The features which characterise this method of historical work are few and strongly distinctive.  A continuous chronology connects the times of rest and their separating intervals, and thereby the continuity of the periods is secured.  In order justly to estimate this chronology, it is necessary to travel somewhat beyond the limits of Judges.  The key to it is to be found in 1Kings vi. 1.  “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of the reign of Solomon, he began to build the house of the Lord.”  As observed by Bertheau, and afterwards by Noldeke, who has still farther pursued the subject, these 480 years correspond to 12 generations of 40 years each.  Analogously in 1Chronicles v. 29-34 [vi. 2-8], 12 high priests from Aaron to Ahimaaz are assumed for the same period of time, and the attempt was made to make their successions determine those of the generations (Numbers xxxv. 28).  Now it is certainly by no means at once clear how this total is to be brought into accord with the individual entries.  Yet even these make it abundantly plain that 40 is the fundamental number of the reckoning.  The wandering in the wilderness, during which the generation born in Egypt dies out, lasts for 40 years; the land has 40 years of rest under Othniel, Deborah, and again under Gideon; it has 80 under Ehud; the domination of the Philistines lasts for 40 years, the duration also of David’s reign.  On the necessary assumption that the period of the Philistines (Judges xiii. 1), which far exceeds the ordinary duration of the foreign dominations, coincides with that of Eli (1Samuel iv. 18), and at the same time includes the 20 years of Samson (Judges xvi. 31), and the 20 of the interregnum before Samuel (1Samuel vii. 2), we have already 8 x 40 accounted for, while 4 x 40 still remain.  For these we must take into account first the years of the two generations for which no numbers are given, namely, the generation of Joshua and his surviving contemporaries (Judges ii. 7), and that of Samuel to Saul, each, it may be conjectured, having the normal 40, and the two together certainly reckoning 80 years.  For the remaining 80 the most disputable elements are the 71 years of interregna or of foreign dominations, and the 70 of the minor judges.  One perceives that these two figures cannot both be counted in,—­they are mutually exclusive equivalents.  For my own part, I prefer to retain the interregna; they alone, so far as we can see at present, being appropriate to the peculiar scheme of the Book of Judges.  The balance of 9 or IO years still remaining to be applied are distributed between Jephthah (6 years), and Solomon (down to the building of the temple), who claims 3 or 4 years, or, if these are left out of account, 3 years may be given to Abimelech.