The destined punishment had now fallen upon Shechem; it was not long before it fell also upon its destroyer. The town of Thebez had shared in the revolt of Shechem, and Abimelech’s next action was to besiege it. The town itself offered little resistance, but there was a ‘strong tower’ within it, to which its defenders fled for refuge. Abimelech again had recourse to fire. But while the wood was being laid against the gate of the tower, a woman on the parapet above threw a broken millstone upon his head and shattered his skull. The king felt himself dying, and besought his armour-bearer to thrust a sword through his body, lest it might be said that he had been slain by the hand of a woman. But the request was made in vain, and future generations remembered that the last king of Shechem, the murderer of his brethren, had perished ignominiously by a woman’s hands.[356] With Abimelech the sovereignty of the house of Joash seems to have come to an end. We hear no more of Jotham, or of any other attempt to found a monarchy among the northern tribes. The first endeavour to organise Israel into a state had but little success. Once more the old elements of disorder and disunion reigned supreme. The tribes stood further and further apart from each other, and mutual jealousies led to intestine wars. The influence of Ephraim and of the sanctuary of Shiloh grew daily less, and the power of the northern tribes waned at the same time. The Israelites on the eastern side of Jordan began to forget that they had brethren on its western bank; Reuben is lost among the Bedâwin of Moab, and Gilead and Ephraim engage in interfraternal war. Meanwhile a new tribe is rising in the south. Judah has absorbed Simeon and the Kenizzites of Hebron; the few relics of Dan which have been left in the neighbourhood of Zorah have become Jews in all but name, and the Kenites and the Jerahmeelites, and the other foreign settlers in the Negeb have followed the example of the Kenizzites. A common enemy and a common danger has thus forced them together. The enemy were the Philistines. In the early days of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan the Philistines had already made the raids inland which had been checked, if not suppressed, by Shamgar ben-Anath. For a time they had remained quiet in their five cities of the coast. But fresh immigrants from Krete or other Ægean lands introduced new blood and warlike energy. Once more their armed bands marched forth to plunder and destroy. This time they are no longer contented with mere raids; they now aim at conquest. Hardly have the Canaanites been subjugated after long generations of struggle, when the Israelites are called upon to meet a new foe. It is a foe, moreover, which is not enervated by centuries of luxury and culture, not accustomed to foreign rule or divided within itself, but a hardy nation of pirates whose whole life has been passed in fighting, and in seizing the possessions of others.