The next champion of Israel after Abimelech was the son of his uncle Phua,✻ a man of Issachar named Thola. He lived at Samir in the hill-country of Ephraim,

and at Samir he died and was buried, after ruling Israel for twenty-three years.

He was followed by Jair, a man of Galaad, who ruled Israel for twenty-two years.

He had thirty sons, each of whom rode in state on an ass’s colt of his own, and ruled a township of his own; these townships in Galaad are still called Havoth Jair, Jair’s Villages.

And when Jair died, he was buried at a place called Camon.

And now the Israelites matched their old sins with new, defying the Lord and worshipping idols of Baal and Astaroth, gods of Syria, Sidon, Moab, Ammon and Philistia, forsaking the Lord and no longer paying him reverence.

And the Lord, in his anger, left them at the mercy of Philistine and Ammonite,

who for eighteen years wore them down and grievously harassed them. Nor was it only the old land of the Amorrhites beyond Jordan, in Galaad, that suffered;

these Ammonites crossed the Jordan and laid waste Juda, Benjamin and Ephraim, so that Israel was in sore distress.

Thereupon they cried out to the Lord, and confessed that they had sinned against him, in worshipping the gods of the country-side; but the Lord would not listen to them.

So it was, he said, when Egyptian and Amorrhite, Ammonite and Philistine,

Sidonian, Amalecite and Chanaanite harassed you. You cried out to me, and I delivered you from the power of all these,

and still you forsook me, still you paid reverence to alien gods; I will no longer be your deliverer.

Go and ask help from the gods of your own choosing; it is they who ought to befriend you in your hour of need.

We have sinned, the men of Israel answered, punish us as thou wilt, only bring us deliverance now;

and with that they banished the idols of every alien god from their dominions, and went back to the service of the Lord; till at last he took pity on their distress.

The Ammonites had raised their war-cry, and were encamped now in Galaad, with the forces Israel had mustered encamped opposite them at Maspha.

And the word went round among the chiefs of Galaad, Let but a champion come forward to lead us against the Ammonites, and all Galaad will make him its ruler.