ISRAELITES
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ISRAELITES
there to skirt the southern possessions of Edom,
whence they marchetl northward, skirting the
eastern frontier first of Edom and next of Moab, and
finally encamping over against the River Arnon (the
modern Wady Mojib). Such is the general line of
march commonly admitted by scholars between
Cades and the Arnon. Owing, however, to the fact
that the several lists of Israel's stations in Numb.,
XX, 22-xxi, 11; xxxiii; Deut., x, 6, 7, contain differ-
ences as to the encampments which they mention,
and as to the time which they assign to Aaron's
death, some uncertainty remains as to which side of
Edom — east or west — the Hebrews actually skirted
on their way to the Arnon. With regard to the
various stations named in those lists, a still greater
uncertainty prevails. In point of fact, only a few of
them can be identified, among which may be men-
tioned the place of Aaron's death, Mount Hor, which
is probably the modern Jebel Madurah on the west-
ern border of Edom, some thirty or forty miles
north-east of Cades; and next the encampment at
Asiongaber, a place which may be identical with
'Ain el Gudyan which lies about fifteen miles north
of the Gulf of Akabah. Resuming their march to-
wards the Jordan, the Children of Israel crossed the
Arnon, and encountered the hostility of the Amor-
rhite chief, Sehon, who had taken from Moab the
territory between the Arnon and the Jeboc (Wady
Zerkah). They defeated him at Jasa (not now iden-
tified), captured his capital Hesebon (the modern
Hesban), Jazer (Beith Zerah, three miles north of
Hesebon), and the other cities of his dominions.
They were thus brought into contact, and appar-
ently also into conflict, with the northernmost king-
dom of Basan, which lay between the Jeboc and the
foot of Mount Hermon. They gave battle to its
king, Og, defeated him at Edrei (now Edr'a), and
took possession of his territory. Their victories and,
perhaps still more, their occupation of the land
north of Moab by Ruben, Gad, and the half-tribe
of Manasses aroused the enmity of the Moabites
who, at this juncture, summoned Balaam to curse
the Israelites, and who succeeded but too well in
their efforts to betray them into idolatry at Settim
(.\ccacids), in the plains of Moab, over against
Jericho (Eri'ka). The crowning events of the Wan-
derings were the induction of Josue into office as
Moses' successor in command, and the death of
Moses himself on one of the heights of the Aliarim
(Numb., xxvii, 12), which is variously called Nebo
(Jebel Neba; Deut., xxxii, 49) or Phasga (Ras
Siaghah; Deut., iii, 27), the western projection of
Mount Nebo.
V. The Conquest op Chanaan. — Soon after the death of Moses, Josue resolved to attempt the invasion and conquest of Chanaan proper, or the country west of the Jordan, which Israel's great lawgiver had in- deed contemplated, but had not been allowed to effect. In some respects this was at the time a hard task. The crossing of the Jordan was in itself a difficult undertaking. The heights on the other side of the river were crowned with numerous cities, strongly walled, and therefore able to offer a stout resistance. Even the population in the lowlands was much supe- rior to the Israelites in the art and appliances of war, in touch, as they had long been, with the advanced civilization of Babylonia and Egypt. In some other respects the work of conquest was then comparatively easy. The various peoples (Chanaanites, Hethites, Amorrhites, Pherezites, etc.) who made up the popu- lation of Western Palestine, constituted a number of mostly indeiiciidcnt cities, distracted l)y those mutual jealousies which have boon revealed l)y the Tell el- Amarna tablets, and hence not likely to combine their forces against Israel's invasion. "Moreover, there was no possibility of outside alliances against the intruders. Tyre and Sidon, and other cities of the coast, were
going their way, increasing their wealth and com-
mercial connexions by peaceful means, and were
averse to entangling foreign comphcations. The
Amorrhites east of the Jordan were the most formid-
able remnant of their decaying race, and they had
been rendered powerless; while the Phihstines, them-
selves a strange people, had not yet grown into
power" (McCurdy). Circumstances such as these
naturally called for Josue's prompt and vigorous ac-
tion. With God's special help he crossed the Jordan
at the head of all the tribes encamped at Galgal, iden-
tified with the modern Tell Jiljulieh, four miles from
the river, and thence advanced upon Jericho. This
city was one of the keys to the trans-Jordanic region,
and it soon fell into his power. He next proceeded by
the pass of Machmas (the Wady Suweinit) against
Hai, a town two miles east of Bethel, and captured it
by stratagem. After this rapid conquest of Central
Chanaan, Josue made alliance with the Gabaonites,
who had outwitted him, and won the memorable bat-
tle of Bethoron over the five kings of the nearest
Amorrhite peoples. This victory was followed up by
the subjugation of other districts of Southern Pales-
tine, a work which seems to have been accomplished
mainly by the tribes of Simeon and Juda, assisted by
the Cinites and the Calebites. Meantime, the kings
of the north had rallied around Jabin, King of Azor in
Galilee, and mustered their hosts near the Waters of
Merom (Lake Huleh). At the head of the House of
Joseph, the Jewish leader took them by surprise, de-
feated them, and subdued numerous northern towns.
Josue's glorious achievements secured for the tribes
of Israel a firm foothold in Chanaan, by means ot
which they settled in their allotted territories. Great,
however, as were these victories, they failed, even in
conjunction with the efforts of the individual tribes
(an account of which is supplied in the scattered no-
tices in the Book of Josue and by the opening chapter
of that of Judges), to complete the subjugation of
Palestine. Many of the larger cities, together with the
cultivated valleys and the coast-land, were still, and
remained for a long time, in the possession of Cha-
naan's earlier inhabitants.
VI. The Period of the Judges. — As long as Josue lived, his personality and his generalship succeeded in keeping up among the Israelites some manner of cen- tral authority, despite the tribal rivalries which mani- fested themselves even during the conquest of West- ern Palestine. When he died, without a previously appointed successor, all central authority actually ceased, and the bonds of union between the different tribes were quickly dissolved. The tribes were dis- persed in different districts, and the Semitic love of tribal independence strongly reasserted itself among them. The immediate pressure of the war of con- quest was no longer felt, and in many cases the dis- tinct Hebrew communities were either unwilling or unable to exterminate the older population which sur- vived in the land. The bond of union which naturally arises from close kinship, was likewise considerably relaxed by intermarriage between the Israelites and the Chanaanites. Even the bond created by the com- munity of religion was time and again seriously im- paired in Israel by the corruption of the ancestral worship of Yahweh with the attractive cult of the Baalim of Chanaan. This deep disunion of the tribes accounts naturally for the fact that, during a long period after the death of Moses' successor, each section of Israel's possessions was in its turn harassed and humiliated by a powerful foreign foe, and each time delivered from his oppression by a military leader, a "judge", as he is called, whose authority never ex- tended over the whole land. In the course of time, the drawbacks of such disunion were more and more felt by the Israelites, and in order to withstand their enemies more effectively by concerted action, they wished for a king. Their first attempts in this direo-
