tions of the children of Israel might know to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof;" and "to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which He commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses." *

I. In the preceding chapter it has been shown that the judges were to a great extent successful in accomplishing the purpose for which they were raised up. Their duty was, as "saviours" to deliver and defend, and as "judges" to rule, the chosen people. They were not called to extend the territory of Israel beyond the limits of the conquests of Joshua, but only to repress and keep down the heathen within those limits. In general they were successful; yet some important exceptions are noted in the sacred narrative.

The third chapter of the Book of Judges opens with a brief enumeration, altogether different from that which we have already examined, † of the nations which were left unsubdued. If some expositors have explained this second catalogue as being a short summary of the first, it has been through their not having compared the two with sufficient care. The former catalogue enumerates the various places, within the allotments of the several tribes, where the Canaanites were still suffered to remain, most of them under tribute; whereas the passage now before us speaks of "nations" which were left unconquered,—

"these are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them." * The enemies here referred to resided not among the Israelites, but for the most part in their own territories, not acknowledging the supremacy of Israel.

It cannot be too distinctly pointed out, that the limits of the "land of promise," as they had been described by Moses, were far wider than the limits of the land of possession, as actually subdued and inherited by the Hebrew people. The actual conquests of Joshua extended northwards "even unto Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon ;"+ but the promised border of Israel extended much farther. In the word of the Lord, spoken by Moses, it had been laid down with singular exactness: "This shall be your north border; from the Great Sea ye shall point out for you Mount Hor; from Mount Hor ye shall point out unto the entrance of Hamath; and the goings forth of the border shall be to Zedad; and the border shall go on to Ziphron, and the goings out of it shall be at Hazar-enan."†

Without going into minute topographical details§ it may be sufficient here to state that Baal-gad, the utmost limit in this direction of Joshua's conquests, is about a hundred miles south of "the entrance of Hamath," to which the promised boundary of the

* Jud. iii. 1.

Josh. xi. 17; xii. 7.

Num. xxxiv. 7–9.

§ See Stanley's "Syria and Palestine," p. 407; Van de Velde, i. 113; Porter's "Giant Cities,” p. 303.

land extended. The intervening region embraces the ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, the valley of Colo-Syria, and the plain of Hamath; a magnificent country, which the successors of Joshua ought to have subdued, in order to complete their covenanted inheritance, but which, until the time of David, they never entered. In this noble country resided "The Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon from mount Baal-hermon," which was most probably identical with Baal-gad just mentioned—“ unto the entering in of Hamath."* This country, though distinctly within the boundaries of the land of promise, was not so much as allotted to any of the tribes. Joshua divided the land so far as he had conquered it; but before his death the Lord reminded him that "there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed," particularly specifying "all Lebanon toward the sunrising, from Baal-gad under mount Hermon unto the entering into Hamath."+ This country, then, remained unsubdued. The Israelites did not so much as enter it. The Hivites remained unmolested in the hills and valleys of Lebanon. Unlike the Canaanites of southern and central Palestine, who were at least partially subdued, and whose land was divided among the Israelitish tribes, these "nations" of the north were not brought under the yoke, nor was their land occupied as an inherîtance. The faith of Israel waxed feeble; they could not go on to new conquests; and

a great part of the land of promise never came, at least during the period now under review, into their possession, but was left entirely to the heathen.

"These," then, (to adopt the words of the sacred narrative) "are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan." Besides the nation of the Hivites, who occupied the region of Lebanon, there were "the Sidonians," a remarkable and powerful people, whose history is famous alike in sacred and in classic story; whose territory lay within the bounds of the land of promise, as they had been defined by Moses, yet was never actually possessed by the Jewish people. These "Sidonians," who are called also "Canaanites," were the far-famed Phoenicians of antiquity, and "the Lord left them" in possession of their land, "to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord."

One of the most remarkable of the physical features of Palestine is the strip of lowland, varying from twenty miles to two miles in breadth, which extends from south to north along its entire seaboard. In the southern part of the coast this strip widens into a spacious plain of twenty miles across, having the Mediterranean on the west, and on the east the mountains of Judah; this plain is Philistia. In the central section of the coast the plain becomes narrower, and is shut

* Jud. iii. 4. ·

in by the mountains of Manasseh and Ephraim; this is the plain of Sharon. In the northern part of the coast, extending for a hundred miles beyond the "White Cape" and the "Tyrian Ladder," the plain becomes a mere strip of two or three miles in width, having the sea on one side and the mountain-range of Lebanon on the other; this strip is Phoenicia. Contracted as is the territory, its commerce, like that of our own little island in modern times, became celebrated throughout the known world. Part of this strip was included in the allotment of the tribe of Asher; and Zidon itself, the early metropolis of the region, has been already mentioned as one of the cities of the heathen which Asher failed to subdue. But Zidon was the most northerly point to which his allotment extended; whereas beyond this, for a distance almost equal to the entire length of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba, the Phoenician plain extended, all of which, as well as the mountain region of Lebanon which runs parallel to it, had been included within the divinely appointed limits of the land of promise.

The subsequent fame of Phoenicia, of Tyre its capital city, and of the ingenious and enterprising Sidonian race, the English of antiquity-their connection with the fortunes of the Israelitish people, with the Greeks and Romans, and with the ancient inhabitants of Britain-their extraordinary opulence, and the marvel of their predicted fall, and of the utter desolation of their country according to the word of the Lord by His