ing the same penalty.* The
king besieged the city and took it, and was about to burn with fire the
tower in which all the people of the city had taken refuge, when a woman
threw a millstone down upon his head "and brake his skull."

* Thebez, now Tubas, the north-east of Nablus.

The narrative tells us that, feeling himself mortally wounded, he called
his armour-bearer to him, and said, "Draw thy sword, and kill me, that
men say not of me, A woman slew him." His monarchy ceased with him, and
the ancient chronicler recognises in the catastrophe a just punishment
for the atrocious crime he had committed in slaying his half-brothers,
the seventy children of Jerubbaal.* His fall may be regarded also as
the natural issue of his peculiar position: the resources upon which he
relied were inadequate to secure to him a supremacy in Israel. Manasseh,
now deprived of a chief, and given up to internal dissensions, became
still further enfeebled, and an easy prey to its rivals. The divine
writings record in several places the success attained by the central
tribes in their conflict with their enemies. They describe how a certain
Jephthah distinguished himself in freeing Gilead from the Ammonites.**

* Judges ix. 23, 24. "And God sent an evil spirit between
Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem
dealt treacherously with Abimelech: that the violence done
to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come, and
that their blood might be laid upon Abimelech their brother,
which slew them, and upon the men of Shechem, which
strengthened his hands to slay his brethren."

** The story of Jephthah is contained in chaps, xi., xii. 1-
7, of the _Book of Judges_. The passage (xi. 12-29) is
regarded by some, owing to its faint echo of certain
portions of Numb, xx., xxi., to be an interpolation.
Jephthah is said to have had Gilead for his father and a
harlot for his mother. Various views have been put forward
as to the account of his victories over the Midianites, some
seeing in it, as well as in the origin of the four
days'feast in honour of Jephthah's daughter, insertions of a
later date.

But his triumph led to the loss of his daughter, whom he sacrificed in
order to fulfil a vow he had made to Jahveh before the battle.* These
were, however, comparatively unimportant episodes in the general history
of the Hebrew race. Bedawins