JUDGE-ADVOCATE-GENERAL, an officer appointed in England to assist the Crown with advice in matters relating to military law, and more particularly as to courts-martial. In the army the administration of justice as pertaining to discipline is carried out in accordance with the provisions of military law, and it is the function of the judge-advocate-general to ensure that these disciplinary powers are exercised in strict conformity with that law. Down to 1793 the judge-advocate-general acted as secretary and legal adviser to the board of general officers, but on the reconstitution of the office of commander-in-chief in that year he ceased to perform secretarial duties, but remained chief legal adviser. He retained his seat in parliament and in 1806 he was made a member of the government and a privy councillor. The office ceased to be political in 1892, on the recommendation of the select committee of 1888 on army estimates, and was conferred on Sir F. Jeune (afterwards Lord St Helier). There was no salary attached to the office when held by Lord St Helier, and the duties were for the most part performed by deputy. On his death in 1905, Thomas Milvain, K.C., was appointed, and the terms and conditions of the post were rearranged as follows: (1) A salary of £2000 a year; (2) the holder to devote his whole time to the duties of the post; (3) the retention of the post until the age of seventy, subject to continued efficiency—but with claim to gratuity or pension on retirement. The holder was to be subordinate to the secretary of state for war, without direct access to the sovereign. The appointment is conferred by letters-patent, which define the exact functions attaching to the office, which practically are the reviewing of the proceedings of all field-general, general and district courts-martial held in the United Kingdom, and advising the sovereign as to the confirmation of the finding and sentence. The deputy judge-advocate is a salaried official in the department of the judge-advocate-general and acts under his letters-patent. A separate judge-advocate-general’s department is maintained in India, where at one time deputy judge-advocates were attached to every important command. All general courts-martial held in the United Kingdom are sent to the judge-advocate-general, to be by him submitted to the sovereign for confirmation; and all district courts-martial, after having been confirmed and promulgated, are sent to his office for examination and custody. The judge-advocate-general and his deputy, being judges in the last resort of the validity of the proceedings of courts-martial, take no part in their conduct; but the deputy judge-advocates frame and revise charges and attend at courts-martial, swear the court, advise both sides on law, look after the interests of the prisoner and record the proceedings. In the English navy there is an official whose functions are somewhat similar to those of the judge-advocate-general. He is called counsel and judge-advocate of the fleet.
In the United States there is also a judge-advocate-general’s department. In addition to being a bureau of military justice, and keeping the records of courts-martial, courts of inquiry and military commissions, it has the custody of all papers relating to the title of lands under the control of the war department. The officers of the department, in addition to acting as prosecutors in all military trials, sometimes represent the government when cases affecting the army come up in civil courts.
See further [Military Law], and consult C. M. Clode, Administration of Justice under Military and Martial Law (1872); Military Forces of the Crown (2 vols., 1869).
JUDGES, THE BOOK OF, in the Bible. This book of the Old Testament, which, as we now read it, constitutes a sequel to the book of Joshua, covering the period of history between the death of this conqueror and the birth of Samuel, is so called because it contains the history of the Israelites before the establishment of the monarchy, when the government was in the hands of certain leaders who appear to have formed a continuous succession, although the office was not hereditary. The only other biblical source ascribed to this period is Ruth, whose present position as an appendix to Judges is not original (see [Bible] and [Ruth]).
Structure.—It is now generally agreed that the present adjustment of the older historical books of the Old Testament to form a continuous record of events from the creation to the Babylonian exile is due to an editor, or rather to successive redactors, who pieced together and reduced to a certain unity older memoirs of very different dates; and closer examination shows that the continuity of many parts of the narrative is more apparent than real. This is very clearly the case in the book of Judges. It consists of three main portions: (1) an introduction, presenting one view of the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites (i. 1-ii. 5); (2) the history of the several judges (ii. 6-xvi.); and (3) an appendix containing two narratives of the period.
