ben Bedad (possibly a contemporary of Gideon) defeated the Midianites on the plains of Moab.  In the story of Jacob and Laban, again, the contemporary background shines through the patriarchal history very distinctly.  The Hebrew, on his half-migration, half-flight from Mesopotamia to the land of Jordan, is hotly pursued by his Aramean father-in-law, who overtakes him at Gilead.  There they treat with each other and pile up a heap of stones, which is to be the boundary between them, and which they mutually pledge themselves not to overstep with hostile intentions.  This answers to the actual state of the facts.  The Hebrew migration into Canaan was followed by the Aramaean, which threatened to overwhelm it.  Gilead was the boundary between the two peoples, and the arena, during a long period, of fierce conflicts which they waged with each other.  The blessing of Jacob, in the oracle on Joseph, also mentions the Syrian wars:  the archers who press Joseph hard, but are not able to overcome him, can be no other than the Arameans of Damascus, to whose attacks he was exposed for a whole century.  Joseph here appears always as the pillar of the North-Israelite monarchy, the wearer of the crown among his brethren, a position for which he was marked out by his early dreams.  The story of Joseph, however, in so far as historical elements can be traced in it at all, and not merely the free work of poetry, is based on much earlier events, from a time when the union was just being accomplished of the two sections which together became the people of Israel.  The trait of his brother’s jealousy of him points perhaps to later events. 1

****************************************** 1.  It deserves to be considered that at first Joseph is in Egypt alone, and that his brothers came after, at his request.  When the notion of united Israel was transferred to the distant past, one consequence was that the fortunes of the part could not be separated from those of the whole.  In the same way, Rachel being an Aramaean, Leah must be one too.  Perhaps the combination of Rachel and Leah in a national unity was only accomplished by Moses.  Moses came from the peninsula of Sinai (Leah) to lead the Israelites there from Goshen (Joseph).  The designation of Levite he could not receive in Joseph, only in Leah. *******************************************

The historical associations which form the groundwork of the stories of the other sons of Jacob are also comparatively old.  They afford us almost the only information we possess about the great change which must have taken place in the league of the tribes soon after Moses.  This change principally affected the group of the four old Leah tribes which were closely connected with each other.  Reuben assumes the rights of his father prematurely and loses the leadership.  Simeon and Levi make, apart from the others, a faithless attack on the Canaanites, and collective Israel lets them suffer the consequences alone, so that they succumb