The Angel of Jehovah is enough to tell
us this. The difference which exists between it and the
Jehovistic main version in the Book of Joshua is to be explained
for the most part by the fact that the latter is of Ephraimite origin,
and in consequence ascribes the conquest of the whole land to the
hero of Ephraim or of Joseph, while Judges i. leans more to the tribe
of Judah. Moreover, we find in the Book of Joshua itself the remnant
of a version (ix. 4-7, 12-14) in which, just as in Judges i., the
actors are the "men of Israel," who "ask counsel of the mouth of
Jehovah," while elsewhere Joshua alone has anything to say, being
the successor of Moses, and drawing his decisions from no source
but the authority of his own spirit. And finally, we have to consider
Exodus xxiii., 20 seq., where also there is a correspondence with
Judges i., in the fact that not Joshua but the Angel of Jehovah
(Judges v. 23) is the leader of Israel, and that the promised land
is not conquered all at once but gradually, in the process of time.
Judges i. presents certain anachronisms, and is partly made up of
anecdotes, but these should not prevent us from acknowledging that
the general view given in this chapter of the process of the
conquest, is, when judged by what we know of the subsequent
period of Israel, incomparably more historical than that in the
Book of Joshua, where the whole thing is done at once with
systematic thoroughness, the whole land being first denuded of its
inhabitants, and then divided by lot among the different tribes.
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