all the other tribes flew to arms. The Benjamites refusing to deliver up the offenders to punishment, a bloody war was commenced against them. In two engagements they were victorious, but in the third they were defeated, and the whole tribe destroyed with the exception of 600 men, who had fled to the rock Rimmon. These were afterwards treated with favour. As the Israelites had sworn not to allow their daughters to intermarry with them, 400 of them obtained wives. from among the young women of Jabesh Gilead, the males of which city were destroyed by the Israelites, because they had not joined the war; and the remainder were allowed to seize the maidens of Shiloh, while they were celebrating an annual festival.

That the author of this fragment lived in an age much later than the events which it records, appears from his ignorance of the name of the Levite, and of that of the city where he resided; and from his saying (xx. 27) that the ark was at that time in Shiloh, and (xix. 1) that there was then no king in Israel.- -There are no traces of any ancient document, from which this piece could have been compiled; but it is quite improbable that any Hebrew would be induced to invent a narrative so disgraceful to his nation as that which it contains. It is, therefore, scarcely necessary to refer to Hos. ix. 9. in proof of the correctness of the history.

§ 40. Contents of the Book of Ruth.

A famine having arisen in the land of Israel, at the period, perhaps, when the Midianites impoverished the country during seven years by feeding their flocks on the crops of the Israelites, (Judg. vi. 1—6),[a] Elimelech with his wife and two sons, emigrated from Bethlehem to the region of the Moabites, where shortly after he died. His two sons married Moabitish wives, and not long after both of them died without children. Naomi, deprived now of her husband and children, returned to Bethlehem, taking with her Ruth, one of her daughtersin-law, whom no considerations could dissuade from accompanying her. In the time of harvest, Ruth availed herself of the permission granted by the Mosaic law, and went to glean in the field of Boaz, a descendant of Naasson, of the tribe of Judah. The kind reception she met with induced her, at the persuasion of her mother-in-law, to make known to Boaz, the kinsman of Elimelech, her claim of mar

riage by the right of a brother-in-law, sanctioned by the Mosaic law. After a nearer kinsman had solemnly renounced his right, Boaz married her, and she became the mother of Obed, the grandfather of David.

[a) So PATRICK, Comm. on Ruth. i., and RICHARDSON, Pref. to Ruth. JOSEPHUS, A. J. V. ix. 1. refers this history to the time of Eli, but is refuted by BERTHOLDT, Einleit. Th. V. S. 2349. MOLDENHAUER, (Introd. ad Lib. V. et N. T. p. 43) after some Jewish writers, assigns it to the time of Ehud: USSHER to that of Shamgar. HORNE, Introd. IV. 38. ed. 4th. Tr.]

§ 41. Age of the Book of Ruth.

From the addition of the genealogy of the royal line it appears that the author lived, not before David, but sometime after him; and indeed it is plain that he wrote in an age comparatively modern: for, 1) the expression ، when the judges ruled,' (i. 1) which marks the period when the event occurred, shows that in the writer's day kings had already been reigning for a considerable time.-2) The explanation of the rite, formerly in use, of confirming a bargain by the deliveof the shoe of one of the parties (iv. 7), which in the author's time had become obsolete; and his ignorance of the name of the nearer kinsman, who is merely designated as inhib, such an one, strengthens the above proof.-3) The Chaldee words with which the language is interspersed,[a] intimate that the last period of the kingdom of Judah is the earliest age to which the book can be assigned.

ry

[a) Thus N occurs for D, i. 20; Jod is used in the second person feminine, ' and 'ny, iii. 3., and ', iii. 4. As however, in

other respects the language is tolerably pure, these few Chaldaisms may have arisen from negligence in the transcribers; particularly as in iv. 5. the second person masculine has also a Jod, (nap) plainly from the er

ror of the copyist, and elsewhere the book exhibits much variety of reading. It is not possible, therefore, to determine its date with certainty.] -[De Wette adds as instances of Chaldaisms; ¡y, c. i. 15. (on which,

however, see MICHAELIS, Suppl. ad. Lex. Heb. No. 1819); p, i. 14.

ii. 8, 21. (which occurs in Gen. ii. 24. xix. 19.); Day, ii. 14.; and the

- T

use of the suffix instead of 1, i. 8, 9, 11, 13. Comp. also the similar phrases in Ruth i. 17. and I Sam. iii. 17. xiv. 44. I Ki. ii. 23. II Ki. vi. 31., and in Ruth iv. 4. and I Sam. ix. 15. xx. 2, 12. Tr.]

§ 42.

The Book of Ruth is worthy of credence.

That the book is taken from ancient records, perhaps genealogies, may be inferred from the following circumstances.-1) The retention of the obsolete term an to express the second nearest kinsman, c. ii. 20.-2) The omission of the nearest kinsman's name, probably because it was wanting in the document.-3) The accurate agreement of the speech of Ruth and of the dialogue between Boaz and the other kinsman, with the characters of the persons, which is such as to preclude all idea of their being fictitious.

