and, overtaking the enemy on the borders of the wilderness, inflicted on them such chastisement as put an end to these incursions.  His heroism had consequences which reached far beyond the scope of his original purpose.  He became the champion of the peasantry against the freebooters, of the cultivated land against the waste; social respect and predominance were his rewards.  In his native town of Ophrah he kept up a great establishment, where also he built a temple with an image of Jehovah overlaid with the gold which he had taken from the Midianites.  He transmitted to his sons an authority, which was not limited to Abiezer and Manasseh alone, but, however slightly and indirectly, extended over Ephraim as well.

On the foundations laid by Gideon Abimelech his son sought to establish a kingship over Israel, that is, over Ephraim and Manasseh.  The predominance, however, which had been naturally accorded to his father in virtue of his personal merits, Abimelech looked upon as a thing seized by force and to be maintained with injustice; and in this way he soon destroyed those fair beginnings out of which even at that time a kingdom might have arisen within the house of Joseph.  The one permanent fruit of his activity was that Shechem was destroyed as a Canaanite city and rebuilt for Israel. 1

************************************ 1.  On the narratives contained in the Book of Judges see Bleek, Einl. ins Alte Testament (4th ed.), 88-98, and especially the sections on Barak and Sisera, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, the Danite migration, and the Benjamites of Gibeah (93-98). ***********************************

The most important change of the period of the judges went on gradually and in silence.  The old population of the country, which, according to Deuteronomy, was to have been exterminated, slowly became amalgamated with the new.  In this way the Israelites received a very important accession to their numbers.  In Deborah’s time the fighting men of Israel numbered 40,000; the tribe of Dan when it migrated to Laish, counted 600 warriors; Gideon pursued the Midianites with 300.  But in the reigns of Saul and David we find a population reckoned by millions.  The rapid increase is to be accounted for by the incorporation of the Canaanites.

At the same time the Hebrews learned to participate in the culture of the Canaanites, and quietly entered into the enjoyment of the labours of their predecessors.  From the pastoral they advanced to the agricultural stage; corn and wine, the olive and the fig, with them are habitually spoken of as the necessaries of life.  It was not strange that this change in the manner of their everyday life should be attended with certain consequences in the sphere of religion also.  It is inconceivable that the Israelites should have brought with them out of the desert the cultus they observed in the time of the kings (Exod. xxii. xxiii. xxiv.), which throughout presupposed the fields and gardens of Palestine; they borrowed it from the Canaanites. 1