quality which leads to the narrative consequences of that episode and contributes to the resolution of the book. James Martin notes that the book extends the image of local battles to include all of Israel, which could not have been politically unified (1975:6–7); I, instead, submit a spiritual entity had evolved in the desert. George E. Mendenhall finds that ‘early Israel until the establishment of the Monarchy actually constituted the sovereignity of Yahweh as the functional system that enabled