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dead, that they returned and corrupted "themselves more than their fathers, and "ceased not from their own doings and "from their stubborn way." That the government of the Israelites required this occasional interposition of God, in appointing the supreme magistrate, appears, as well from the tenor of the sacred history, as the testimony of Josephus, who remarks, "That "as they got large tributes from the Ca"naanites, and were indisposed for taking 'pains by their luxury, they suffered their

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aristocracy to be corrupted also; and did "not ordain themselves a senate, nor any "other such magistrates as their laws had "formerly required." Here then either the Divinity must have incessantly interposed, never suffering a moment to pass, without placing at the head of the Jews a vicegerent, supported by all the terrors of the divine' power, to restrain them forcibly from yielding to their idolatrous and vicious propensities, thus counteracting their whole moral character; a mode of procedure altogether unexampled

Josephus, Antiq. Book V. sect. vii.

unexampled in God's government; and indeed it should seem inconsistent with the very idea of a moral governor, or he must altogether have abandoned them to the influence of those propensities, which would have speedily plunged them irretrievably in idolatry and vice with the rest of the world, and defeated the entire purpose of the divine œconomy; or lastly, he must have taken that course which the sacred history declares he did, appointing occasionally vicegerents, as circumstances called for their interposition; and supporting the authority of his Law, by thus visibly controuling, and proportioning the national prosperity and adversity to the degree of obedience which the people voluntarily yielded to his Law; and habituating them to look up immediately to his protection, without interposing any permanent human authority, on which they might be too apt exclusively to depend, and thus forget their God.

Such was the system of divine administration over the Jews under their judges. Thus the chosen people, who were, as it should seem, (like all the nations of that

period,)

period,) mere children in religion and morality, were treated as children, kept in a state of tutelage, under the constant guardianship and occasional correction of their heavenly Father; taught to feel experimentally their total dependence upon his protection; taught to feel that none of their chiefs or elders possessed power or wisdom to govern and defend them, except as they were raised to the supreme authority, and maintained in it by God himself.

That this system was as effectual in securing the obedience of the Jews to the divine Law, as from their situation and character we could reasonably expect, may appear, when we recollect, that of four. hundred

It is not easy to be accurate in the statement of these periods of prosperity and good conduct, or adversity and punishment; because that sometimes part of the Children of Israel transgressed the divine Law, and were punished distinct from the rest. Thus it is recorded, Judges, x. 8, "That the Lord delivered Israel into the hands of the "children of Ammon, and they oppressed them eighteen all the Children of Israel which were on the other years, "side Jordan, in the land of the Amorites." Something similar to this appears to have been the case in the deliverance wrought by Shamgar, Judges, iv. 31; and even the servitude to Jabin, king of Canaan, Judges, iv. 2, does not

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hundred and fifty years which elapsed from the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan by Joshua,

VOL. II.

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appear to have been universal, though it is said he mightily oppressed the Children of Israel; for it is said, "Deborah "judged Israel at that time." But the following periods appear to have been clearly periods of tranquillity, during which the Israelites lived under their own law.

From the time when Joshua took the whole land, and the land rested from war, Joshua, xii. 23, about 1445 years before Christ, to the time when God delivered them into the hands of the king of Mesopotamia, about the year A. C. 1410. 35 years. Judges, iii. 11-the land had peace under Othniel 40 ditto. iii. 31-under Ehud and his successors v. 31-under Deborah and Barak and

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Without taking into the amount the forty years during which Eli had judged Israel, 1 Sam. iv. 18, during which the worship of the true God, and the observance of the Law had been in a great measure preserved, though not perfectly; this would make the period during which the Law of Moses was the regular established religion of Israel, 377 years out of the 450 under the judges; and it must be recollected, that it was always the religion of probably a

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Joshua, to the first election of a king in the person of Saul, when taken together, distinct from the intervals of occasional relapses into idolatry, above three hundred and fifty seem to have passed under the government of the various judges, whom God raised up at different periods, to recal his people from their errors, and retain them in the observance of his Law; and that during the lives of each of these judges, there was no material apostacy from the national religion, and no material interruption of the public tranquillity and prosperity by these punishments, which always attended such apostacy. It is peculiarly necessary to notice this circumstance, because, by a superficial reader of the sacred history, the whole period under the judges may be easily mistaken

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great multitude of the people, though the public idolatry of others brought down the judgments of God: and above all, let it not be forgotten, that those idolaters did not renounce the worship of Jehovah, but only added to it the worship of idols. They corrupted, but never entirely forsook, their national religion; and such corruption never implied any doubt of its divine original, or any positive disbelief of the Mosaic miracles. If, with Usher in his Chronology, and others, we suppose the periods of tranquillity above, to have been only partial, we must also admit the idolatries through the entire period of the Judges to have been also partial, and the argument will be unaffed.

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