B.C. 1161. THE JUDGES OF ISRAEL. 23 the upper springs and the lower springs. He judged Israel forty years. He was succeeded by Aioth/ who had equal use of both his hands, and slew Eglon, a fat king, and so delivered Israel, and himself defended Israel, and died the same year. He judged Israel. • Eighty years afterwards, Shamgar slew six hundred men with a ploughshare. Deborah, the wife of Barachor Lapidoth, Sisera having been slain by the hand of Jael, the wife of Abner* the Kenite, who gave him a cup of milk, at length slew Jabin, whose general Sisera was, and sang a song over him. Deborah judged Israel forty years. Gideon having been saluted by an angel to whom he offered flesh on Petra, and who was called Jerubbaal from having destroyed an altar, having received a sign by means of a fleece, with three hundred men who lapped water like dogs, with broken pitchers and clanging trumpets, overthrew four kings, Oreb, Zeb, Zeba, and Salmana. Abimelech, the son of Jerubbaal by hie concubine, being made king in Sichem over the Sichemites, slew his seventy brothers, leaving only one surviving, who told the Sichemites a parable about the brier, the fig tree, the vine and the bramble. He also destroyed this same Sichem, with Gaal, its king, by means of Zebul, and died himself in the town of Thesbe, having a millstone thrown upon him by the hand of a woman. Abimelech, the son of Jerubbaal, reigned over Israel three years. Thola succeeded Abimelech, and judged Israel twenty-three years. Jair judged for twenty-two years. Jephthah, who had been discarded by the children of Israel as illegitimate, and who abode in the country of Thob, was afterwards made prince over them ; and, having bound himself by a vow, in consequence of his victory over the Ammonites, he sacrificed his daughter, after giving her two months and forty days to bewail her virginity. Chechoiat6 slew forty-two thousand of Ephraim by Shibboleth and Sibboleth, trying them at the fords of Jordan. Jephthah judged Israel six years. After him Abesan judged Israel seven years. • Called in the Bible Ehud. * Called in the Bible Heber. ' Called in the Bible Gilead.