1. The first section relates events which are said to have taken place after the death of Joshua, but in reality it covers the same ground with the book of Joshua, giving a brief account of the occupation of Canaan, which in some particulars repeats the statements of the previous book, while in others it is quite independent (see [Joshua]). It is impossible to regard the warlike expeditions described in this section as supplementary campaigns undertaken after Joshua’s death; they are plainly represented as the first efforts of the Israelites to gain a firm footing in the land (at Hebron, Debir, Bethel), in the very cities which Joshua is related to have subdued (Josh. x. 39).[1] Here then we have an account of the settlement of Israel west of the Jordan which is parallel to the book of Joshua, but makes no mention of Joshua himself, and places the tribe of Judah in the front. The author of the chapter cannot have had Joshua or his history in his eye at all, and the words “and it came to pass after the death of Joshua” in Judg. i. 1 are from the hand of the last editor, who desired to make the whole book of Judges, including ch. i., read continuously with that which now precedes it in the canon of the earlier prophets.[2]
2. The second and main section (ii. 6-xvi.) stands on quite another footing. According to Josh. xxiv. 31 the people “served Yahweh” during the lifetime of the great conqueror and his contemporaries. In Judg. ii. 7 this statement is repeated, and the writer proceeds to explain that subsequent generations fell away from the faith, and served the gods of the nations among which they dwelt (ii. 6-iii. 6). The worship of other gods is represented, not as something which went on side by side with Yahweh-worship (cf. x. 6), but as a revolt against Yahweh, periodically repeated and regularly chastised by foreign invasion. The history, therefore, falls into recurring cycles, each of which begins with religious corruption, followed by chastisement, which continues until Yahweh, in answer to the groans of his oppressed people, raises up a “judge” to deliver Israel, and recall them to the true faith. On the death of the “judge,” if not sooner, the corruption spreads anew and the same vicissitudes follow. This religious explanation of the course of the history, formally expounded at the outset and repeated in more or less detail from chapter to chapter (especially vi. 1-10, x. 6-18), determines the form of the whole narrative. It is in general agreement with the spirit as also with the language of Deuteronomy, and on this account this section may be conveniently called “the Deuteronomic Book of Judges.” But the main religious ideas are not so late and are rather akin to those of Josh. xxiv; in particular the worship of the high places is not condemned, nor is it excused as in 1 Kings iii. 2. The sources of the narrative are obviously older than the theological exposition of its lessons, and herein lies the value and interest of Judges. The importance of such documents for the scientific historian lies not so much in the events they record as in the unconscious witness they bear to the state of society in which the narrator or poet lived. From this point of view the parts of the book are by no means all of equal value; critical analysis shows that often parallel or distinct narratives have been fused together, and that, whilst the older stories gave more prominence to ordinary human motives and combinations, the later are coloured by religious reflection and show the characteristic tendency of the Old Testament to re-tell the fortunes of Israel in a form that lays ever-increasing weight on the work of Yahweh for his people. That the pre-Deuteronomic sources are to be identified with the Judaean (J, or Yahwist) and Ephraimite (E, or Elohist) strands of the Hexateuch is, however, not certain.
To the unity of religious pragmatism in the main stock of the book of Judges corresponds a unity of chronological scheme. The “judges,” in spite of the fact that most of them had clearly no more than a local influence, are all represented as successive rulers in Israel, and the history is dated by the years of each judgeship and those of the intervening periods of oppression. But it is impossible to reconcile the numbers with the statement elsewhere that the fourth year of Solomon was the 480th from the exodus (1 Kings vi. 1). See [Bible]: Chronology.
The general introduction (ii. 6-iii. 6) is a blend of Deuteronomic and other sources. The intimate relation between it and the separate narratives (Josh. xxiv. 1-27, a late [Ephraimite] record inserted by a second Deuteronomic hand, and xxiii., D) appears both from their contents and from the fact that Judg. ii. 6-10 is almost identical with the narrative appended to Joshua’s address (Joshua xxiv. 28-31). Judg. i.-ii. 5, however, is not touched by D, and hence was probably inserted in its present position at a later date. According to the highly intricate introduction the Hebrews were oppressed: (a) to familiarize them with warfare—it is assumed that they had intermarried with the Canaanites and worshipped their gods (iii. 2, 6); (b) to test their loyalty to Yahweh (ii. 22; iii. 1); or (c) to punish them for their marriage with the heathen and their apostasy (D in ii. 12; cf. Josh. xxiii., and ibid. v. 12).