Mesopotamia, bondage 8 years,--rest 32 years. Moab, bondage 18 years,--rest 22 years. Canaan, bondage 20 years,--rest 20 years. Midian, bondage 7 years,--rest 32 years. Philistia and Ammon, bondage 18 years,--rest 7, 10, and 8 years. Philistia, bondage 40 years,--rest 20 years.
Adding all these up, we find that the people were in bondage in whole or in part for 111 years, while they had "rest" as the result of their repentance for 151 years. Without pressing this mathematical calculation too far, we must nevertheless conclude that for more than half the time the nation at large obeyed God fairly well.
#50. Great Leaders among the Judges.#--Deborah and Barak, who, by their combined forces drove out the oppressors of Canaan, under Jabin their king. This man had mightily oppressed the people, he having nine hundred chariots of iron, against which poor Israel could bring no corresponding force. Yet when the Lord's time came, he was able to overthrow the armies of Jabin, through the courage and combination of the two persons named. Then the land had rest for forty years. (For a wonderful setting of the song of triumph that Deborah and Barak sang, let the student turn to Professor Moulton's "Literary Study of the Bible," pp. 133-142.)
#51.# After this came the terrible oppression of the Midianites, who, with their camels, their flocks, and herds came on the land like grasshoppers, and ate up everything. Fortunately this oppression lasted only for seven years, otherwise there would have been nothing left. The deliverance from the hosts of Midian came through Gideon, whose three hundred men with torches and trumpets wrought havoc among the Midianite army. What the three hundred at Thermopylæ were to Greece, that this three hundred were to the people of Israel.
#52.# Another terrible experience of Israel was that which came to them in connection with their oldtime foes, the Philistines and the Ammonites. Study the story as told in Judges 10:6-18, together with the narrative of their deliverance under Jephthah. Here the student will see clearly set forth the cause of the "oppression," verses 6-9, and the cause of the deliverance, verses 10-18. Jephthah was a rude man of his times, but then we must realize that rude times call for violent men.