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A Connection of Sacred and Profane History
A Connection of Sacred and Profane History Author:Michael Russell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK I. CONTAINING A CONNECTION OF SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY, FROM THE DEATH OF JOSHUA TO THE COM. MENCEMENT OF REGAL GOVERNMENT AMONG THE HEBREW... more »S. CHAPTER I. ON THE CIVIL AND POLITICAL CONSTITUTION OF THE ANCIENT HEBREWS. No portion of Jewish history is more obscure or imperfectly recorded than that which extends from the death of Joshua to the reign of Saul. Not only is our path obstructed by the ordinary difficulties which arise from a defective chronology and a meagre detail of facts; we have also to encounter those greater obstacles which attach to an ignorance almost entire, as well in respect to the general state of society which subsisted during that long period of nearly five hundred years, as in regard to the precise nature of the political relations which appear to have united, in a kind of federal constitution, the Hebrew tribes on both sides of the Jordan. We are supplied only with a few notices of persons, offices, and characters, which it is not easy to refer to the operation of known or fixed principles. The incidents which occupy the attention of the reader seem to bear an affinity to a condition of things which is no where clearly developed; and, accordingly, he no sooner attempts to form into a regular narrative, the events which befell the remarkable people whose history is contained in the book of Judges, than he has to deplore the want of those luminous views which belong to the more perfect records of a later age. The commission intrusted to Moses and Joshua appears to have had no other object besides that of conducting the children of Israel into the promised land. When the former perceived himself at the point of death, he named a successor; who, under the guidance of the supernatural light which was bestowed upon the leader ...« less