Hardly had the last effort of the Canaanites against their invaders been overthrown on the banks of the Kishon, when a new enemy appeared in the south.

The Philistines, who had planted themselves on the sea-coast shortly before the Israelites had invaded the inland, now turned their arms against the new-comers, and contended with them for the possession of the country.

The descendants of Jacob were already exhausted by struggle after struggle with the populations which surrounded them.
Moabites and Midianites, Ammonites and Bedawin, even the king of distant Mesopotamia, had sacked their villages, had overrun their fields, and exacted tribute from the Israelitish tribes.

The tribes themselves had lost coherence; they had ranged themselves under different "judges" or "deliverers," had forgotten their common origin and common faith, and had even plunged into interfraternal war.

Joshua was scarcely dead before the tribe of Benjamin was almost exterminated by its brethren; and a few generations later, the warriors of Ephraim, the stalwart champion of Israel, were massacred by the Israelites east of the Jordan.
In the south, a new tribe, Judah, had arisen out of various elements--Hebrew, Kenite, and Edomite; and it was not long before there was added to the cleavage between the tribes on the two banks of the Jordan, the further and more lasting cleavage between Judah and the tribes of the north.