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ledgment of the justice, which had hitherto pursued their cri- 

 minality, and under which they were now experiencing all 

 the awful punishments incident to unrepented guilt. 



4th. The arguments produced against the contemporaneous 

 years of Samson and the Phdistines by Vignoles, and which 

 seem to have been the 2;reat cause of his makino: the admi- 

 nistration of Samson and Eli exclusively successive, have not 

 greater force, and therefore, the conclusion founded upon 

 them must be given up. " Is it to be supposed, is it credible, 

 that a young man of eighteen or twenty years of age, undis- 

 tinguished and unknown (d'ailleurs un simple particulier,) 

 should be chosen Judge of the nation against a foreign do- 

 mination consolidated now for twenty years, and this when 

 the Israelites were only numbered from that age ?" (Ex. 30. 14.) 

 Here the whole argument consists in the ambiguous and equi- 

 vocal signification of the word " chosen," (choisi,) and I Avoukl 

 answer it by saying, that Scripture, in no one place informs 

 us, alludes to, or even can be brought to signify, that Samson 

 was " chosen Judge of Israel." He was desigtied i'ov it by 

 Heaven, he was prophesied by an Angel ; he was deserving of 

 it by his exploits, but we cannot say he was chosen to it by his 

 countrymen. In effect, none of the Judges, except Jepthah, 

 seem properlt/ to have been chasen by the election of the tribes, 

 and his authority appears to have been s.uf!icieutly limited, 

 (vide supra). He was only acknowledged " head over the 

 inhabitants of Gilead," and the very fact of the tribe of Judab 



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