DAUNTLESS IN BATTLE, IGNORANTLY BRAVE 293 JUDGES XV. XXII. PLEASURE AND PERIL IN GAZA 307 JUDGES XVI. 1-3. XXIII. THE VALLEY OF SOREK AND OF DEATH 319 JUDGES XVI. 4-31. XXIV. THE STOLEN GODS 335 JUDGES XVII., XVIII. XXV. FROM JUSTICE TO WILD REVENGE 348 JUDGES XIX.-XXI. _THE BOOK OF RUTH._ I. NAOMI'S BURDEN 363 RUTH I. 1-13. II. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 375 RUTH I. 14-19. III. IN THE FIELD OF BOAZ 386 RUTH I. 19-II. 23. IV. THE HAZARDOUS PLAN 397 RUTH III. V. THE MARRIAGE AT THE GATE 408 RUTH IV. INDEX 421 THE BOOK OF JUDGES. I. _PROBLEMS OF SETTLEMENT AND WAR._ JUDGES i. 1-11. It was a new hour in the history of Israel. To a lengthened period of serfdom there had succeeded a time of sojourn in tents, when the camp of the tribes, half-military, half-pastoral, clustering about the Tabernacle of Witness, moved with it from point to point through the desert. Now the march was over; the nomads had to become settlers, a change not easy for them as they expected it to be, full of significance for the world. The Book of Judges, therefore, is a second Genesis or Chronicle of Beginnings so far as the Hebrew commonwealth is concerned. We see the birth-throes of national life, the experiments, struggles, errors and disasters out of which the moral force of the people gradually rose, growing like a pine tree out of rocky soil.