The narrative tells us that, feeling himself mortally wounded, he called his armour-bearer to him, and said, “Draw thy sword, and kill me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him.”  His monarchy ceased with him, and the ancient chronicler recognises in the catastrophe a just punishment for the atrocious crime he had committed in slaying his half-brothers, the seventy children of Jerubbaal.* His fall may be regarded also as the natural issue of his peculiar position:  the resources upon which he relied were inadequate to secure to him a supremacy in Israel.  Manasseh, now deprived of a chief, and given up to internal dissensions, became still further enfeebled, and an easy prey to its rivals.  The divine writings record in several places the success attained by the central tribes in their conflict with their enemies.  They describe how a certain Jephthah distinguished himself in freeing Gilead from the Ammonites.**

* Judges ix. 23, 24.  “And God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech:  that the violence done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come, and that their blood might be laid upon Abimelech their brother, which slew them, and upon the men of Shechem, which strengthened his hands to slay his brethren.”

** The story of Jephthah is contained in chaps, xi., xii. 1- 7, of the Book of Judges.  The passage (xi. 12-29) is regarded by some, owing to its faint echo of certain portions of Numb, xx., xxi., to be an interpolation.  Jephthah is said to have had Gilead for his father and a harlot for his mother.  Various views have been put forward as to the account of his victories over the Midianites, some seeing in it, as well as in the origin of the four days’feast in honour of Jephthah’s daughter, insertions of a later date.

But his triumph led to the loss of his daughter, whom he sacrificed in order to fulfil a vow he had made to Jahveh before the battle.* These were, however, comparatively unimportant episodes in the general history of the Hebrew race.  Bedawins from the East, sheikhs of the Midianites, Moabites, and Ammonites—­all these marauding peoples of the frontier whose incursions are put on record—­gave them continual trouble, and rendered their existence so miserable that they were unable to develop their institutions and attain the permanent freedom after which they aimed.  But their real dangers—­the risk of perishing altogether, or of falling back into a condition of servitude—­did not arise from any of these quarters, but from the Philistines.

* There are two views as to the nature of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter.  Some think she was vowed to perpetual virginity, while others consider that she was actually sacrificed.

By a decree of Pharaoh, a new country had been assigned to the remnants of each of the maritime peoples:  the towns nearest to Egypt, lying between Raphia and Joppa, were given over to the Philistines, and the forest region and the coast to the north of the Philistines, as far as the Phoenician stations of Dor and Carmel,* were appropriated to the Zakkala.  The latter was a military colony, and was chiefly distributed among the five fortresses which commanded the Shephelah.