Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph reproduced by the Duc de
Luynes.
Abimelech had arranged his Abiezerites in three divisions: one of which made for the gates, while the other two fell upon the scattered labourers in the vineyards. Abimelech then fought against the city and took it, but the chief citizens had taken refuge in “the hold of the house of El-berith.” “Abimelech gat him up to Mount Zalmon, he and all the people that were with him; and Abimelech took an axe in his hand, and cut down a bough from the trees, and took it up, and laid it on his shoulder: and he said unto the people that were with him, What ye have seen me do, make haste, and do as I have done. And all the people likewise cut down every man his bough, and followed Abimelech, and put them to the hold, and set the hold on fire upon them; so that all the men of the tower of Shechem died also, about a thousand men and women.”
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the Ramesseum.
This is a portion of the picture representing the capture of
Ascalon by Ramses II.
This summary vengeance did not, however, prevent other rebellions. Thebez imitated Shechem, and came nigh suffering the same penalty.* The king besieged the city and took it, and was about to burn with fire the tower in which all the people of the city had taken refuge, when a woman threw a millstone down upon his head “and brake his skull.”
* Thebez, now Tubas, the north-east of Nablus.
The narrative tells us that, feeling himself mortally wounded, he called his armour-bearer to him, and said, “Draw thy sword, and kill me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him.” His monarchy ceased with him, and the ancient chronicler recognises in the catastrophe a just punishment for the atrocious crime he had committed in slaying his half-brothers, the seventy children of Jerubbaal.* His fall may be regarded also as the natural issue of his peculiar position: the resources upon which he relied were inadequate to secure to him a supremacy in Israel. Manasseh, now deprived of a chief, and given up to internal dissensions, became still further enfeebled, and an easy prey to its rivals. The divine writings record in several places the success attained by the central tribes in their conflict with their enemies. They describe how a certain Jephthah distinguished himself in freeing Gilead from the Ammonites.**
* Judges ix. 23, 24. “And God sent an evil spirit between
Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem
dealt treacherously with Abimelech: that the violence done
to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come, and
that their blood might be laid upon Abimelech their brother,
which slew them, and upon the men of Shechem, which
strengthened his hands to slay his brethren.”
** The story of Jephthah is contained in chaps, xi., xii. 1-
7, of the Book of Judges. The passage (xi. 12-29) is
regarded by some, owing to its faint echo of certain
portions of Numb, xx., xxi., to be an interpolation.
Jephthah is said to have had Gilead for his father and a
harlot for his mother. Various views have been put forward
as to the account of his victories over the Midianites, some
seeing in it, as well as in the origin of the four
days’feast in honour of Jephthah’s daughter, insertions of a
later date.
But his triumph led to the loss of his daughter, whom he sacrificed in order to fulfil a vow he had made to Jahveh before the battle.* These were, however, comparatively unimportant episodes in the general history of the Hebrew race. Bedawins from the East, sheikhs of the Midianites, Moabites, and Ammonites—all these marauding peoples of the frontier whose incursions are put on record—gave them continual trouble, and rendered their existence so miserable that they were unable to develop their institutions and attain the permanent freedom after which they aimed. But their real dangers—the risk of perishing altogether, or of falling back into a condition of servitude—did not arise from any of these quarters, but from the Philistines.