reinterpreted in a national sense, yield a supply of national heroes, who then can be introduced as Shôpheṭîm. But the harmonising of national stories was not pushed to a sufficient degree of continuity to form a foundation for a fixed historical picture. It is therefore better, in forming our judgment on the dignity of the so-called Judges, to allow ourselves to be determined more by the name Shôpheṭîm itself than by the nature of the nationalised myths attached to it. Grätz[626] has quite recently renewed the attempt to render doubtful the existence of the Shôpheṭîm-institution among the Hebrews, and especially combated any connexion of the Shôpheṭîm with the Punic Suffetes; and in this the judgment of the most competent professional authorities is on his side. But, not to speak of his view of the Shôpheṭîm as representatives of an institution, he sets up a linguistic conjecture which arouses many a doubt. For it requires strong etymological imagination to deny to the Hebrew word shâphaṭ the signification _judicare_. Sober Biblical students and philologists will not be imposed on by the passages quoted by Grätz in justification and support of his conjecture. Not to mention other passages, compare only the words of Is. I. 17, 23 with the passages of Scripture which, Grätz says, speak of rushing up to the aid of ‘oppressed or injured persons, widows and orphans.’ The word rîbh is not calculated to support this conjecture. But, that the Shôpheṭîm, though not hereditary nor even paid officers of state (as no one would pretend they were), were yet certainly heads of the state, appointed by the voice of the people, is proved by the mere fact that the Shôphêṭ was regarded in the same light as the Melekh, as a species of the same genus. So e.g. in Judges IX. 6, 16, where the instalment of a Shôphêṭ is denoted by hamlîkh, and Judges XVII. 6, XVIII. 1, XXI. 25, where the interregnum between one Shôphêṭ and the next is described as a time ‘in which no melekh (king) reigned over Israel, and every one could do what was right in his own eyes.’ And the consideration of the word Shôphêṭ itself leads to the conviction that the office was an institution suggested by Phenician custom. For it is found in no other Semitic language in the same signification as in these two dialects of Canaan.[627] The Samaritan, in which Shâphâṭ is also found,[628] scarcely requires separate mention. So the Hebrews, as was so often the case, must have borrowed the term shôphêṭ, together with the corresponding institution, from their cultivated neighbours; for it cannot be assumed that the expression for an idea implying so advanced a stage of civilisation as Judge had its origin in the primeval age of ethnological community between Hebrews and Canaanites. And later, when the Hebrews began to appreciate the institution of Kingship, as existing in many neighbouring nations,[629] and wished to be ruled by kings, the theocratic historian himself describes this innovation as borrowed,