The eighteenth chapter of the book of Judges, which records the invasion of the Danites, is evidently an _appendix_, introduced by the words: "In those days there was no king in Israel;" and that this invasion took place not long after the settlement of the people in Canaan, is manifest from the object proposed by it. Judges 18:1. At the time of the conquest, Rahab was a young woman, and may well have survived that event forty years or more. The only apparent indication of a still later composition of the book is that found in the reference to the book of _Jasher_, chap. 10:13. From 2 Sam. 1:18, we learn (according to the most approved interpretation of the passage) that David's elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan was written in the book of Jasher. But we are not warranted in affirming that this title was applied to a book of definitely determined contents. It may have been a collection of national songs, enlarged from age to age. Though Joshua does not appear to have been the author of the book in its present form, we may well suppose that the writer employed, in part at least, materials that came from Joshua's pen. When the land was divided by lot among the several tribes, the boundaries of each inheritance, with the cities pertaining to it, must have been carefully described in writing by Joshua himself, or by persons acting under his direction. It is probable that these descriptions were copied by the author of the book of Joshua; and this is sufficient to account for any diversity of diction that may exist in this part of the book as compared with the purely historic parts. Nothing in the style and diction of this book, or in that of the two following books of Judges and Ruth, indicates that they belong to a later age of Hebrew literature. Certain peculiarities of expression which occasionally appear in them may be naturally explained as provincialisms, or as belonging to the language of conversation and common life.