Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land; nevertheless the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and of Beth-anath became tributaries unto them." (Jud. i. 33.)

"Neither did Zebulon drive out the inhabitants of Kitron, nor the inhabitants of Nahalol; but the Canaanites dwelt among them, and became tributaries." (Jud. i. 30.)

"Neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean and her towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns; but the Canaanites would dwell in that land. And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out." (Jud. i. 27.)

"Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwelt in Gezer among them." (Jud. i. 29.) "And the Bene Yousef they also went up against Bethel, and Adoni was with them. And the Bene Yousef sent to descry Bethel. (Now the name of the city before was Luz.)

"And the spies saw a man come forth out of the city, and they said unto him, Shew us, we pray thee, the entrance into the city, and we will show thee mercy. And when he shewed them the entrance into the city, they smote the city with the edge of the sword; but they let go the man and all his family. And the man went into the land of the Hittites, and built a city, and called the name thereof Luz; which is the name thereof unto this day." (Jud. i. 22.)

The Hittites from whom the Bene Yousef took Luz (Bethel) by treachery do not appear, for a long time afterwards, to have been dispossessed of any other place. Gideon seems to have become ruler of Shechem, by some arrangement connected with his marrying a Hivite or Hittite princess, for Abimelech claimed his title to it in right of his mother; and that claim was supported by her family. Moreover that title was disputed by Gaal in virtue of his representing the ancient family of Hamor.

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And the Amorites forced the Bene Dan into the mountain, for they would not suffer them to come down to the valley; but the Amorites would dwell in mount Heres in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim ; yet the hand of the house of Joseph prevailed, so that they became tributaries. And the coast of the Amorites was from the going up to Akrabbim, from the rock, and upwards." (Jud. i. 35, 36.)

"And the Bene Yamin did not drive out the Jebusites that in

habited Jerusalem; but the Jebusites dwelt with the Bene Yamin in Jerusalem unto this day." (Jud. i. 22.)

Moreover there were left to prove Israel and to teach them war, "Five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians and the Hivites that dwell in Mount Lebanon from Baal-hermon unto the entering in of Hamath." (Jud. ii. 3.)

There is a legend of the settlement of emigrant Danites, driven from their hills in the south by the Philistines, in a district which acquired the name of Dan, in the extreme north of Palestine. But this is not connected with the early invasion, and will be the subject of comment in dealing with that legend. It is sufficient here to remark that no such settlement could have been made until after the conflict between Sisera and Barak.

There is no mention in the earlier legends of Issachar. The Bene Issachar may have been a small sept which, at a subsequent period, found its way across the Jordan, and was permitted by Ephraim, or the earlier inhabitants, to occupy some places in or south of Esdraelon. And, from time to time, other migrants from the regions of Gilead may have been hospitably received in districts vacant, or thinly peopled.

Distribution of the earlier races. From what has been already stated, it may be reasonably inferred that the inhabitants of Palestine and Philistia consisted of a town population, a rural village population, and a more or less nomadic pastoral population, some roving within districts over which they claimed to have exclusive right of range, like other venatorial and pastoral races, and some intruding occasionally on districts in which their wanderings were not disputed, and others maintaining their possession by force of arms, or sweeping the regions in rapid. forays.

The towns were not numerous. In the south, Hebron, connected with the traffic from Arabia through the north of Idumea; then the Philistine towns, Bezer, and probably a few others in Sharon, the northern part of the maritime plain up to Carmel-then, branching from this plain up the transverse valley, Shechem, and descending to Jordan, Bethel, Ai, and Jericho; then, farther north, branching again from the maritime plain eastward, the towns in the most convenient and defensible localities in and bordering upon the plain of Esdraelon, then up the plain of Gennesareth along the hills and valleys on the way to Hamath and Damascus.

The rural villagers (the Perizzites) were probably scattered in various directions, where they could find sufficiently secure localities for their small communities, and close by sufficient land for cultivation. Their avocation was probably that of husbandmen, growing corn, and cultivating their orchards, and vine and olive yards.

To such towns and villages, neighbouring pasture lands were a necessity, and so long as they were occupied by a friendly population, there was probably little consideration of races; and the pastors would be a somewhat settled population.

Beyond what was necessary for these purposes, it was immaterial to the townspeople, the villagers, and the settled pastors, what nomads occupied or roved over the rest of the country, so long as they abstained from insult and plunder, and brought supplies into the towns.

It has been observed that the Hebrews were not on their first advent the only intruders, that the Kenites came into the land.

