From Ophrah he sends messengers throughout Manasseh, as well as to the tribes of Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali, and their fighting-men gather together at his summons. He thus acts like a king, and is obeyed like a king. Though he may not have actually borne the royal title, he was more than a mere ‘judge.’ Barak may have assumed the name and prerogatives of the Canaanitish kings he had conquered, and have passed them on to the family of Ebi-ezer. At any rate the power of Joash must have extended beyond Shechem and Ophrah; all Manasseh obeys the call of his son, and even the more distant northern tribes come at his bidding. The subjugation of the Canaanites had demanded a head to the state, and their union with their conquerors implied an organised community under a common king.
It was, however, with three hundred chosen followers that Jerubbaal made his first attack upon the foe. Encouraged by a dream, he fell upon their camp by night, and his followers, breaking the pitchers they carried with them, and waving torches in their left hands, caused such a panic among the undisciplined hordes of the desert that they fled in all directions.[[342]] The rout of the enemy was completed by the rest of the Israelitish army, which pursued the Midianites eastward towards the Jordan. Part of them under the shêkhs Oreb and Zeeb made for the ford at Beth-barah, where, however, they were intercepted by the Ephraimites, and their chiefs slain at ‘the rock of Oreb’ and the ‘winepress of Zeeb.’[[343]]
Meanwhile Jerubbaal was already on the eastern side of the Jordan, following in hot haste a detachment of the Midianites under two other of their shêkhs, Zebah and Zalmunna. His road led past Succoth and Penuel, but their Israelitish inhabitants refused all help, and even bread, to their brethren of Manasseh. It is clear that between Gilead and the western tribes there was now a diversity of interests and feelings, and that the half-nomad Israelites on the eastern side of the Jordan had more sympathy with the heathen of the desert than with the ruler of the organised state on the other side of the river. Perhaps they feared that his arms would next be turned against themselves, and that they too would be forced to become part of a kingdom of Manasseh.
But if they had hoped that the Midianites would have freed them from all fears upon this score they were doomed to disappointment. Once more ‘the sword of Yahveh and of Gideon’ prevailed, and Zebah and Zalmunna were slain. The claims of the blood-feud were satisfied, and Jerubbaal now returned to his old home. Condign vengeance was taken on ‘the elders’ of Succoth and ‘the men’ of Penuel. The first were scourged with the thorns of the wilderness, the others were put to death, and their tower, which guarded the approach from the desert, was razed to the ground.
Now, however, Jerubbaal had to meet with more formidable adversaries. The house of Joseph was divided against itself, and the Ephraimites resented his conduct in acting independently of the elder tribe.[[344]] In the earlier days of the occupation of Palestine it had been Ephraim which took the leading part; Joshua, who first opened the path into Canaan, had been an Ephraimite, and Mount Ephraim had been the first stronghold of Israel on the western side of the Jordan. In the time of Barak Ephraim had still been the dominant tribe, at least such is the impression we gather from the Song of Deborah; but it had begun to live on its past glories rather than on its present achievements. The Benjamites had definitely separated from it, and become a separate tribe, and Issachar, Zebulon, and Naphtali had carried on the war against Jabin and Sisera. Manasseh, however, had not yet appeared on the political scene; its place was taken by Machir, whose territory lay in Gilead, not to the west of the Jordan. But between the age of Barak and that of Jerubbaal a change had occurred. The Canaanitish towns, which the victory on the banks of the Kishon had laid at the feet of the northern tribes, passed into the possession of the younger branch of the house of Joseph, and Issachar had to be content that Shechem also should become a part of its territory.[[345]] Manasseh grew at the expense of its neighbours. It is possible that the clan of the Abi-ezrites at Ophrah had, by their conquest of Shechem, paved the way for the rise of Manasseh; if so, the dominant position they occupied in the tribe would become intelligible. Ophrah would have been the first home and gathering-place of the tribe. The treaty with Shechem, which united that city with Ophrah, may have been the beginning of Manasseh’s rise to power.
But Ephraim could ill brook the growing ascendency of the younger tribe. Manasseh had become wealthy from the tribute levied on its Canaanitish subjects; it had united itself with the older inhabitants of the land, and had borrowed their habits and their culture, and therewith their idolatries as well. The mountaineers of Ephraim, on the other hand, had retained much of the roughness and the virtues of the first invaders of Palestine. They were still warlike and hardy; they held the fortress of the Israelitish possessions in Canaan; and Shiloh, with its Aaronic priesthood, its traditions of the Mosaic law, and its purer worship of Yahveh was in their midst. Jerubbaal was forced to temporise with them. He pointed out that the destruction of the main body of the Midianites at the fords of the Jordan was a greater achievement than his own successful pursuit of the remaining bands. He had slain Zebah and Zalmunna in revenge for the death of his brothers; the slaughter of Oreb and Zeeb had been for the sake of all Israel. ‘Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer?’
Jerubbaal was fitted to rule, for he possessed statecraft as well as military ability. His statecraft was shown not only in his answer to the Ephraimites, but also in his refusal to accept the title of king. It was pressed upon him, we are told, by ‘the men of Israel’—that is to say, by the northern tribes. Whether his father had actually borne the title we cannot say, though it would seem from the subsequent history of Abimelech, as well as from the words of Zebah and Zalmunna (viii. 18), that he must have done so. But at any rate he had exercised the authority of a king, like his son Jerubbaal, at the outset of the Midianite war, and it may be that among the Canaanites of Shechem he had also the name of king. Jerubbaal, however, if we are to regard the passage as historical, rejected the crown offered him by the Israelites, declaring that their king was Yahveh alone.
That the passage is historical seems to admit of little doubt. Jerubbaal’s words were in harmony with the feelings of the time among the stricter adherents of Yahveh, as we learn from the language of Samuel when the people demanded of him a king. How different were the feelings of the compiler of the book of Judges may be gathered from the words with which it ends. Moreover, Jerubbaal’s refusal of the royal title was politic. He had already realised that he had powerful enemies in Ephraim, who viewed his success and claims to power with suspicion and hostility, and he also knew that it was in Ephraim and among the priesthood of Shiloh that the belief in the theocratic government of Israel was strongest. As in Assyria, in Midian, and in Sheba, so too in Israel, the high priest preceded the king; it was not until the need for a single head and a leader in war became too urgent to be resisted that the national God made way for a national king.[[346]]
Phœnician tradition remembered that Jerubbaal was a priest of Yahveh, not that he was a king.[[347]] It was as a priest that he exacted from the people the golden earrings they had won from the Midianites in order that he might make with them an image of his God. The Hebrew text has substituted for the image the ephod which accompanied it.[[348]] But the ephod was the linen garment of the priest, which he wore when ministering, and with the help of which the future was divined.[[349]] It was not the vestment but the image, in whose service the vestment was used, that Jerubbaal set up in Ophrah, and after which ‘all Israel went a whoring.’ Like his father, Jerubbaal saw no idolatry where it was Yahveh of Israel who was represented by the idol. The religious beliefs and practices of Canaan had entered deeply into the soul of Israel; at Shiloh alone was no image of its God.
High priest among the Israelites, king among his Canaanitish subjects, Jerubbaal lived long in his father’s home at Ophrah. He acted like a king, even if he did not take the royal title. Like Solomon, he had ‘many wives,’ and like Solomon also, he built a sanctuary attached to his own house.[[350]] The Bedâwin spoilers came no more: there was now a strong hand ruling over the northern tribes of Israel, checking all tendency to disunion, and building up an organised community.