The Historians' History of the World 02

The Children of Israel said to Gideon, “Rule thou over us, both thou and thy son, and thy son’s son also: for thou hast saved us out of the hand of Midian.” He answered, “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you, Jehovah shall rule over you.” After his death one of his seventy sons, Abimelech, had himself proclaimed king at Shechem, and had himself proclaimed king by the oak of Shechem. Civil war broke out. Shechem was destroyed and its ruins sown with salt. Abimelech set fire to the tower of the temple of Baal-berith, where the principal inhabitants of the city had taken refuge; a thousand souls perished in it. He next besieged the city of Thebez; the inhabitants shut themselves up in the citadel; and as he drew near to set it on fire, a woman cast a millstone on his head, and he commanded his armour bearer to kill him, that he might not die by the hand of a woman.

After repulsing the invasion of the Midianites, the tribe of Manasseh, whose territory lay on both banks of the Jordan, were desirous of enlarging their borders to the east, and completed the conquest of the land of Bashan. The Ammonites, however, laid claim to the country, which had formerly belonged to them. They gathered together and encamped at Gilead. “And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob; and they said unto Jephthah, Come and be our chief, that we may fight with the Children of Ammon. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto Jehovah, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver the children of Ammon into mine hand, then shall it be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be Jehovah’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the Children of Ammon to fight against them, and Jehovah delivered them into his hand. And Jephthah came to Mizpah unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and dances; and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto Jehovah, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, thou hast opened thy mouth unto Jehovah; do unto me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as Jehovah hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may depart and go down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my companions. And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she had not known man. And it was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.”

There is so great a resemblance between this tradition and the Greek legend of the sacrifice of Iphigenia that we may well believe that one was borrowed from the other. It may be that Phœnician mariners, or even Israelite prisoners sold into slavery on the coast of Asia Minor, recounted the tragic story of a general who gained the victory at the price of the sacrifice of his daughter. The very name of Iphigenia seems to be no more than a Greek translation of the words “daughter of Jephthah.” The legend is unknown to Homer. Euripides borrowed it from a cyclic poem, the Cypria. According to this poem the sacrifice was not consummated; the goddess substituted a hind for the maiden. Some theologians have tried to extenuate the sacrifice of Jephthah in the same way, and have maintained that his daughter was vowed to perpetual celibacy. This explanation, however, has failed to win acceptance. “The text,” says M. Munk, “leaves no room to doubt that Jephthah did actually offer up his daughter as a burnt offering, and Josephus expressly says so” (Antiq., V, 7, 10).

While the tribes of the north were striving with the Canaanites, and those of the east with the Midianites and Ammonites, the tribes of the south were not always successful in defending their independence against the Philistines. The isolated position of the Israelite tribes made it possible for the Philistines to subjugate those in their immediate neighbourhood. The resistance of Israel to this suppression is personified in Samson, the hero of the tribe of Dan, the Israelitish Hercules.