of the true service of Jehovah; the worship of false gods, oppression by enemies as a punishment, an appeal for help, a deliverance by the Judge, followed one another time after time in dire succession; to illustrate this is the object of the history which follows. In the case of Othniel tradition had preserved little beyond his name; the account of him, therefore, is composed entirely out of the formulae of the compiler (iii. 7—11). But of the five other Judges full narratives existed, and most of them are prefaced and concluded with a similar refrain: the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord sold (or delivered) them into the hand of..., then they cried unto the Lord; and...was subdued; and the land had rest...years1. Into this rationale of the period the compiler worked a system of chronology, which gives in each case the years of the oppression and of the peace which followed; for the most part the years are determined by the principle of a generation, either halved or doubled, 20, 40, 80. Now besides the six Greater Judges, a list of five Minor Judges is introduced before and after Jephthah, x. 1-5 and xii. 8—15. These last are treated quite differently from the former; nothing is said about national sin, oppression, and deliverance; they are not judges in the sense of ii. 11--19; some of the names belong elsewhere to clans, not to individuals; the years assigned to them are arranged on no particular principle. Since, therefore, the Minor Judges do not illustrate the theory of the compiler, they appear to stand outside his scheme. Did he insert them from some special source, or were they added later? It has been suggested that the five Minor Judges, and Abimelech, were introduced by some other hand to bring up the number to twelve. But the five are represented as belonging to the succession; after Abimelech there arose...and after him...and after him...etc.; moreover the notices of Jephthah (xii. 7) and of Samson (xv. 20) use the word judged (followed by the number of years) in the same way as the list of the Minor Judges; and as the chronology of the Book elsewhere is due to the compiler, it seems natural to suppose that

1 Othniel iii. 7-11; Ehud iii. 12, 15, 30; Deborah and Barak iv. 1-3, 23, v. 31b; Gideon vi. 1, 6b, viii. 28; Jephthah x. 6, 7, 10, xi. 33 b; Samson xiii. 1, xv. 20, xvi. 31 end.

he is responsible for the chronology of the Minor Judges also; but he must have derived it from some special information at his disposal. Without feeling any certainty on the subject, we may at any rate adopt this as a working hypothesis.

Is it possible to determine the age and affinities of the compiler? The question admits of a clear answer. His point of view corresponds with that of the historical sections of Deuteronomy and of the Deuteronomic elements in the Book of Joshua; his language also shews that he belonged to the school of writers which worked in the spirit of Deuteronomy and adopted its terminology, the school of the compiler of Kings, with which the prophet Jeremiah is connected. The following lists illustrate the characteristics of our author and his indebtedness to the Deuteronomic school.

(a) Expressions characteristic of the compiler:

1. Jehovah raised up (judges) ii. 16, 18, iii. 9, 15.

2. a saviour, saved them (of the judge) ii. 16, 18, iii. 9, 15, x. 1; cf. x. 12, 13 (of Jehovah).

3. judge, he judged (in the special sense of deliverer or he vindicated) ii. 16, 17, 18, 19, iii. 10, ? iv. 4; 2 Sam. vii. 11 (Deut.) =1 Chr. xvii. 10, Kings xxiii. 22, 1 Chr. xvii. 6, Ruth i. I. For the use of the word in the sense of ruler (followed by a date) see p. xi n.

4. sold them into the hand of ii. 14, iii. 8, iv. 2 cf. 9, x. 7. For the figure cf. Deut. xxviii. 68, xxxii. 30, 1 Sam. xii.9 (Deut.), Ezek. xxx. 12, Ps. xliv. 12.

5. delivered them into the hand of ii. 14, vi. 1, xiii. 1.

6. oppressed, oppressors (laḥaș) ii. 18, iv. 3, vi. 9, x. 12; cf. Ex. iii. 9 E, 1 Sam. x. 18, 2 Kings xiii. 4, 22, Is. xix. 20, Jer. xxx.

20.

