had ever dwelt in the land which, properly speaking, was the heritage of Reuben.  But in Chronicles these extinct tribes again come to life—­and not Levi alone, which is a special case, but also Simeon and Reuben, with which alone we are here to deal—­and they exist as independent integral twelfths of Israel, precisely like Ephraim and Manasseh, throughout the whole period of the monarchy down to the destruction of the kingdom by the Assyrians. 1 This is

***************************************** 1.  For Reuben see (in addition to 1Chronicles v. 1-10) v. 18, xi. 42, xii. 37. xxvi. 32, xxvii. 16, for Simeon, 1Chronicles iv. 24-43, with xii. 25, and 2Chronicles xv. 9, xxxiv. 6, observing that in the last two passages Simeon is reckoned as belonging to the northern kingdom, so as to complete the number of the ten tribes. ****************************************

diametrically opposed to all authentic tradition; for to maintain that nothing else is intended than a continued subsistence of individual Simeonite and Reubenite families within other tribes is merely a desperate resort of the harmonists, and every attempt to tone down the fact that those extinct and half-mythical tribes are in Chronicles placed side by side with the rest without any distinction is equally illegitimate.  The historical value thus lost by the narrative as a whole cannot be restored by the seeming truthfulness of certain details.  Or is more significance really to be attached to the wars of the Simeonites and Reubenites against the Arabians than to the rest of the extemporised wars of the kings of Judah against these children of the wilderness?  If only at least the names had not been “sons of Ham, and Mehunim and Hagarenes " (iv. 40 seq. [Heb.], v. 10)!  As for the pedigrees and genealogical lists, are they to be accepted as historical merely because their construction is not apparent to us, and they evade our criticism?  The language affords no room for the conjecture that we here possess extracts from documents of high antiquity (iv. 33, 38, 4I, v. 1 seq., 7, 9 seq.), and proper names such as Elioenai and the like (iv. 35 seq.) are not striking for their antique originality.

Of the remaining tribes, so far as they belong to Israel and not to Judah, the next in the series after Reuben are the trans-Jordanic (v. 11-26).  They are said to have been numbered in the days of Jotham of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel, on which occasion 44,760 warriors were returned; they took the field against the Hagarenes, Ituraeans, Nephishites, and Nabataeans, gaining the victory and carrying off much booty, “for they cried to God in the battle, and He was entreated of them because they put their trust in Him.”  But afterwards they fell away from the God of their fathers, and as a punishment were carried off by Pul and Tiglath-Pileser to Armenia by the Chaboras and the river of Gozan.  Apart from the language, which in its edifying tone is that