Some judges, who are commonly considered to have been successive, were in all probability con temporaneous, and ruled over different districts. Under these circumstances it is impossible to fix the date of each particular event in the book of Judges; but attempts have been made to settle its general chronology, of which we must in this place mention the most successful.
The whole period of the judges, from Joshua to Eli, is usually estimated at 299 years, in order to meet the 48o years which (1 Kings vi:1) are said to have elapsed from the departure of the Israelites from Egypt to the foundation of the temple by Solomon. But St. Paul says (Acts xiii :20), 'God gave unto the people of Israel judges about the space of 45o years until Samuel, the prophet.' Again, if the number of years speci fied by the author of our book, in stating facts, is summed up, we have 410 years, exclusive of those years not specified for certain intervals of time above mentioned. In order to reduce these 4to years and upwards to 299, events and reigns must, in computing their years of duration, either be entirely passed over, or, in a most arbitrary way, included in other periods preceding or sub sequent.
(a) Of Usher. This has been done by Arch bishop Usher, whose peculiarly faulty system has been adopted in the Authorized Version of the Scriptures. He excludes the repeated intervals during which the Hebrews were in subjection to their enemies, and reckons only the years of peace and rest which were assigned to the suc cessive judges. For example, he passes over the eight years of servitude inflicted upon the He brews by Chushan-rishathaim, and, without any interruption, connects the peace obtained by the victories of Othniel with that which had been conferred on the land by the government of Joshua; and although the sacred historian relates on the plainest terms possible that the children of Israel served the king of Mesopotamia eight years, and were afterwards delivered by Othniel who gave the land rest forty years, the arch bishop maintains that the forty years now men tioned began, not after the successes of this judge, but immediately after the demise of Joshua. Nothing certainly can be more obvious than that in this case the years of tranquillity and the years of oppression ought to be reckoned separately.
Again, we are informed by the sacred writei that after the death of Ehud the children of Israel were under the oppression of Jabin, king of Hazor, for twenty years, and that afterwards, when their deliverance was effected by Deborah and Barak, the land had rest forty years. Nothing can be clearer than this; yct Usher's system leads him to include the twenty years of oppression in the forty of peace, making hoth but forty years.
(b) Of Hales. All this arises from the obliga tion which Usher unfortunately conceived him self under of following the scheme adopted by the Nlassoretic Jews, who, as Dr. Hales remarks, have by a curious invention included the first four servitudes in the years of the judges who put an end to them, contrary to the express declarations of Scripture, which represents the administrations of the judges, not as synchroniz ing with the servitudes, but as succeeding them.
The Rabbins were indeed forced to allow the fifth servitude to have been distinct from the administration of Jeplithah, because it was too long to be included in that administration; but they deducted a year from the Scripture account of the servitude, making it only six instead of seven years. They sank entirely the sixth servi tude of forty years under the Philistines, because it was too long to be contained in Samson's ad ministration; and, to crown all, they reduced Saul's reign of forty years to two years only.
(c) The necessity for all these tortuous opera tions has arisen from a desire to produce a con formity with the date in Kings vi :1, which, as already cited, gives a period of only 48o years from the Exode to the foundation of Solomon's temple. As this date is incompatible with the sum of the different numbers given in the book of Judges, and as it differs from the computation of Josephus and of all the ancient writers on the subject, whether Jewish or Christian, it is not unsatisfac tory to find grounds which leave this text open to much doubt and suspicion. We cannot here enter into any lengthened proof ; but that the text did not exist in the Hebrew and Greek copies of the Scripture till nearly three centuries after Christ, is evident from the absence of all refer ence to it in the works of the learned men who composed histories of the Jews from the ma terials supplied to them in the sacred books. This could be shown by reference to various authors, who, if the number specified in it had existed, could not fail to have adduced it. But our space forbids such reference. (See CHRONOLOGY.) (12) Government. We find that, apart from such offices as those of Moses and Joshua, a very excellent provision existed for the government of the chosen people, both as regarded the interests of the nation generally, as well as of the several tribes. To this latter branch of the government it is important to draw particular attention, be cause, as it existed before the Law, and is as sumed throughout as the basis of the theocratical constitution, we hear but little of it in the books of Moses, and are apt to lose sight of it alto gether.