In our sources the history of this period has attached to it a religious interpretation: apostasy, and disobedience to the commands of Jehovah were the causes of the people being sold into the power of their enemies; when they returned to the worship of Jehovah and penitently pleaded for His forgiveness then deliverers were raised up who vanquished their oppressors. This can be nothing but a late interpretation, for the religion of the Book of Judges is of quite a fixed order, and many of the stories recorded in it will not lend themselves to any such interpretation. The hand that supplied this reading of the history of this period has been identified with the author of Deuteronomy, or, as some would prefer to say, with the school of thought that produced that work. There is a religious lesson in this history, as in all history; but it is hardly to be found in a series of apostasies and returns. There are really four separate endeavours to account for the undoubted fact of the Canaanites being spared. (1) Israel was not able to drive them out (Judges i. 19, 27). (2) Israel was only commanded to drive them out by degrees, "lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee" (Deut. vii. 22). (3) It was a providential arrangement to keep the Israelites practised in war (Judges iii. 1, 2). (4) It was due to direct disobedience to the command of Jehovah (Judges ii. 20). The history does not entitle us to assume that the judges were officials who exercised kingly rights over a united Israel. The word translated "Judge" more often means "Deliverer," and this is certainly the part that they play. Of some of the so-called minor judges we know nothing beyond their names, and there is evidence that they have simply been used to fill out a traditional period of 480 years (1 Kings vi. 1). Whenever the "Judges" assumed kingly or judicial functions trouble and rebellion always followed. The figure of Samson displays little fitness for ruling a nation or guiding it in religion, but the stones of his life are illuminating for the understanding of the morality and interests of that age. With this revised conception of the history of the Conquest, and of the events which followed, we are in a better position to estimate the effect of the change from nomadic life to a settled existence, and to understand how critical for the future of the religion of Jehovah this change was.