That the author used these documents with integrity, is proved; 1) by the fact that he does not flatter the royal family, but candidly relates its descent from a Moabitish mother, who had been reduced to extreme poverty.-2) The good disposition of Boaz is proved by his marrying a widow in such circumstances, whom her nearer kinsman had rejected, and to whom the requisition of the law did not oblige him to unite himself: so that this view of his character cannot be the author's invention.-3) All the circumstances incidentally mentioned are in character with that age. Poverty, for instance, does not expose to contempt; the courts of justice are held in the gate; a bargain is confirmed by the delivery of a shoe.[a]

The genealogy from Naasson to David, which contains only five generations in five hundred years, does not cause any difficulty, since the orientals in those genealogies in which they do not insert the chronology of the succession, omit generations at pleasure, being only solicitous to trace up the posterity to its true source.[b]

[a) DE WETTE, Einleit. § 193., defends the authority of the book of Ruth, against BERTHOLDT, who imagined that it was a fictitious narrative designed to recommend hospitality, and the honourable performance of engagements. Einleit. Th. V. S. 2337. ff. Tr.]

(b) See EICHHORN Monumenta Antiquissimæ Historiæ Araborum. 7. p. 18. Tr.]

§ 43.

The age of the Judges was not heroic.

If by a heroic age, which many suppose that of the Judges to have been, we are to understand an age in which heroes arise and defend their country; the name is inapplicable to that of the Judges. For those who voluntarily offered themselves were very few. Barak, on the contrary, was summoned by Deborah, a woman, and displayed no great degree of courage. Gideon though called by God, obeyed with tardy reluctance. Jephthah, being solicited by an embassy, not merely to conduct the war, but also to take upon him the government, did not consent without delay. Tola, Jair, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon, not to mention Eli and Samuel, were not heroes, but civil rulers.If that is a heroic age, which is disturbed with perpetual wars; the expression is still less appropriate to the age of the Judges: for there were long intervals of tranquillity, Judg. iii. 11, 30. v. 31. viii. 28.; and all the wars which took place during this period of 450 years, occupied only 111, hardly a fourth part of the whole, and were carried on only by particular tribes.If, lastly, that age be called heroic, which is rude, and rough, and fierce, destitute of letters, politeness and morals; in this sense also is the term inappropriate to the age of the Judges. For although it does indeed exhibit some examples of harshness and cruelty to enemies, they are just such as occur in David's age, and are certainly compensated by the friendly state of intercourse which was granted to the Canaanites, by the high degree of moral character which gave rise to the destructive war against the Benjamites, by the well turned reply which Gideon's father made to his fellow citizens for his son, by Gideon's magnanimous refusal of the kingdom that God alone might be king of the Hebrews, by the humane and mild deportment of Boaz, by the courts' being held without interruption in the gates of the cities; and by Jephthah's treating of peace before he undertook to go to war. These are manifest proofs of an age of some cultivation, and the state of letters is illustrated by the song of Deborah and the parable of Jotham. If the period of the Judges had been so rude as some represent it, the nation could not possibly have risen in so short a space of time to the degree of refinement and polish and cultivation that we find under the reign of David.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE BOOKS OF SAMUEL, KINGS, AND CHRONICLES.

§ 44. THE books of Samuel begin with an account of the conception, infancy, and prophetic and civil offices of him whose name they bear; I Sam. i. 1-vii. 17.-They proceed to relate the change of government, the inauguration of Saul as king, and his official acts, which not corresponding with the commands of the Divine Ruler it was announced to him that his kingdom should devolve upon another : I Sam. viii. 1-xiv. 52.—————It is mentioned also that Samuel, by a symbolical action, promised the kingdom to David, (the youngest son of Jesse, a citizen of Bethlehem,) who was subsequently called to court in order to soothe by his music the mind of Saul, who was rendered insane by the knowledge of his approaching downfal. After David's victory over Goliath, the acclamations of the women who congratulate him on that event induce Saul to suspect that he is the person on whom the kingdom is about to devolve. Saul ende vours therefore to destroy him, and persecutes him to such a degree that he is obliged to take refuge in Philistia: I Sam. xv. 1—xxxi. 13.Saul is slain in a battle with the Philistines, and David elected king by the tribe of Judah. Through the influence of Abner the other eleven tribes adhere to Ishbosheth the son of Saul, and on his being slain by some of his own party in the second year of his reign, they continue without a king, until at last, in the seventh year from the death of Saul, they submit to David. He, having taken the fortress of Jerusalem, transfers the royal residence from Hebron to Zion and removes thither also the ark of the covenant. He is prohibited from

Contents of the Books of Samuel and Kings.