Othoniel did so renounce the office of a judge after five and twenty years, that it might then be truly said there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was good in his own eyes. Now concerning the rehearsal of the law by Moses, and the stopping of Jordan, they might indeed be properly said to have been when Israel came out of Egypt; like as we say, that king Edward I. was crowned when he came out of the Holy Land; for so all journeys, with their accidents, commonly take name from the place either whence or whither they tend. But I think he can find no such phrase of speech in scripture, as limiteth a journey by an accident, or saith, by converting the proposition, when Jordan was turning back, Israel came out of Egypt. Indeed most unproper it were to give date unto actions commenced long after, from an expedition finished long before; namely, to say, that king Edward, at his arrival out of Palæstina, did win Scotland, or died at Carlisle. How may we then believe that enterprise, performed so many years after the division of the land, (which followed the conquest at the journey's end,) should be said to have been at the time of the departure out of Egypt? Or who will not think it most strange, that the most notable account of time, serving as the only guide for certain ages in sacred chronology, should not take name and beginning from that illustrious deliverance out of Egypt rehearsed often by God himself among the principal of his benefits to Israel, whereof the very day and month are recorded in scripture, (as likewise are the year and month wherein it expired,) and the form of the year upon that occasion changed; but should have reference to the surprising of a town by 600 men, that robbed a chapel by the way, and stole from thence idols to be their guides, as not going to work in God's name? For this accident, whereupon Codoman buildeth, hath either no time given to it, or a time far different from that which he supposeth, and is indeed rather by him placed in such a year, because it best stood with his interpretation so to have it, than for any certainty or likelihood of the thing itself. Wherefore we may best agree with such as affirm, that the apostle St. Paul did not herein labour to set down the course of time exactly, (a thing no way concerning his purpose,) but only to shew that God, who had chosen Israel to be his people, delivered them out of bondage, and ruled them by judges and prophets unto the time of Saul; did raise up our Lord Jesus Christ out of the seed of David the king, in whose succession the crown was established, and promise made of a kingdom that should have no end. Now in rehearsing briefly thus much, which tended as a preface to the declaration following, (wherein he sheweth Christ to have been the true Messias,) the apostle was so far from labouring to make an exact calculation of time, (the history being so well known, and believed of the Jews to whom he preached,) that he spake as it were at large of the forty years consumed in the wilderness, whereof no man doubted; saying, that God suffered their manners in the wilderness about forty years. In like manner he proceeded, saying, that from the division of the land unto the days of Samuel the prophet, in whose time they required to have a king, there passed about 450 years. Neither did he stand to tell them, that 111 years of bondage, mentioned in this middle while, were by exact computation to be included within the 339 years of the judges; for this had been an impertinent digression from the argument which he had in hand. Wherefore it is a work not so needful as laborious, to search out of this place that which the apostle did not here intend to teach, when the sum of 480 years is so expressly and purposely set down. Now that the words of St. Paul (if there be no fault in the copy through error of some scribe) are not so curiously to be examined in matter of chronology, but must be taken as having reference to the memory and apprehension of the vulgar, it is evident by his ascribing in the same place forty years to the reign of Saul; whereas it is manifest, that those years were divided between Saul and Samuel, yea, that far the greater part of them were spent under the government of the prophet, howsoever they are here included in the reign of the king. As for those, that with so much cunning forsake the general opinion, when it favoureth not such exposition as they bring out of a good mind to help where the need is not over great, I had rather commend their diligence, than follow their example. The words of St. Paul were sufficiently justified by Beroaldus, as having reference to a common opinion among the scribes in those days, that the 111 years of servitude were to be reckoned apart from the 339 years ascribed to the judges; which account the apostle would not in this place stand to contradict, but rather chose to speak as the vulgar, qualifying it with a quasi, where he saith, Quasi quadringentis et quinquaginta annis; "As it were four hundred and fifty years." But Codoman being not thus contented, would needs have it to be so indeed; and therefore disjoins the members to make the account even. In so doing he dasheth himself against a notable text; whereupon all authors have builded, (as well they might and ought,) that purposely and precisely doth cast up the years from the departure out of Egypt, unto the building of Salomon's temple, not omitting the very month itself. Now (as commonly the first apprehensions are strongest) having already given faith to his own interpretation of St. Paul, he thinketh it more needful to find some new exposition for that, which is of itself most plain, than to examine his own conjecture, upon a place that is full of controversy. Thus by expounding, after a strange method, that which is manifest by that which is obscure, he loseth himself in those ways wherein before him never man walked. Surely if one should urge him to give reason of these new opinions, he must needs answer, that Othoniel could not govern above twenty-five years, because then was the taking of Laish, at which time there was no king in Israel: that the Danites must needs have taken Laish at that time, because else we could not reckon backwards from the foundation of the temple, to any action that might be termed the coming of Israel out of Egypt, without excluding the years of servitude; and that the years of servitude must needs be included, for that otherwise he himself should have spent his time vainly, in seeking to pleasure St. Paul with an exposition. Whether this ground be strong enough to uphold a paradox, I leave it to the decision of any judicious reader. And now to proceed in our story. To the time of Jephta are referred the death of Hercules, the rape of Helen by Paris, and the provisions which her husband Menelaus, reigning then in Sparta, and his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, made for her recovery. Others refer this rape of Helen to the fourth year of Ibzan; from which time, if the war of Troy (as they suppose) did not begin till the third of Ailon, or Elon, yet the Greeks had six years to prepare themselves; the rule holding not true in this war, Longa præparatio belli celerem affert victoriam; "That a "long preparation begets a speedy victory;" for the Greeks consumed ten years in the attempt; and Troy, as it seems, was entered, sacked, and burnt in the third year of Habdon. Three years after Troy was taken, which was in the sixth year of Habdon, Æneas arrived in Italy. Habdon, in the eighth year of his rule, died, after he had been the father of forty sons and thirty grandchildren. And whereas it is supposed, that the forty years of Israel's oppression by the Philistines (of which Judg. xiii. 1.) took beginning from the ninth year of Jair, and ended with the last of Habdon; I see no great reason for that opinion. For Ephraim had had little cause of quarrel against Jephta, for not calling them to war over Jordan, if the Philistines had held them in servitude in their own territories; and if Ephraim could have brought 42,000 armed men into the field, it is not likely that they were then oppressed; and had it been true that they were, who will doubt but that they would rather have fought against the Philistines, with so powerful an army, for their own deliverance, than against their own brethren the Israelites? But Ammon being overthrown, it seemed at that time that they feared no other enemy. And therefore these forty years must either be supplied elsewhere, as in the time of Samson, and afterward; or else they must be re ferred to the interregnum between the death of Habdon and the deliverance of Israel by Samson, such as it was. CHAP. XIV. Of the war of Troy. SECT. I. Of the genealogy of the kings of Troy, with a note touching the ancient poets how they have observed historical truth. THE war at Troy, with other stories hereupon depending, (because the ruin of this city by most chronologers is found in the time of Habdon, judge of Israel, whom in the last place I have mentioned,) I rather choose here to entreat of in one entire narration, beginning with the lineal descent of their princes, than to break the story into pieces, by rehearsing apart in divers years the diversity of occurrents. The history of the ancient kings of Troy is uncertain, in regard both of their original and of their continuance. It is commonly held that Teucer and Dardanus were the two founders of that kingdom. This is the opinion of Virgil; which if he (as Reineccius thinks) took from Berosus, it is the more probable: if Annius borrowed it from him, then it rests upon the authority of Virgil, who saith thus: Creta Jovis magni medio jacet insula ponto: In the main sea the isle of Crete doth lie; |