VII.I.3.  Going a step further back from the last revision we meet with an earlier effort in the same direction, which, however, is less systematically worked out, in certain supplements and emendations, which have here and there been patched on to the original narratives.  These may be due in part to the mere love of amplification or of talking for talking’s sake, and in so far we have no further business with them here.  But they originated partly in the difficulty felt by a later age in sympathising with the religious usages and ideas of older times.  Two instances of this kind occur in the history of Gideon.  We read (vi. 25-32), that in the night after his call Gideon destroyed, at the commandment of Jehovah, the altar of Baal in Ophra, his native town, as well as the Ashera which stood beside it; and that in place of it he built an altar to Jehovah, and burned on it a yearling bullock, with the wood of the Ashera for fuel.  The next morning the people of Ophra were full of indignation, and demanded that the author of the outrage should be given up to them to be put to death; his father, however, withstood them, saying, “Will ye contend for Baal?  Will ye save him?  If he be a god, let Baal contend (Heb.  Jareb Baal) for himself.”  In consequence of this speech Gideon received his second name of Jerubbaal.  This conflicts with what is said in an earlier part of the chapter.  There Gideon has already made an altar of the great stone under the oak of Ophra, where he saw Jehovah sitting, and has offered upon it the first sacrifice, which was devoured by flames breaking out of themselves, the Deity Himself ascending in the flames to heaven.  Why the two altars and the two stories of their inauguration, both tracing their origin to the patron of Ophra?  They do not agree together, and the reason is plain why the second was added.  The altar of a single stone, the flames bursting out of it, the evergreen tree, the very name of which, Ela, seems to indicate a natural connection with El, 1—­all this was in the eyes of a later

*************************************** 1. )LH, )LWN, in Aramaic simply tree, in Hebrew the evergreen, and in general the holy tree (Isaiah i. 29 seq.) mostly without distinguishing the species.  Not only are oaks and terebinths included, but also palms.  For the )LWN DBWRH at Bethel is elsewhere called TMR; Elim derives its names from the 70 palms, and the same may be the case with Elath on the Red sea. ***************************************

generation far from correct, indeed it was Baal-work.  A desire that the piety of Gideon should be above suspicion gave rise to the second story, in which he erects an altar of Jehovah in place of the former altar of Baal.  How far this desire attained its end we may best judge from the kindred effort to remove another ground of offence, which lies in the name Jerubbaal.  In accordance with the occasion out of which the name is said to have arisen it is said