or themselves.

7. After this, the Israelites grew effeminate as to fighting any more
against their enemies, but applied themselves to the cultivation of the
land, which producing them great plenty and riches, they neglected the
regular disposition of their settlement, and indulged themselves in
luxury and pleasures; nor were they any longer careful to hear the laws
that belonged to their political government: whereupon God was provoked
to anger, and put them in mind, first, how, contrary to his directions,
they had spared the Canaanites; and, after that, how those Canaanites,
as opportunity served, used them very barbarously. But the Israelites,
though they were in heaviness at these admonitions from God, yet
were they still very unwilling to go to war; and since they got large
tributes from the Canaanites, and were indisposed for taking pains by
their luxury, they suffered their aristocracy to be corrupted also, and
did not ordain themselves a senate, nor any other such magistrates
as their laws had formerly required, but they were very much given to
cultivating their fields, in order to get wealth; which great indolence
of theirs brought a terrible sedition upon them, and they proceeded so
far as to fight one against another, from the following occasion:--

8. There was a Levite [12] a man of a vulgar family, that belonged to
the tribe of Ephraim, and dwelt therein: this man married a wife from
Bethlehem, which is a place belonging to the tribe of Judah. Now he was
very fond of his wife, and overcome with her beauty; but he was unhappy
in this, that he did not meet with the like return of affection from
her, for she was averse to him, which did more inflame his passion for
her, so that they quarreled one with another perpetually; and at last
the woman was so disgusted at these quarrels, that she left her husband,
and went to her parents in the fourth month. The husband being very
uneasy at this her departure, and that out of his fondness for her, came
to his father and mother-in-law, and made up their quarrels, and was
reconciled to her, and lived with them there four days, as being kindly
treated by her parents. On the fifth day he resolved to go home, and
went away in the evening; for his wife's parents were loath to part with
their daughter, and delayed the time till the day was gone. Now they had
one servant that followed them, and an ass on which the woman rode; and
when they were near Jerusalem, having gone alr