The king himself set them an evil example, and did not hesitate to assassinate one of his subjects in order that he might seize a vineyard which he coveted;* it was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the nobles of Ephraim “sold the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes;” ** that they demanded gifts of wheat, and “turned the needy from their right” when they sat as a jury “at the gate.” *** From top to bottom of the social ladder the stronger and wealthier oppressed those who were weaker or poorer than themselves, leaving them with no hope of redress except at the hands of the king.****

* Cf. the well-known episode of Naboth and Ahab in 1 Kings
xxi.
** Amos ii. 6.
*** Amos v. 11, 12.
**** 2 Kings vi. 26-30; viii. 3-8, where, in both instances,
it is a woman who appeals to the king. Cf. for the period of
David and Solomon, 2 Sam. xiv. 1-20, and 1 Kings iii. 16-27.

Unfortunately, the king, when he did not himself set the example of oppression, seldom possessed the resources necessary to make his decisions effective. True, he was chief of the most influential family in either Judah or Israel, a chief by divine appointment, consecrated by the priests and prophets of Jahveh, a priest of the Lord,* and he was master in his own city of Jerusalem or Samaria, but his authority did not extend far beyond the walls.

* Cf. the anointing of Saul (1 Sam. ix. 16; x. 1; and xiv.
1), of David (1 Sam. xvi. 1-3, 12, 13), of Solomon (1 Kings
i. 34, 39, 45), of Jehu (2 Kings ix. 1-10), and compare it
with the unction received by the priests on their admission
to the priesthood (Exod. xxix. 7; xxx. 22, 23; cf. Lev.
viii. 12, 30; x. 7).

It was not the old tribal organisation that embarrassed him, for the secondary tribes had almost entirely given up their claims to political independence. The division of the country into provinces, a consequence of the establishment of financial districts by Solomon, had broken them up, and they gradually gave way before the two houses of Ephraim and Judah; but the great landed proprietors, especially those who held royal fiefs, enjoyed almost unlimited power within their own domains. They were, indeed, called on to render military service, to furnish forced labour, and to pay certain trifling dues into the royal treasury;* but, otherwise, they were absolute masters in their own domains, and the sovereign was obliged to employ force if he wished to extort any tax or act of homage which they were unwilling to render. For this purpose he had a standing army distributed in strong detachments along the frontier, but the flower of his forces was concentrated round the royal residence to serve as a body-guard. It included whole companies of foreign mercenaries, like those Cretan and Carian warriors who, since the time of David, had kept guard round the Kings of Judah;** these, in time of war,*** were reinforced by militia, drawn entirely from among the landed proprietors, and the whole force, when commanded by an energetic leader, formed a host capable of meeting on equal terms the armies of Damascus, Edom, or Moab, or even the veterans of Egypt and Assyria.

* 1 Kings xv. 22 (cf. 2 Ohron. xvi. 6), where “King Asa made
a proclamation unto all Judah; none was exempted,” the
object in this case being the destruction of Ramah, the
building of which had been begun by Baasha.
** The Carians or Cretans are again referred to in the
history of Athaliah (2 Kings xi. 4).
*** Taking the tribute paid by Menahem to Pul (2 Kings xv.
19, 20) as a basis, it has been estimated that the owners of
landed estate in Israel, who were in that capacity liable to
render military service, numbered 60,000 in the time of that
king; all others were exempt from military service.

The reigning prince was hereditary commander-in-chief, but the sharzaba, or captain of the troops, often took his place, as in the time of David, and thereby became the most important person in the kingdom. More than one of these officers had already turned against their sovereign the forces which he had entrusted, to them, and these revolts, when crowned with success, had, on various occasions, in Israel at any rate, led to a change of dynasty: Omri had been shar zaba when he mutinied against Zimri, the assassin of Elah, and Jehu occupied the same position when Elisha deputed him to destroy the house of Omri.

The political constitutions of Judah and Israel were, on the whole, very similar to those of the numerous states which shared the territory of Syria between them, and their domestic history gives us a fairly exact idea of the revolutions which agitated Damascus, Hamath, Carchemish, Arpad, and the principalities of Amanos and Lebanon about the same period. It would seem, however, that none of these other nations possessed a literary or religious life of any great intensity. They had their archives, it is true, in which were accumulated documents relating to their past history, their rituals of theology and religious worship, their collections of hymns and national songs; but none of these have survived, and the very few inscriptions that have come down to us merely show that they had nearly all of them adopted the alphabet invented by the Phoenicians. The Israelites, initiated by them into the art of writing, lost no time in setting down, in their turn, all they could recall of the destinies of their race from the creation of the world down to the time in which they lived. From the beginning of the monarchical epoch onwards, their scribes collected together in the Book of the Wars of the Lord, the Book of Jashar, and in other works the titles of which have not survived, lyrics of different dates, in which nameless poets had sung the victories and glorious deeds of their national heroes, such as the Song of the Well, the Hymn of Moses, the triumphal Ode of Deborah, and the blessing of Jacob.* They were able to draw upon traditions which preserved the memory of what had taken place in the time of the Judges;** and when that patriarchal form of government was succeeded by a monarchy, they had narratives of the ark of the Lord and its wanderings, of Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon,*** not to mention the official records which, since then, had been continuously produced and accumulated by the court historians.****

* The books of Jashar and of the Wars of the Lord appear
to date from the IXth century B.C.; as the latter is quoted
in the Elohist narrative, it cannot have been compiled later
than the beginning of the VIIIth century B.C. The passage in
Numb. xxi. lib, 15, is the only one expressly attributed by
the testimony of the ancients to the Book of the Wars of
the Lord, but modern writers add to this the Song of the
Well (Numb. xxi. 17b, 18), and the Song of Victory over
Moab (Numb. xxi. 27&-30). The Song of the Bow (2 Sam. i.
19-27) admittedly formed part of the Book of Jashar.
Joshua’s Song of Victory over the Amorites (Josh. x. 13),
and very probably the couplet recited by Solomon at the
dedication of the Temple (1 Kings viii, 12, 13, placed by
the LXX. after verse 53), also formed part of it, as also
the Song of Deborah and the Blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix.
1-27).
** Wellhausen was the first to admit the existence of a Book
of Judges prior to the epoch of Deuteronomy, and his opinion
has been adopted by Kuenen and Driver. This book was
probably drawn upon by the two historians of the IXth and
VIIIth centuries B.C. of whom we are about to speak; some of
the narratives, such as the story of Abimelech, and possibly
that of Ehud, may have been taken from a document written at
the end of the Xth or the beginning of the IXth centuries
B.C.
*** The revolutions which occurred in the family of David (2
Sam. ix.-xx.) bear so evident a stamp of authenticity that
they have been attributed to a contemporary writer, perhaps
Ahimaaz, son of Zadok (2 Sam. xv. 27), who took part in the
events in question. But apart from this, the existence is
generally admitted of two or three books which were drawn up
shortly after the separation of the tribes, containing a
kind of epic of the history of the first two kings; the one
dealing with Saul, for instance, was probably written in the
time of Jeroboam.
**** The two lists in which the names of the principal
personages at the court of David are handed down to us,
mention a certain Jehoshaphat, son of Ahilud, who was
mazhir, or recorder; he retained his post under Solomon (1
Kings iv. 3).

It may be that more than one writer had already endeavoured to evolve from these materials an Epie of Jahveh and His faithful people, but in the second half of the IXth century B.C., perhaps in the time of Jehoshaphat, a member of the tribe of Judah undertook to put forth a fresh edition.*