Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite: and they took their
daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons,
and served their gods. And the children of Israel did that which was
evil in the sight of the Lord their God, and served the Baalim and the
Asheroth."*

[Illustration: 268.jpg MAP OF PALESTINE IN TIME OF THE JUDGES]

When they had once abandoned their ancient faith, political unity was
not long preserved. War broke out between one tribe and another; the
stronger allowed the weaker to be oppressed by the heathen, and were
themselves often powerless to retain their independence. In spite of the
thousands of men among them, all able to bear arms, they fell an easy
prey to the first comer; the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, and
the Philistines, all oppressed them in turn, and repaid with usury the
ills which Joshua had inflicted on the Canaanites. "Whithersoever they
went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord
had spoken, and as the Lord had sworn unto them: and they were sore
distressed. And the Lord raised up judges, which saved them out of the
hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they hearkened not unto their
judges, for they went a-whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves
down unto them: they turned aside quickly out of the way wherein their
fathers walked obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not
so. And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the
judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of
the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groaning by reason
of them that oppressed them and vexed them. But it came to pass, when
the judge was dead, that they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than
their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down
unto them; they ceased not from their doings, nor from their stubborn
way."* The history of this period lacks the unity and precision with
which we are at first tempted to credit it.

* Judges ii. 15-19.

The Israelites, when transplanted into the promised land, did not
immediately lose the nomadic habits they had acquired in the desert.
They retained the customs and prejudices they had inherited from their
fathers, and for many years treated the peasantry, whose fields they
had devastated, with the same disdain that the Bedawin of our own day,
living in the saddle, lance in hand, shows towards the fellahin