A Manual of Ancient History / Particularly with Regard to the Constitutions, the Commerce, and the Colonies, of the States of Antiquity

by A. H. L. Heeren

Heroic age.

1. General character of this period as the heroic age of the nation, which, after the gradual adoption of fixed dwellings and agriculture, was engaged in constant feuds with its neighbours, the vagrant Arabs, the Philistines, and the Edomites. Impossibility of exterminating entirely the ancient inhabitants according to the intention of Moses.—Hence the worship of Jehovah was never the only religion in the land.

Constitution.

2. Political organization. In consequence of the division of land, according to tribes, and their separation from one another, the government long remained patriarchal. Each tribe preserved its patriarch or elder, as in the nomad state. All, however, had, in the worship of Jehovah, one common bond, uniting them into one federate state. Magistrates were likewise appointed in the cities, to whom scribes are conjoined out of the Levite caste.

Distribution of the Levites.

3. The permanent union of the nation, and preservation of the Mosaic law, were likewise promoted by the distribution of the Levite caste into forty-eight separate towns, situated in various parts of the country, and by making the high priesthood hereditary in Aaron's family.

Disturbed state of the Jews at the death of Joshua.

4. But when at the death of Joshua the people were left without a common ruler, the tie of religion became insufficient to hold them together; especially as the weaker tribes became jealous of the more powerful. At this time the high priests appear to have had but little political influence; and the national bond was only prevented from being dissolved by the dread of a foreign yoke.

Judges.

5. The Jews were sometimes independent, at other times tributary. In seasons of oppression and distress heroes arose, jealous for the worship of Jehovah, to deliver them from bondage. They acted as chief magistrates and rulers of a part, or even the whole of the nation, and as champions of the worship of the true God. The judges, particularly Othniel, Deborah, and Sampson.—Concerning the marvellous in their history.