The second judge left a more famous record behind him. This was Jephthah, who delivered Gilead from its bondage to the Ammonites. His father’s name was doubtful, his mother was a harlot, and ‘the elders’ of Gilead accordingly expelled him from what he claimed to be his father’s house.[[361]] He fled to the desert land of Tob,[[362]] and there gathering a band of bandits around him, lived on the spoils of brigandage. He soon became known, like David in later days, for his skill and courage in deeds of arms. For eighteen years the Ammonite domination had lasted, and the Gileadites sighed for independence. But it was long before a champion could be found. At last the fame of the bandit captain in Tob reached the ears of the Israelitish elders, and they begged him to come to their help. Jephthah taunted them with their conduct towards him, but feelings of patriotism finally prevailed, and he agreed to lead his followers against the national enemy if the Gileadites would promise to make him their ‘head.’ The representatives of the people had no choice but to agree to his terms, and the struggle for independence began. It ended in the deliverance of the Israelites; the Ammonites were again driven from the land which had once been theirs, and Gilead was free.[[363]]
The rejoicings over the victory, however, were clouded by the rash vow of the Israelitish chieftain. Before marching forth to attack the Ammonites, Jephthah had vowed to sacrifice as a burnt-offering to Yahveh whatever first came out of his house at Mizpeh to meet him should he return ‘in peace.’ It was his own daughter, his only child, who thus came forth to meet him, and to celebrate his victory with timbrels and dances. The spirit of the Gileadites was very far removed from that which had taught Abraham a newer and better way; the Canaanite belief was strong in them that their firstborn could be claimed by their God; and none questioned that Yahveh Himself had selected the victim and led her forth from the house to welcome the conqueror. The vow had to be fulfilled; Yahveh had claimed that which was nearest and dearest to the Gileadite chief in return for the victory He had given him. All Jephthah could do was to grant his daughter’s request that she might wander for two months in the mountains with her comrades, bewailing ‘her virginity,’ before the day of sacrifice arrived.
The memory of the sacrifice was never forgotten. It became a custom in Israel, we are told, for the Israelitish maidens year by year to ‘lament’ for four whole days the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. It has been maintained that this custom was the origin of the story, and that the lamentation was not for the daughter of a Hebrew judge, but for some mountain goddess who corresponded with the Phœnician god Adonis. As the maidens of Phœnicia once each year mourned the death of Adonis, so the maidens of Gilead bewailed the untimely death of a virgin goddess. But the theory is part of that reconstruction of ancient Israelitish history, one of the postulates of which is that a custom has never arisen out of a historical incident. The historian, on the other hand, finds in the story evidences of its truth. There is no trace elsewhere of such a goddess as the story demands, or of an anniversary of lamentation in her honour, while the account of the vow and its fulfilment is in thorough harmony with the beliefs and customs of the time. It is wholly contrary to the spirit of later Israel as well as to the feelings of those who adhered faithfully to the Mosaic Law. If the story were an invention, it must have originated either in the days when human sacrifice was still practised, or else in the later period when it was regarded with abhorrence. In either case, its invention would be inconceivable. In the earlier period there would have been no reason to invent what actually took place; in the later period, the character of a judge and deliverer of Israel would never have been needlessly blackened. Moreover, the belief that the first thing met with on leaving or entering a house is unlucky and devoted to the gods, is a belief which is probably as old as humanity. It still survives in our own folklore, and testifies to a time when he who first left the protection of the hearth and threshold could be claimed by the powers of the other world.
