agony pierced his soul; he rent his garments, and a cry of anguish burst forth from his lips: Alas, my daughter, thou bendest me low indeed, and bringest me to destruction, for I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot go back.' The maiden was equal to the great occasion; she felt that the vow was sacred and inviolable, and she shrank not from its accomplishment. She accepted her fate with resignation, merely entreating that for two months she might be permitted to live with her companions in seclusion on the mountains, there to bewail her untimely death. Was Jephthah unable to see that the vow was in itself impious, that it could not be acceptable in the eyes of the Lord, and that it was detestable blasphemy to offer such a sacrifice? Great beyond our present means of realising it must have been the confusion of the lawless times in which such deeds could be publicly done and regarded as meritorious. Jephthah granted his daughter's last request; and when she returned to his house after two months, he did with her,' the Bible tells us, considerately veiling the awful scene, according to his vow.' The memory of the unhappy maiden was cherished among her country-women; for it became a custom for the daughters of Israel annually to go up to the mountains, and to praise her obedience. and fortitude.

When the war was concluded, the Ephraimites appeared with an army in Gilead, and addressed to Jephthah the same haughty remonstrance which they had before made to Gideon: Wherefore didst thou proceed to fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with thee? We will burn thy house upon thee with fire!' Jephthah replied, that in the time of distress he had invited the Ephraimites to join him, but they had sent no help; and he at once marched against them, drove them back to the Jordan, and occupied the fords. Now,

when fugitives came and desired to pass, they were bidden to say the word shibboleth (meaning stream); if they pronounced it sibboleth, they were recognised as Ephraimites (for in their dialect sh was pronounced like 8), and they were put to death. Thus fell twenty-two thousand men of Ephraim.

74. IBZAN-ELON-ABDON-SAMSON.

[JUDG. XII-XVI.]

After the death of Jephthah, who judged Israel for six years, we have a string of mere names presenting but little importance to us. Thus we hear of Ibzan of Bethlehem, with his thirty sons and thirty daughters-in-law; of Elon, a native of Zebulun; and Abdon of Pirathon in Ephraim, who had forty sons and thirty grandsons-the three together ruling over Israel for twenty-five years.

But the person and history of the next Judge are associated with features and events which seem to lead us to the old mythical traditions of Greece, rather than to the annals of the chosen people. The life of Samson, so vividly told in the Book of Judges, so full of hazard and risk, of buoyancy and rude humour, finds its counterpart in the fabled deeds of Hercules. Unlike the other Judges, Samson performs all amazing feats of valour and strength alone and unaided; he never leads the people to great enterprises; he is their sole champion, rejoicing in his strength, and rushing into perils for the mere delight he feels in braving them. There is a quaintness and lightheartedness about this giant warrior, which give to his adventures a wonderful interest, enhanced perhaps by the fearful tragedy which concludes his career. The story is peculiarly life-like, and yet it sounds almost legendary in its details. His exploits are ever listened to with wonder

and admiration; and his sayings, chiefly riddles and puzzles, never fail to cause pleasure and merriment.

The land of Canaan was bounded on its south-western frontiers by the territory of the Philistines, which, running into the provinces of Dan and Judah, extended in a narrow strip of land along the shore of the Mediterranean. The Philistines, descendants of the giant races that once possessed Canaan, rude, warlike, and restless, had grown into a powerful nation, and were among the most implacable and most dangerous enemies of the Hebrews. In these perpetual feuds, the Israelites, weakened by idolatry and disunion, were often defeated and subdued, and had then to submit to merciless oppression. The burdens both of the war and servitude fell naturally most heavily upon the neighbouring tribe of the Danites; but they were felt with more or less weight by the whole nation. During forty years the Israelites bore the hateful yoke, and they sent up their cries for help and rescue.

Their deliverer came at last from the tribe of Dan. In the small town of Zorah there lived a man of the name of Manoah, whose wife was childless. One day an angel appeared to her, declaring that she would become the mother of a son who should, in due time, save the Hebrews from the hand of the Philistines. The boy was from his birth to be dedicated to God as a Nazarite; no razor was ever to touch his hair; even the mother was to abstain from strong drink and all unclean food. Amazed by what she had heard, she told it to her husband, who devoutly prayed for another appearance of the Divine messenger, to learn more fully the duties that awaited him and his wife. The vision was repeated, and the angel announced again, this time both to Manoah and his wife, the birth of the wondrous child, and renewed his former injunctions both with respect to the boy and the mother. Manoah entreated his guest to stay and to partake of a meal which

he would speedily prepare. The angel declined, but left it to him to sacrifice a burnt-offering to God. When Manoah had laid the kid he had slaughtered upon the rock which he was using for an altar, and had kindled the fire, the angel, rising upon the flame, ascended with it towards heaven, and was lost to their view. Awed, yet reassured by the miracle, Manoah and his wife worshipped silently, certain that the promise they had received would

come true.

When the child was born, he was called Samson, the sunny, the bright; and he grew, and God's blessing was with him. His exploits commenced when he was a mere youth. On one of his frequent roaming expeditions, he came to Thimnah, situated south of his native town Zorah. There he saw a Philistine maiden who so pleased him that he resolved to make her his wife. His parents were unwilling to bring an idolatress into their household, and entreated their son to select a bride from among his own people. But Samson obstinately insisted upon his choice, and went to Thimnah with his father and mother, to make them acquainted with the maiden. On the way, and whilst he was wandering alone in the vineyards near the town, he was met by a young lion; he seized the wild beast, and rent it asunder as if it had been a kid. Then he joined his parents unconcerned, without mentioning his feat. Returning to Thimnah some time afterwards to celebrate his marriage, he found, upon looking at the spot where he had before killed the lion, that a swarm of bees had built their hive in the carcase. He took some of the honey and ate it on his way. At Thimnah he prepared a wedding feast, to which he invited thirty of his companions, and which was to last for seven days. Delighting in riddles, and desirous to perplex his guests, he put before them the following puzzle: Out of the eater came forth food, and out of the

strong came forth sweetness.' If they guessed the meaning, he promised to give to each of them a shirt and a suit of apparel, but if not, then they were to give him thirty shirts and thirty suits of apparel. Unable to explain the riddle, the guests urged Samson's bride to persuade him to tell her the interpretation, and then to communicate it to them. She succeeded by artful appeals to her husband's tenderness; and on the last day of the feast the men said: 'what is sweeter than honey, what is stronger than a lion?' Samson, easily divining the source of their knowledge, answered in his quaint manner: If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you had not found out my riddle.' Resolved to pay his debts in no ordinary way, and at the same time to chastise the cunning deceit of the Philistines, he went down to Ashkelon, and in the full flush of his strength slew thirty men, and stripped them of their garments, which he gave to the wedding guests. He then returned, angry and mortified, to his father's house in Zorah.

In the height of the Eastern summer, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson came back to claim his wife, when her father told him that in his absence she had been given to one of his companions, and offered him her younger sister in her stead. Enraged at the insult, he exclaimed, This time I am free of guilt with respect to the Philistines, if I do evil to them;' he rushed out into the fields, caught three hundred foxes, tied them together by their tails, two and two, putting a lighted firebrand between them, and let them loose into the standing corn, into the vineyards and the olive-groves. The affrighted Philistines asked each other, 'Who has done this?' And when they heard it was Samson, who thus sought to punish his father-in-law's treachery, they went up to the house of the latter, and burnt it to the ground. Samson's wife and her father perished in the flames. Some of the