CHAPTER XII

EXPERIMENTS IN GOVERNMENT


After Sisera was conquered, the Hebrew tribes which had combined
against him immediately fell apart, relapsing into the same state of
disunion and disorganization as before. And very soon other enemies
took advantage of it to plunder and kill.

=The Midianites.=--Among the most harassing of these enemies for a
time were the Midianites, who lived as nomads, roaming over the
deserts just as the Hebrews themselves had done except that they made
their living chiefly by robbery. Every spring just after the wheat and
barley had begun to sprout, covering all the fields with a carpet of
the brightest green, bands of these nomads would drive their flocks
across the Jordan and turn them loose on the young grain while the men
stood guard in armed bands. In the summer and fall after what was left
of the grain had been harvested and beaten out on the threshing floors
they would come again and steal the threshed grain, taking it away in
bags on the backs of camels.

Sometimes the Hebrews would keep the wheat and barley unthreshed with
the sheaves piled up in grain ricks and would thresh it out, a little
at a time, in the low, half-concealed wine presses, which were dug in
the rock. No one's life was safe where these marauders were in the
habit of coming, and no family could be sure of food to carry them