Jephthah’s term of office as ruler of Gilead was only six years. He seems to have been already advanced in years when he was called upon to oppose the Ammonites. But his rule was signalised by a war with Ephraim. The ever-increasing dissensions between the tribes on the eastern and western sides of the Jordan came openly to a head, and the elder and younger branches of the house of Joseph engaged in a struggle to the death. Ephraim, it seems, still claimed predominance, and asserted its right to interfere in the concerns of its eastern brethren. ‘Ye Gileadites,’ it was said, ‘are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites and among the Manassites.’ But the ‘fugitives’ soon proved that they were the stronger of the two. The Ephraimites invaded Gilead, but were compelled to retreat. Before they could reach the Jordan Jephthah had seized the fords across it, and the retreat of the Ephraimites was cut off. A terrible massacre took place; whoever said sibboleth for shibboleth, ‘river-channel,’ was thereby known to belong to the western bank, and was at once put to death. Altogether 42,000 men of Ephraim perished, and the power of the tribe was broken. Jephthah, however, did not follow up his success; that would have brought upon him the hostility of the other western tribes, and he seems to have returned to Gilead. There he died and was buried in one of its cities, the name of which was not stated in the sources used by the compiler of the book of Judges.[[364]]
The date of Jephthah it is impossible to fix. That the author of the book of Judges was ignorant of it would appear from his making Jephthah follow immediately after Jair. But it is clear that he believed it to have been towards the close of the period of the Judges. This, too, would agree with the fact that it corresponded with the fall of the power of Ephraim. In the time of Jerubbaal, the Ephraimites were still strong enough to command the respect of the conqueror of the Midianites; when the light once more breaks upon the history of central Israel we find the Philistines in possession of the passes that led into Mount Ephraim, and threatening Shiloh itself. The destruction of the Ephraimite forces at the fords of the Jordan can best explain the Philistine success.
With the period of the Philistine supremacy the history of the Judges comes to an end. That supremacy forced Israel to the conviction that they must either submit to the organised authority of a king or cease to be a nation at all. The kingdom of Israel was born amid the struggle with the Philistines; and though the first king perished in the conflict, his successor succeeded in founding an empire.
The Philistine wars lasted for many years. They began with raids on the Israelitish territory immediately adjoining that of the Philistines. Perhaps the conquest of the plain at the foot of the mountains of Judah first roused their hostility against Judah; at all events, it brought them into contact with the conquering tribe. A desultory warfare was carried on for some years; then the plans of the Philistines became more definite, and they aimed at nothing less than the conquest of the whole of Canaan. The sea-robbers had been gradually changed into a nation of soldiers.
Samson, the hero of popular tradition, belongs to the earlier part of the Philistine wars. The last relics of the tribe of Dan in the neighbourhood of Zorah and Eshtaol have not as yet been absorbed by Judah; the Philistines, on the other hand, have gained possession of the whole plain. Between them and the Israelites there is constant intercourse, partly friendly, partly hostile; at one time the two peoples intermarry, visit, and trade with one another; at another time they carry on a guerilla warfare.
Of late years it has been the fashion to transform Samson into the hero of a myth.[[365]] It is true that his name is derived from Shemesh, ‘the sun,’ and it cannot be denied that the stories relating to him have come rather from popular tradition than from written records. His hair, in which his strength lay, reminds us of the face of the sun-god engraved on the platform of the Phœnician temple of Rakleh on Mount Hermon, where the flaming rays of the sun take the place of human hair. But it must be remembered that Samson is represented as a Nazarite—a purely Israelitish institution between which and a solar myth there is no connection—and that his strength was dependent on the keeping of the vow which consecrated him to Yahveh as a Nazarite from the day of his birth. With the loss of the hair the vow was broken, the consecration at an end; the strength had been given by Yahveh, and Yahveh took it away. Between this and the fiery locks of the sun-god there is but little connection.
The character of Samson, however, is that of a hero of popular tradition. His utter ignoring of moral principles, his hankering after foreign women, his riddle, his devices for deceiving and slaying his enemies, belong to the tales told by the Easterns at the door of a café, or around the camp-fire, rather than to sober history. When we hear that Ramath-lehi was so called from the ‘jawbone’ of an ass which Samson had ‘flung away’ after slaying a thousand men with it, or that Ên-hakkorê received its name from the water which flowed from the bone to quench the hero’s thirst, we find ourselves in the presence of those etymological puns with which the historian has nothing to do.[[366]]