_Structure._--It is now generally agreed that the present adjustment of the older historical books of the Old Testament to form a continuous record of events from the creation to the Babylonian exile is due to an editor, or rather to successive redactors, who pieced together and reduced to a certain unity older memoirs of very different dates; and closer examination shows that the continuity of many parts of the narrative is more apparent than real. This is very clearly the case in the book of Judges. It consists of three main portions: (1) an introduction, presenting one view of the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites (i. 1-ii. 5); (2) the history of the several judges (ii. 6-xvi.); and (3) an appendix containing two narratives of the period. 1. The first section relates events which are said to have taken place after the death of Joshua, but in reality it covers the same ground with the book of Joshua, giving a brief account of the occupation of Canaan, which in some particulars repeats the statements of the previous book, while in others it is quite independent (see JOSHUA). It is impossible to regard the warlike expeditions described in this section as supplementary campaigns undertaken after Joshua's death; they are plainly represented as the first efforts of the Israelites to gain a firm footing in the land (at Hebron, Debir, Bethel), in the very cities which Joshua is related to have subdued (Josh. x. 39).[1] Here then we have an account of the settlement of Israel west of the Jordan which is parallel to the book of Joshua, but makes no mention of Joshua himself, and places the tribe of Judah in the front. The author of the chapter cannot have had Joshua or his history in his eye at all, and the words "and it came to pass after the death of Joshua" in Judg. i. 1 are from the hand of the last editor, who desired to make the whole book of Judges, including ch. i., read continuously with that which now precedes it in the canon of the earlier prophets.[2]