But almost every country,during the early period of settlement,passes through such an agony of bloodshed.It would be foolish,therefore,to blame the Jews for certain crimes which the ancestors of all of us have committed and which are in no way typical of one particular race of men.
Because we have studied the Old Testament with such great care,we happen to know more Jewish history than Babylonian or Assyrian or Hittite history.That is the main difference.For certainly those other inhabitants of western Asia were not a whit better than their Hebrew neighbours.And after this little digression,let us return to the records of the sacred Book.
As time went on,the war along the frontier became increasingly violent,and even the women were called upon to do their part.The little cities of Canaan were no longer a menace.One by one they had been conquered and destroyed.One enemy,however,remained as dangerous and as threatening as before.That was Philistia.
We shall often hear the name of the Philistines in the following pages.Unlike the Jews and the other inhabitants of western Asia,the Philistines did not belong to the Semitic race.
They were Cretans and they had left their native island after the destruction of Cnossos,the famous city of antiquity,which for almost a thousand years had been the centre of the civilised world.
How and why and by whom that city had been destroyed,we do not know.The survivors of the tragedy had escaped by sea.First of all they had tried to establish themselves in the delta of the river Nile.The Egyptians,however,had driven them away.
Then they had sailed westward and following the coast of Asia they had occupied a narrow slip of land between the Mediterranean and the hills of western Judaea which had just been conquered by Joshua.
Of course the Jewish tribes would have liked to possess a few seaports of their own,and the Philistines wanted all the land up to the river Jordan.This led to everlasting warfare between the land-locked Jewish states and their seafaring Philistine neighbours.But as the Cretans were far ahead of their Asiatic neighbours in the arts of peace (and therefore in the art of war)it was not possible for the rude tribes of Israel to make much headway against their enemies of Philistia (or Philistina or Palestine,as we now call that country).
Many of the most famous battles of the Old Testament occurred during eight centuries of strife between the two great competitors for the Mediterranean coast and almost invariably the former Cretans,with their copper shields and their iron swords and their armoured chariots (a sort of ancient tank)were able to defeat the Jews,whose wooden shields and stone-pointed arrows and slingshots only occasionally saved them from defeat.
Once in a while,however,when the Hebrew tribes were conscious of the fact that they were fighting the cause of Jehovah,they gained a victory and one such triumph occurred during the lifetime of Deborah the Prophetess.
Shamgar the Judge had just died.Immediately the soldiers of King Jabin had marched across the frontier.They had stolen the cattle.They had killed the men.And they had carried away the women and children.The attack called for revenge,but who was to lead the Jews?
The armies of Jabin were commanded by a foreigner named Sisera.He seems to have been an Egyptian who had come north to make a career.Like most professional soldiers,he was well versed in the most recent methods of warfare.He established a special corps of iron-clad chariots.Those were pulled by horses and they slashed their way through the Jewish ranks with the ease of a knife cutting through butter.It was said that Sisera had not less than nine hundred of these armoured cars.This number was probably somewhat exaggerated,but the Egyptian was powerful enough to threaten the young Jewish state with complete annihilation and great was the fear in the valleys and among the hills on both sides of the river Jordan.
Now it happened at that time that near the village of Bethel there lived a woman by the name of Deborah.
She enjoyed that strange gift which had made Joseph so famous as a child.She could predict the future.
Little wonder that people came from all parts of western Asia to ask her advice before they started upon a voyage or went to war or entered upon new business or got married.
To her the Jews turned and begged that she tell them what to do.Fortunately,Deborah was a woman of courage.She did not advise her fellow countrymen to surrender.On the contrary,she told them to fight.
She sent word to the tribe of Naphtali,and asked that a man by the name of Barak come to see her.Barak had a certain local reputation as a soldier.But when Deborah told him to march boldly against Sisera,he hesitated.“It will end in disaster,”he said.“Our troops cannot hold their own against those iron chariots.”
Deborah answered that Jehovah would be with the Jewish army as soon as they took the offensive,and would make them invisible.But Barak still had a vision of those nine hundred armoured cars and he declined the honour of being made commander-in-chief.
In utter despair,Deborah then offered to accompany him,if this would give him courage.At the same time she warned him that now the glory of the coming victory would not go to him but to a woman.Then at last Barak gave in and ordered his soldiers to leave the safe fortress of Mount Tabor.
Sisera had drawn up his line of chariots in the plains of Jezreel.There he attacked the Jews when they came down from the hills.Jehovah,however,was on the side of the Jews.The armies of Jabin fought a desperate battle,but they were doomed to destruction.The few survivors fled and even mighty Sisera was forced to leave his armoured car and to make his escape on foot.
Westward he ran,but unaccustomed to this unusual exercise,he was soon tired out and he entered a house that stood by the side of the road and asked for food.
It was the house of Heber,the Kenite.