But the unity of Israel is the presupposition upon which rests the theocratic relation, the reciprocal attitude between Israel and Jehovah, whereby according to the scheme the course of the history is solely conditioned. In the genuine tradition the presupposition disappears, and in connection with this the whole historical process assumes an essentially different, not to say a more natural aspect. The people are no longer as a body driven hither and thither by the same internal and external impulses, and everything that happens is no longer made to depend on the attraction and repulsion exercised by Jehovah. Instead of the alternating see-saw of absolute peace and absolute affliction, there prevails throughout the whole period a relative unrest; here peace, there struggle and conflict. Failure and success alternate, but not as the uniform consequences of loyalty or disobedience to the covenant. When the anonymous prophet who, in the insertion in the last redaction (chap. vi. 7-10), makes his appearance as suddenly as his withdrawal is abrupt, improves the visitation of the Midianites as the text for a penitential discourse, the matter is nevertheless looked at immediately thereafter with quite different eyes. For to the greeting of the angel, "Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of velour," Gideon answers, "If Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all His miracles, of which our fathers told us ? "He knows nothing about any guilt on the part of Israel. Similarly the heroic figures of the judges refuse to fit in with the story of sin and rebellion: they are the pride of their countrymen, and not humiliating reminders that Jehovah had undeservedly again and again made good that which men had destroyed. Finally, with what artificiality the sins which appear to be called for are produced, is incidentally made very clear. After the death of Gideon we read in chap. viii. 33, "the children of Israel went a-whoring after the Baals, and made Baal Berith their god." But from the following chapter it appears that Baal or El Berith was only the patron god of Shechem and some other cities belonging to the Canaanites; the redactor transforms the local worship of the Canaanites into an idolatrous worship on the part of all Israel. In other cases his procedure is still more simple,--for example, in x. 6 seq., where the number seven in the case of the deities corresponds with the number seven of the nations mentioned in that connection. Ordinarily he is content with "Baals " or "Astartes " or "Asheras," where the plural number is enough to show how little of what is individual or positive underlies the idea, not to mention that Asheras are no divinities at all, but only sacred trees or poles.