After this vengeance, however, they regret the annihilation of a whole tribe, and offer terms of peace to the six hundred survivors of the Benjamites.
At the beginning and at the end of this narrative the Bible says that in those days there was no king in Israel, and that every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The author imagines that thus he can explain the atrocities he has related; but there was no king in the Greek cities either, and nothing of this kind took place there.
We may be astonished that a nation which “rose up as one man to punish a crime and blot out a stain from Israel” should not be able to unite to repulse a foreign foe. But this contrast is not enough to cast doubt upon the Bible narrative; it is unhappily true that an age and a country may witness at one and the same time the most merciless reprisals in civil war and the most deplorable weakness in face of the outside world. The Philistines had already subjugated the southern tribes, Dan, Judah, and Zebulun; they were now menacing those of the centre.
The Israelites remembered that after their coming forth out of Egypt the Ark of the Covenant had led them to the conquest of Canaan, and they thought that now again it would insure them the victory. The Ark was at that time at Shiloh, under the charge of the aged Eli, who combined the office of high priest with the title of Judge in Israel. So the Ark was brought from thence in charge of the two sons of Eli. But its presence was after all of no avail. “Israel was smitten, and they fled every man to his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen. And the Ark of the God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain.”
Such a blow could not but daunt the spirit of the nation. As a matter of fact, the Philistines did not keep the trophy long; believing that the presence of a hostile god would bring misfortune upon them, they sent the Ark of the Covenant back to the Israelites. But to prevent any attempt at rebellion, they forbade the vanquished to bear arms and carried off all the smiths, so that no Israelite could mend his plough unless he went to the Philistines.
The reawakening of the national sentiment took the form of a revival of religious zeal, as it does among the Arabs of this day. The initiative in this religious movement is attributed to Samuel, of the tribe of Ephraim. From his childhood he had been dedicated to the service of Jehovah, and he was early believed to receive direct communication from God. He was therefore what was called a nabi (inspired person). This word is usually translated by “prophet,” which signifies soothsayer, because such inspired persons were supposed to be gifted with the power of foreseeing the future, and themselves believed that they possessed it.
The distinction between priests and prophets is clearly marked, even in the legend of Moses; for the lawgiver, the interpreter of Jehovah, reserves the sacerdotal office, not for his own descendants, but for those of his brother Aaron. This distinction is not peculiar to the Hebrews; the Greeks also had soothsayers, who received inspiration from a god, and priests, or rather sacristans, who were charged with the maintenance of the temples and superintended the ceremonial of worship. The Hebrew priesthood became by degree an exclusive caste; prophecy which had its origin in personal inspiration, could not be hereditary, for the spirit bloweth where it listeth. There were no priestesses among the Israelites, though there were prophetesses, like Miriam the sister of Moses, or Deborah. In the same way it was a woman, the Pythia, who transmitted the oracles of Apollo at Delphi.
Samuel tried to make prophecy a permanent institution. After the death of Eli he went back to his own home, Ramah, a city of Benjamin, and there founded a college or convent of prophets (najoth). There were similar schools at Bethel, Gilgal, and Jericho. The members of these brotherhoods lived in community, for enthusiasm is contagious. Music was the means employed to call down inspiration. With the prophets of Israel, as with the Pythia of Delphi, the ecstasy was the result of a morbid excitation, a kind of intoxication, an intermittent delirium; when this phase of exaltation was over the prophet became an ordinary man once more.
But the trait that distinguishes the religious institutions of the Hebrews from anything analogous that may have existed at other times and in other countries, is their exclusively national character and their attitude of unvarying hostility towards the outer world. The religion of Israel is intolerant because it is but the ideal form of a fanatical patriotism. For this reason every awakening of public spirit among the Hebrews manifests itself by a fresh outbreak of invective against the religions of their neighbours.[d]