ABSTRACT

If the various Hebrew clans entered the land of Canaan at or about the same time, crossing over the Jordan from the eastern hill country, they may have been actuated by a sense of their common kinship; but so independent were certain groups of one another at the time of settlement, that it is difficult for us to believe that there was among them a real unity of purpose and of sentiment such as a pronounced national consciousness might, had it been possessed, have made possible. It has been surmised that their desert life unified Israel; even Kuenen speaks of it as making for unity, though “as a temporary co-operation.” That there was a try sting-place, with the Ark as the seat of Yahweh, during their desert life appears probable; though whether it was Kadesh-barnea or some other sanctuary does not indubitably appear. It seems unreasonable to suppose that the various clans journeyed about the Arabian desert together; it is likely that they separated and wandered about for pasturage. Still, a central sanctuary would serve to unify them, though its power over the individual clans to whom their clan organisation and their common action in endeavour and in sacrifice were of supreme concern may not have been great, especially if Yahwism was, as Budde contends, the religion of the Kenites, to which Moses introduced them. Until we know more of the religion of the Hebrews in Egypt, it is hardly safe for us to speak confidently of the unity of Israel during the bondage. Though a common oppression and consciousness of a common origin may measurably have kept them together, whether a common monotheism did, now seems questionable. That there was a sense of nationality earlier than the monarchy, and an inner unity back of the settlement, as Wellhausen thinks, we may admit, as we may also that Moses was its author. We may say with him that the basis for the unification of the tribes must certainly have been laid before the conquest of Canaan proper; but during the early part of the period of the Judges there was more to segregate the Hebrews than to unite them. The Canaanites were wanting in unity, so that only on rare occasions were the Hebrew clans forced to act together, 1 and then only a part of them at most, as in the time of Deborah. 2 The Judges as local vindicators had little need, as a rule, of a united Israel; if they could rally a few thousand clansmen, they were reasonably sure of a victory. The most conspicuous note of unity that was struck before the Philistines came in force upon the stage, was in the Song of Deborah, and, it may be, in the campaign against Sisera which it celebrated. Here Yahweh is the God whose name forms a rallying cry. 1 That it was so, is significant. It suggests that as the Hebrews became more and more distinctively the people of Yahweh, they realised somewhat their oneness.