The stories of Micah and the migration of the Danites (Judg. 17-18) and of the levite and his concubine and the decimation of Benjamin (cc. 19-21) were not included in the deuteronomist book; but there is no reason to doubt that they are of the same age as the other stories in Judges, nor that they were found in one or more of the literary collections of these stories. In cc. 17-18 the character of the narrative in the main suggests the same source with the stories of Samson (J), but there are some duplications and inconsistencies which may be regarded as fragments of a closely parallel account of not greatly inferior age. In cc. 19-21, again, the original story seems to be from J (with perhaps traces of another version in c. 19), but in the following account of the vengeance taken by all Israel on the Benjamites, the older narrative has been united with a second, which in its point of view, its language, and its unimaginable exaggerations, is evidently akin to parts of the Books of Chronicles, or to the youngest additions to the Pentateuch such as the vengeance on the Midianites (Num. 31), and doubtless belongs to the most recent stratum of the Old Testament. Judges i. 1-ii. 5, as has been pointed out above, is foreign to the connection in which it stands, and can only have been introduced there by a late compiler or editor. It is a remnant of the most historical, and presumably the oldest, account of the establishment of the tribes in western Palestine. That, in completer form, it had originally a place in the Judæan history (J) is unquestioned, and in that work it may have been closely followed by stories of exploits such as those of Ehud, Barak, Gideon. Inasmuch as it contradicted the theory of the complete conquest and extermination of the Canaanites, it was left out of the works which described the conquest in that way, but scraps of it were subsequently introduced in Joshua, and finally the whole restored in its present position. It is easily seen that the recurring apostasies into Canaanite heathenism, as well as such stories as those of Deborah and Barak and of Abimelech, assume that the Canaanites had not been killed off to the last man, but, on the contrary, were very much alive; and, in fact, the authors of Judg. ii. 20-iii. 4 feel the necessity of explaining why God had allowed these heathen to survive. The historical value of the stories in Judges is very great. However large the element of legendary embellishment may be in them, they give us a picture of the social and religious conditions in the period preceding the founding of the kingdom which has an altogether different reality from the narratives of the exodus and the wanderings.