122         Jewish Wars as Precedents for Modern Wars.         [April,

made you go up out of Egypt, and have brought you to the land
which I swore to your fathers, and I said, I will never break my
covenant with you. And you shall make no league with the
inhabitants of this land; you shall throw down their altars; but
you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this?
Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you;
but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be
a snare to you." (Judges ii., 1-3.) Again :  when King Saul un-
dertook to follow his own judgment in the war with Amalek,
sparing Agag and the best of the cattle and the sheep, the conse-
quence of his disobedience was the forfeiture of his throne. (I
Sam. xv., 10-28.)
   The same principle controlled them in their dealings with all
enemies, both foreign and domestic. The reason why they sup-
pressed the revolt of the Benjamites, but permitted that of the
ten tribes to go unresisted, was not because the latter was more
excusable than the former, but because God, by his prophet, com-
manded them in the latter case: "Ye shall not go up, nor fight
against your brethren the children of Israel; return every man to
his house;" but in the former case, when they asked God "Shall
I go up to battle against Benjamin my brother?" the Lord said:
"Go up against him." (I Kings xii., 24; Judges xx., 18, 23, 28.)
If the revolt of the Benjamites were the only one which occurred
in Jewish history, it might suggest the conclusion that God re-
garded revolt as a sufficient cause for war; but the fact that the
revolt of the ten tribes was not resisted prohibits this conclusion,
and shows that while the people had to act upon the decision of
God in each case, God's decision was formed from premises dis-
tinct from those furnished by the quarrel between the parties.
   In the cases of invasion mentioned above, God forbade them to
resist for reasons of his own; and when the whole nation was
tributary to surrounding tribes, as was often the case during the
period of the Judges, they quietly submitted to oppression till
"the spirit of the Lord came upon Othniel," or upon Gideon, or
Jephthah, or Samson; or till some prophet, or some prophetess
like Deborah, called out the armies of Israel in the name of the
Lord. In the period of the kings, when war was contemplated, a

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