As afterwards, so before that time, the lands not required by the townsfolk, the villagers, and the settled pastors, had, without doubt, been occupied and roved over by nomadic races.

So, when the Hebrews came, it was only in a few places that they appeared as conquerors, they came as pastors, and many of them found room enough; and, when they became husbandmen, there does not appear to have been any great deficiency. They lived among, became associated, and more or less intermingled with, and absorbed into the indigenous population.

In early times, few contests arose between the Hebrews and the indigenous races; and after the time of David, or indeed long before that, there was no conflict between them. The wars with the Philistines were foreign.

The legendary tales are almost exclusively of conflicts with external invaders.

The achievement of Othniel was against a Mesopotamian, that of Ehud against a Moabite, that of Gideon against Midian, and that of Jephthah was against the Bene Ammon.

Although that of Deborah and Barak is described as against Jabin, king of Canaan, Jabin was only king of Harosheth of the Gentiles in the north of Galilee, and some surrounding districts.

Indeed, the Hebrews became absorbed into the general population, and Palestine was scarcely more, except in name, a Hebrew,

than England is a Norman nation. There were, however, some regions in which the Hebraic element predominated, as there were others in which it hardly existed.

Towns. Some notion of the size of the Palestinian towns may be formed from what is said of Shechem, Jericho, Ai, and Bethel. Shechem and Jericho appear to have been among the largest.

As to Jericho, it is said (Joshua vi. 15): “On the seventh day, they rose early, about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner (the armed men going before, and seven priests blowing seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark) seven times."

As to Ai and Bethel, it is said (Joshua viii. 17): "All the people that were in Ai were called upon to pursue, and they pursued after Joshua, and were drawn away from the city. And there was not a man left in Ai or Bethel that went not out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel. . . . and so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai. For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai."

Of Shechem there is no particular account. The myth of the murder of all the men when sore from circumcision indicates that the Hebrew notion of it was but of a small town; and the legend of Abimelech in Judges ix. indicates that its armed men were very few.

The Canaanites retained Beth-shean, Taanach, Dor, Ibleam, and Megiddo, with their dependant villages, and "would dwell in that land." These seem to have been all the principal, if not the only, towns and villages from Dor, on the maritime plain along the frontiers of the plain of Esdraelon, to Beth-shean on the Jordan. Consequently, the Hebrews had no established hold upon that country.

Rustics. At the time of Jabin, some Kenites were settled in Esdraelon, manifestly with the acquiescence of the Canaanites. (Judges iv.) The Hebrews appeared to have swarmed into, and endeavoured to possess themselves of some part of this fertile region. Their aggression was resisted by the owners. This was, in scripture language, a mighty oppression.

Sparse population.-From these data it may be reasonably inferred that the earlier population was inconsiderable, and that there was room enough for the Hebrew immigrants to settle in

most parts of the country. This involves, however, that these immigrants were not numerous.

And the aggregate population of the kingdom in aftertimes appears always to have had sufficient room, and, except in periods of famine or devastation, sufficient food. There is no indication of any emigration on account of a superabundant population. Whenever emigration is mentioned, it is as a consequence of war.

The classes. The Hebrew invaders were a pastoral race, and settled naturally where they could obtain room by force or acquiescence.

The rural population at the time of this invasion were cultivators of vine and other fruit yards, husbandmen and pastors.

The intermixture, partly by localities and partly by intermarriages, naturally led the Hebrews and the mixed races also to become husbandmen, and cultivators of vine and other fruits and peculiar products.

The pastoral Hebrews would more slowly intermingle with, and, as they did so in smaller numbers, would become lost in the town populations, long before they had lost their identity of race in the localities which they had at first separately occupied with their flocks and herds, and those in which they established their agricultural occupations.

A man of Jerusalem, Shechem, or Hebron, would by no means necessarily imply a Hebrew, while in many of the farmsteads and villages, called cities, such as the city of Kish, the isolated families retained their distinct names; not, however, implying that they had not taken into them wives from the daughters of neighbouring earlier settlers, or of the indigenous peoples.

The patriarchs of these families (cities) and their principal descendants, probably in some such order as that of primogeniture, constituted the elders. The same, or a similar arrangement, subsisted doubtless among the descendants of the earlier races, and among those of the mixed races, after they had branched off and become families.

Ramified families would probably recognize as their superior elder, the hereditary elder of the stem from which they had sprouted.

The towns would have some similar representatives, elders, or prince. An hereditary character pervades all the scriptures.

Some such organisation has prevailed among all early peoples; the Bedouins, Kurds and Turkomans, and our own Saxon forefathers.