from the house of David) ; that in the troubled times that followed each tribe or cluster of tribes set up its own worship, and had its own priest and ephod ; and that the descendants of Phinehas were weak men who could not make the priesthood respected, or even retain it in their own families. Add to these considerations that the narratives are all taken from tribal annals ; that apparently not one is taken from the annals of the tribe of Ephraim (in which Shiloh was), seeing that in them all the great tribe of Ephraim appears to dis- advantage; and, lastly, that we have in this book not a regular hi~tory of Israel, but a collection of narratives selected on account of their bearing on the author's main design. and we have perhaps a sufficient explanation of what at first appears strange, viz., the abseuce of all mention of the high priests in the body of the book. The book consists of three parts : the preface, eh. i. to eh. iii. 6 ; the main body of the narrative, from eh. iii. 7 to the end of eh. xvi. ; the appendix, containing the separate and isolated narratives concerning the settlement of the Danites and  Tm; BOOK OJ<' JUDOEH. vii ---- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - the civil war with Benjamin, and belonging chrr,nologically to the very beginning of the narrative, very shortly after Joshua's death. The preface dovetails in an extraordinary manner into the B,.,ok of Joshua,-which, or the materials from which it was composed, the compiler must have had before him,-and probably al~o iuto l Samuel. DATE OF COMPILATION. There is nothing peculiar in the language (except some strange architectural terms in eh. iii. in the part relating to Ehud, and some rare words in Deborah's song, in eh. v.) from which to gather the date of compilation. But from the phra.qe in eh. xviii. 31, "all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh," and that in eh. xx. 27, '' the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days," and from the description of the situation of Shiloh (eh. xxi. 19), it is quite certain that it was made after the removal of the ark from Shiloh. From the repeated phra.qe (eh. xvii. 6; xviii. l; :x:ix. 1; xxi. 25) that" in those days there was no king in Israel," it seems equally certain that it was made after the foundation of the kingdom by Saul; while the mention of the J ebusites in eh. i. 21 as dwelling in Jerusalem "unto this day" points to a time prior to David. On the other hand, the phrase ( eh. xviii. 30) "until the day of the captivity of the land" would make it probable that it was written after the deportation of the ten tribes, when it is likely the settlement at Dan was broken up by the Assyrian conqueror. This might be in the reign of J otham or Ahaz. There does not seem to be any other special mark of time in the book itself. But, on the other hand, the allusions to the Book of Judges, or to events which are recorded in it, in other books of the Old Testament must be taken into account. In l Sam. xii. 9-11 there are not only allusions to the events which form the subject of Judges iii., iv., vi., vii., viii.; x. 7, 10; xi., but verbal quotations which make it morally certain that the writer of 1 Sam. had before him the very words which we now read in Judges iii. 7, 8; iv. 2; x. 10, 15, and probably the whole narratives as they are now contained in Judges. It necessarily follows that either the Book of Judges was already compiled when Samuel spake these words, or that Samuel had access to the identical documents which the compiler of Judges afterwards incorporated in his book. The same argument applies to 2 Sam. xi. 21, where the verbal quotation is exact. In Isa. ix. 4 ; x. 26, spoken in the reign of Ahaz, the reference is more general, though in the last passage there is the production of three words from Judges vii. 25-itpon, or at (Heb. ~), the rock Oreb. Again, in Ps. lxxxiii. 9-11 there is a distinct reference to tlie narrative in Judges vii., viii.; and in Ps. lxxviii. 56, &c., and cvi. 34, 45, there is a general reference to the times of the judges, as to one the history of which was well known. Taking, however, into account the fact that all the three psalms are of uncertain date, no very distinct argument can be brought to bear from them on the <late of Judges. On the whole then it would meet a.ll the requirements of the p~1s· sages in the Book of Judges (except the reference to the captivity of the ten tribes), and in the other books in which reference is made to J uclges, if we were to assign  \"iii IXTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF JUDGES.