7. cried (za'ak) iii. 9, 15, vi. 6, 7, x. 10, 14, (sa‍ak) iv. 3, x. 12; cf. Ex. iii. 9 E, Is. xix. 20.

8. subdued iii. 30, iv. 23, viii. 28, xi. 33; cf. Deut. ix. 3, 1 Sam. vii. 13 (Deut.), 2 Sam. viii. 1, 1 Chr. xvii. 10 etc.; perhaps, like No. 7, adopted from the pre-Dtc. Book of Judges.

9. and the land had rest iii. 11, 30, v. 31 b, viii. 28, Josh. xi. 23, xiv. 15 (both Deut.), 2 Chr. xiv. 1, 6.

(b) Expressions which shew the relation between the compiler and Deuteronomy, and the passages in Joshua, Kings, and Jeremiah influenced by Deuteronomy:

I. and the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD ii. 11, iii. 7, 12, iv. 1, vi. 1, x. 6, xiii. 1; Deut. iv. 25, ix. 18, xvii. 2, xxxi. 29; 1 Kings xi. 6, xiv. 22, xv. 26 etc. ; Jer. vii. 30, xviii. 10, xxxii. 30, lii. 2; occasionally elsewhere, 1 Sam. xv. 19, 2 Sam. xii. 9 etc.

2. forsook (Jehovah) ii. 12, x. 6, 10, 13; Deut. xxviii. 20, 1 Kings xi. 33, 2 Kings xxi. 22, xxii. 17 (all Deut.), Jer. i. 16 and often in Jer. Also in JE, Deut. xxxi. 16, xxxii. 15, Josh. xxiv. 20 E.

3. Jehovah, the God of their fathers ii. 12; Deut. i. 11, 21, iv. 1, vi. 3, xii. 1, xxvi. 7, xxvii. 3, xxix. 25.

4. after other gods, and bowed themselves down to them ii. 12, 17, 19; Deut. viii. 19, xi. 16, xvii. 3, xxix. 26, cf. xxx. 17 ; other gods (with serve or go after) also 10 times in Deut. beside the passages quoted; very frequent in the Dtc. parts of Kings and in Jer. First in E, Josh. xxiv. 16 b, Jud. x. 13 ? E.

5. the peoples round about them ii. 12; Deut. vi. 14, xiii. 7. 6. provoked the Lord to anger ii. 12; Deut. iv. 25, ix. 18, xxxi. 29 cf. xxxii. 21 JE; 1 K. xvi. 7, 2 K. xxii. 17 (Deut.), Jer. xxv. 6 etc.

7. their enemies round about ii. 14, viii. 34; Deut. xii. 10, XXV. 19; Josh. xxi. 44, xxiii. 1, 1 Sam. xii. 11, 2 Sam. vii. 1 (all Deut.).

8. as the LORD had spoken (i.e. promised) ii. 15; Deut. 14 times (i. II, vi. 19 etc.); Josh. xiv. 10, 12, xxii. 4, xxiii. 5, 10 (Deut.); I K. v. 12, viii. 20, 56 (Deut.).

9. turned aside quickly out of the way ii. 17; Deut. ix. 12, 16 cf. xi. 28, xxxi. 29. First in Ex. xxxii. 8 E..

10. obey (lit. hearken to) the commandments of the LORD ii. 17, iii. 4; Deut. xi. 13, 27, xxviii. 13, cf. viii. 2.

II. transgressed my covenant ii. 20; Deut. xvii. 2; Josh. xxiii. 16, 2 K. xviii. 12 (Deut.); Jer. xxxiv. 18. First in JE, Josh. vii. 11, 15.

12.

to drive out (lit. cause others to possess, i.e. dispossess) ii. 21, 23; Deut. iv. 38, ix. 4, 5, xi. 23, xviii. 12; Josh. iii. 10,

xiii. 6, xxiii. 5, 9, 13, 1 K. xiv. 24, xxi. 26, 2 K. xvi. 3, xvii. 8, xxi. 2 (all Deut.). So Ex. xxxiv. 24, Num. xxi. 32 (cf. Jud. xi. 23, 24), xxxii. 21 JE.

