The king of Mitanni was numbered among the enemies of Egypt; nevertheless he had not joined the invading hordes in their attack upon the valley of the Nile. Can it have been that he lingered in what had once been an Egyptian province, that land of Canaan which his forefathers had coveted before him? The Egyptian Empire had fallen, the very existence of Egypt itself was at stake, and the favourable opportunity had come at last when Naharaim might make herself the mistress of Western Asia. Babylonia was powerless like Egypt, Assyria had not yet put forth its strength, and the Hittites barred the old road which had led from Chaldæa to the West. The armies of Chushan-rishathaim[294] of Naharaim, accordingly, made their way through Syria to the southern frontiers of Palestine. They were no longer associated with those of Babylonia, as in the days of Ebed-Tob; for a short while Naharaim ruled supreme on the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. For eight years both the Canaanites and their Israelite and Kenizzite invaders were forced to submit to its sway. The work of conquest was checked by the stronger hand of the foreign power. How soon after the Israelitish settlement in Canaan the invasion of Chushan-rishathaim must have been is shown by the fact that Othniel, the Kenizzite, the brother of Caleb, and the conqueror of Kirjath-Sepher, was the hero who ‘delivered’ Israel from the foreign yoke. How the deliverance was effected we do not know, whether through the death of the king of Naharaim, or through a revolt of the Canaanites and Syrians, or whether it was only the Israelitish tribes and not the Canaanitish cities to which it came. What is certain is that both the ‘oppression’ and the deliverance followed closely on the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites. Caleb belonged to the same generation as Moses and Joshua, and though Othniel was his ‘younger brother,’ he too must be counted in it. Joshua can hardly have been dead before Israel had passed under the yoke of Naharaim. The supremacy of Naharaim extended to the southernmost borders of Palestine. It was not an Ephraimite who ‘delivered’ Israel, but the Edomite chief at Hebron, where the tribe of Judah had not yet established itself. The fact is noteworthy: the first of the ‘Judges’ was a Kenizzite of Edomite origin, and the yoke which he shook off was one which pressed equally upon Israelites and Canaanites. In the very act of conquering and exterminating the Canaanites, Israel was forced to sympathise and join with them against a common foe.