Book of Judges

The book opens with the Israelites in the land that God has promised to them, but worshiping "foreign gods" instead of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and with the Canaanites still present everywhere.[6] Chapters 1:1–2:5 are thus a confession of failure, while chapters 2:6–3:6 are a major summary and reflection from the Deuteronomists.[7]

The opening thus sets out the pattern which the stories in the main text will follow:[5]

1. Israel "does evil in the eyes of Yahweh",
2. the people are given into the hands of their enemies and cry out to Yahweh,
3. Yahweh raises up a leader,
4. the "spirit of Yahweh" comes upon the leader,
5. the leader manages to defeat the enemy, and
6. peace is regained.

Once peace is regained, Israel does right and receives Yahweh's blessings for a time, but relapses later into doing evil and repeats the pattern set forth above.

Judges follows the Book of Joshua and opens with a reference to Joshua's death (Joshua 24:29; cf. Judges 1:1). The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges suggests that "the death of Joshua may be regarded as marking the division between the period of conquest and the period of occupation", the latter being the focus of the Book of Judges.[8] The Israelites meet, most likely at the sanctuary at Gilgal or at Shechem (following on from Joshua 24:1–33) and ask the Lord who should be first (in order of time, not of rank) to secure the land they are to occupy.[8]

Map of the tribes of Israel

The main text (3:11–16:31) gives accounts of six major judges and their struggles against the oppressive kings of surrounding nations, as well as the story of Abimelech, an Israelite leader (a judge [shofet] in the sense of "chieftain") who oppresses his own people. The cyclical pattern set out in the prologue is readily apparent at the beginning, but as the stories progress it begins to disintegrate, mirroring the disintegration of the world of the Israelites.[9] Although some scholars consider the stories not to be presented in chronological order,[10] the judges in the order in which they appear in the text are:

• Othniel (3:9–11) vs. Chushan-Rishathaim, King of Aram; Israel has 40 years of peace until the death of Othniel. (The statement that Israel has a certain period of peace after each judge is a recurrent theme.)
• Ehud (3:11–29) vs. Eglon of Moab
• Deborah the prophetess, accompanied by Barak the army leader (4–5), vs. Jabin of Hazor (a city in Canaan) and Sisera, his captain (Battle of Mount Tabor)
• Gideon (6–8) vs. Midian, Amalek, and the "children of the East" (apparently desert tribes)
• Abimelech (9) (who is traditionally counted as a king not a judge, and is considered evil) vs. all the Israelites who oppose him
• Jephthah (11–12:7) vs. the Ammonites
• Samson (13–16) vs. the Philistines

There are also brief glosses on six minor judges: Shamgar (3:31), Tola and Jair (10:1–5), Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon (12:8–15).[11] Some scholars have inferred that the minor judges were actual adjudicators, whereas the major judges were leaders and did not actually make legal judgements.[12] The only major judge described as making legal judgments is Deborah (4:4).[13]

By the end of Judges, the Israelites are in a worse condition than they were at the beginning, with Yahweh's treasures used to make idolatrous images, the Levites (priests) corrupted, the tribe of Dan conquering a remote village instead of the Canaanite cities, and the tribes of Israel making war on the tribe of Benjamin, their own kinsmen.[14] The book concludes with two appendices (17–21), stories which do not feature a specific judge:[15]

• Micah's Idol (17–18), how the tribe of Dan conquers its territory in the north
• Battle of Gibeah (19–21), a war between Benjamin and the other tribes.

Despite their appearance at the end of the book, certain characters (like Jonathan, the grandson of Moses) and idioms present in the epilogue show that the events therein "must have taken place… early in the period of the judges."[16]

Judges contains a chronology of its events, assigning a number of years to each interval of judgment and peace. It is overtly schematic and was likely introduced at a later period.[17]

The basic source for Judges was a collection of loosely connected stories about tribal heroes who saved the people in battle.[21] This original "book of saviours" made up of the stories of Ehud, Jael and parts of Gideon, had already been enlarged and transformed into "wars of Yahweh" before being given the final Deuteronomistic revision.[22] In the 20th century, the first part of the prologue (chapters 1:1–2:5) and the two parts of the epilogue (17–21) were commonly seen as miscellaneous collections of fragments tacked onto the main text, and the second part of the prologue (2:6–3:6) as an introduction composed expressly for the book. More recently, this view has been challenged, and there is an increasing willingness to see Judges as the work of a single individual, working by carefully selecting, reworking and positioning his source material to introduce and conclude his themes.[23]

A statement repeated throughout the epilogue, "In those days there was no king in Israel" (Judges 17:6, 18:1, 19:1, and 21:25) implies a date in the monarchic period for the redaction (editing) of Judges.[24] Twice, this statement is accompanied with the statement "every man did that which was right in his own eyes", implying that the redactor is pro-monarchy, (Judges 17:6 and 21:25) and the epilogue, in which the tribe of Judah is assigned a leadership role, implies that this redaction took place in Judah.[25]

Since the second half of the 20th century most scholars have agreed with Martin Noth's thesis that the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings form parts of a single work.[26] Noth maintained that the history was written in the early Exilic period (6th century BCE) in order to demonstrate how Israel's history was worked out in accordance with the theology expressed in the book of Deuteronomy (which thus provides the name "Deuteronomistic").[27] Noth believed that this history was the work of a single author, living in the mid-6th century BCE, selecting, editing and composing from his sources to produce a coherent work.[28] Frank Moore Cross later proposed that an early version of the history was composed in Jerusalem in Josiah's time (late 7th century BCE); this first version, Dtr1, was then revised and expanded to create a second edition, that identified by Noth, and which Cross labelled Dtr2.[29]

Scholars agree that the Deuteronomists' hand can be seen in Judges through the book's cyclical nature: the Israelites fall into idolatry, God punishes them for their sins with oppression by foreign peoples, the Israelites cry out to God for help, and God sends a judge to deliver them from the foreign oppression. After a period of peace, the cycle recurs. Scholars also suggest that the Deuteronomists also included the humorous and sometimes disparaging commentary found in the book such as the story of the tribe of Ephraim who could not pronounce the word "shibboleth" correctly (12:5–6).[30]