The Historians' History of the World 02

Samson cannot be considered an historical figure. He appears to bear a strong resemblance to Samdan, the Assyrian Hercules, and, generally speaking, to all solar divinities. Like Apollo, his hair has never been cut; like Hercules he subdues lions and is himself subdued by women. The metamorphosis of an ancient divinity into a local hero is of common occurrence in all mythologies. The existence of a city of the sun, Beth-shemesh, within the borders of the tribe of Dan, leads us to suppose that the oldest inhabitants paid peculiar honours to the sun; it is natural that the Israelites, who held a different religion, should graft the legend of a hero on the fables current in the locality.

As a sequel to the legend of Samson, we find two narratives which form, as it were, an appendix to the Book of Judges. The first seems to refer to the actual period of the conquest, for the tribe of Dan had no territory as yet, and sought an inheritance to dwell in. Five men were sent out to explore the land. “And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol; and said unto them, Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: but keep ye silence, be not slothful to go and to enter in to possess the land.”

As they pass through the hill country of Ephraim, their spies inform them that, in the house of a certain man named Micah, there is an ephod, teraphim, and a graven image, under the charge of a Levite. They represent to the Levite that it will be to his advantage to be the priest of a tribe rather than the chaplain of a private individual, and carry him off, taking the graven image, the ephod, and the teraphim with them. Micah pursues him and complains of the theft, they bid him hold his peace or they will set fire to his house. Then the Danites come to Laish: “They came unto a people quiet and secure, and smote them with the edge of the sword; and they burnt the city with fire.… And the children of Dan set up for themselves the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set them up Micah’s graven image which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.” If we attribute the Decalogue, with its prohibition of graven images, to Moses, we must suppose that the precepts of the lawgiver had been very quickly forgotten, even in his own family.

The story of the Levite of Ephraim throws a yet more melancholy light on the morals of the Israelites. The wife of this Levite is outraged and murdered by a band of men at Gibeah, of the tribe of Benjamin. The husband cuts the corpse into twelve pieces, which he sends to the twelve tribes of Israel. And all men, when they saw it, said, “There was no such deed done since the day when the Children of Israel came up out of Egypt.” The Benjamites are required to give up the culprits, they refuse and take up arms, to the number of twenty-six thousand men. The other tribes put four hundred thousand soldiers in the field, according to the Bible, and inquire of Jehovah who shall march first to battle. Jehovah appoints the tribe of Judah. But twice in succession the Benjamites come forth out of Gibeah and gain the advantage over the enormous army of Israel, which loses forty thousand men in two days. The people go up to Bethel, where the Ark of the Covenant then was; they fast, they offer burnt offerings, and Jehovah promises them the victory. The attacking force surrounds the enemy, and defeats them with such slaughter that only six hundred men escape and take refuge in the wilderness. The victors burn all the cities of Benjamin and put all their inhabitants to the sword.

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.