13. the way of the LORD to walk therein ii. 22; Deut. v. 33, viii. 6, x. 12+6 times; Josh. xxii. 5, 1 K. ii. 3, iii. 14, viii. 58, xi. 33 (all Deut.). Cf. Ex. xviii. 20 E.

14. forget Jehovah their God iii. 7; Deut. vi. 12, viii. 11, 14, 19; 1 S. xii. 9 (Deut.).

These facts shew that the compiler must have drawn up the main body of the Book, ii. 6—xvi. 31, after the promulgation of Deuteronomy in 621 B.C., and that he belonged to the age of Jeremiah, the early part of the sixth century. We may, then, use the symbol RD, i.e. Deuteronomic Redactor, to mark his handiwork.

B. The pre-Deuteronomic Book of Judges. The work of RD, as we have seen, was mainly one of compilation and interpretation; he was not himself the author of the stories which recount the deeds of the heroes, for in style they reveal no traces of his unmistakable handling, and in substance they do not bear out his view of the history. By their manner and treatment the stories remind us of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis, and still more of the narratives of Saul and David in the Books of Samuel. It is universally agreed that they are ancient compositions, dating perhaps from the early days of the monarchy, and founded upon oral traditions. This method of transcribing old material to form the basis of a historical work finds an exact parallel in Josh. i.-xii.: the narratives of the Dtc. Book of Joshua were not written by the Dtc. redactor, but incorporated by him from an earlier work. The question then arises, did the old stories in Judges exist in some collected form before they were taken in hand by RD? In other words, was there a pre-Deuteronomic Book of Judges?

Now when closely examined, it will be seen that these old stories themselves were not composed by a single writer; the inconsistency of details, the differences of presentation, the repetitions and redundancies of phraseology, all point to a derivation from more than one source. In the account of Deborah and Barak, for example, two versions have reached us,

the one in prose ch. iv., the other in poetry ch. v.; the latter may well have been taken from some popular collection, such as the Book of Jashar, or the Book of the Wars of Jehovah (2 Sam. i. 18, Num. xxi. 14). In the case of Gideon, again, chs. vi.viii., a double thread seems to run through the narrative: his call and the erection of an altar are told twice over (vi. 11-24 cf. vv. 25—-32; vi. 24 cf. vv. 25, 26); the victory of the Ephraimites over the Midianite chiefs Oreb and Zeeb (vii. 24 ff.) finds a parallel in Gideon's pursuit of the Midianite kings Zeba and Zalmunna (viii. 4-21). In the account of Jephthah it is more difficult to unravel the sources, but a long section has been borrowed from JE's history of the age of Moses (xi. 12-28). The stories told about Samson do not shew signs of composite authorship, but the birth-story, ch. xiii., may well have arisen later than the others, after he had become famous, like the stories of Samuel's youth. In the Appendices there is clear evidence for a combination of narratives; it will be sufficient to refer to the commentary for particulars. The old histories, then, were composed from several sources, and this must have taken place before RD compiled his work. Can we go further, and maintain that the old histories were not only composed but collected into a book before the Dtc. redaction? The question hardly admits of a decisive answer, though there are indications which point to an affirmative. If such a thing as a pre-Dtc. Book of Judges ever existed, it was most likely provided with some brief introductory passages, connecting the ancient stories with one another and setting them in their historical context. Now it seems probable that fragments, at any rate, of such introductory notices have survived in the summaries of the period given in ii. 6—iii. 6, vi. 1—10, x. 6--16. When examined they are found to be not wholly consistent. This appears most strikingly in the case of ii. 6—iii. 6, which proposes no less than three answers to the question, How was it that the Israelites did not succeed in conquering the Canaanites? It was to punish Israel for its sins (ii. 20, 21); to test Israel's fidelity (ii. 22, iii. I a, 3, 4); to practise Israel in the art of war (iii. 2). Explanations so different cannot have been proposed by one and the same writer. Though the passage as a whole has passed