Book of Judges

The Book of Judges (Template:Langx; Template:Langx; Template:Langx) is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the Books of Samuel, during which Biblical judges served as temporary leaders.Template:Sfn

The stories follow a consistent pattern: the people are unfaithful to Yahweh; he therefore delivers them into the hands of their enemies; the people repent and entreat Yahweh for mercy, which he sends in the form of a leader or champion (a "judge"; see shophet); the judge delivers the Israelites from oppression and they prosper, but soon they fall again into unfaithfulness and the cycle is repeated.Template:Sfn The pattern also expresses a repeating cycle of wars. But in the last verse (21:25) there is a hint that the cycle can be broken—with the establishment of a monarchy.

While most contemporary critical scholars reject the historical accuracy of the Book of Judges, some argue that it may preserve echoes of early historical memory, social structure, or chiefdom-level warfare.

ContentsEdit

Judges can be divided into three major sections: a double prologue (chapters 1:1–3:6), a main body (3:7–16:31), and a double epilogue (17–21).Template:Sfn

PrologueEdit

Template:Further 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

The opening thus sets out the pattern which the stories in the main text will follow:Template:Sfn

Israel "does evil in the eyes of Yahweh",
The people are given into the hands of their enemies and cry out to Yahweh,
Yahweh raises up a leader,
The "spirit of Yahweh" comes upon the leader,
The leader manages to defeat the enemy, and
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 above.

Judges follows the Book of Joshua and opens with a reference to Joshua's death.<ref>Template:Bibleverse; cf. Template:Bibleverse</ref> 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.<ref name = biblehub>Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on Judges 1, accessed 9 October 2016.</ref> The Israelites meet, probably at the sanctuary at Gilgal or at Shechem,<ref>following on from Template:Bibleverse</ref> and ask the Lord who should be first (in order of time, not of rank) to secure the land they are to occupy.<ref name = biblehub />

Main textEdit

File:12 Tribes of Israel Map.svg

A map of the tribes of Israel

The main text 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.<ref>Template:Bibleverse-nb</ref> 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.Template:Sfn Although some scholars consider the stories not to be presented in chronological order,Template:Sfn the judges in the order in which they appear in the text are:

Othniel (3:9–11) vs. Cushan-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, directing Barak the army captain (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)
Jephthah (11–12:7) vs. the Ammonites
Samson (13–16) vs. the Philistines

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

EpilogueEdit

By the end of Judges, Yahweh's treasures are used to make idolatrous images, the Levites become corrupt, the tribe of Dan conquers a remote village instead of the Canaanite cities, and the tribes of Israel make war on the tribe of Benjamin, their own kinsmen.Template:Sfn The book concludes with two appendices,<ref>Template:Bibleverse-nb</ref> stories which do not feature a specific judge:Template:Sfn

Micah's Idol (Judges 17–18), how the tribe of Dan conquers its territory in the north.<ref>Template:Bibleverse-nb</ref>
Levite's concubine (Judges 19–21): the gang rape of a Levite's concubine leads to war between the Benjamites and the other Israelite tribes, after which hundreds of virgins are taken captive as wives for the decimated Benjamites.<ref>Template:Bibleverse-nb)</ref>

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."Template:Sfn

ChronologyEdit

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.Template:Sfn

Manuscript sourcesEdit

Four of the Dead Sea Scrolls feature parts of Judges: 1QJudg, found in Qumran Cave 1; 4QJudg^a and 4QJudg^b, found in Qumran Cave 4; and XJudges, a fragment discovered in 2001.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=Rezetko>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The earliest complete surviving copy of the Book of Judges in Hebrew is in the Aleppo Codex (10th century CE).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The Septuagint (Greek translation) is found in early manuscripts such as the Codex Colberto-Sarravianus (c. AD 400; contains many lacunae) and the Fragment of Leipzig (c. AD 500).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

CompositionEdit

File:Maarten van Heemskerck 024.jpg

"Gideon thanks God for the miracle of the dew", painting by Maarten van Heemskerck (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg)

Template:See also

HistoricityEdit

Biblical archaeology in the 19th and 20th centuries supported viewing Judges as historical, but while some scholars still see echoes of early history, most critical scholars today reject its historical accuracy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Scholars hold a variety of opinions about the dating and historicity of the Book of Judges.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Some scholars doubt whether any of the people named as judges existed, while others still find truth throughout the book.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> For Israel Finkelstein, the historical reliability of the Book of Judges cannot be assessed by the possible inclusion of heroic tales from earlier eras because it is impossible to know to what extent those tales are based on authentic memories of local heroes and wars preserved over the centuries in the form of epic poems or popular folktales.<ref>Finkelstein, Israel (2001). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. (New York: Free Press), p 120.</ref> Lester Grabbe generally considers the Book of Judges too problematic to use as a historical source for much the same reasons, but acknowledges that an actual historical core can be found in the Judges stories and cannot be ruled out by archeological evidence.<ref>Grabbe, Lester (2007). Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (London & New York: T & T Clark), p 99-100.</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref> Grabbe, Lester (2017). Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?. Bloomsbury. Template:ISBN p. 118: "The book is generally too problematic to use as a historical source." p. 117–118: "Two points relating to history, however, can be made about the book of Judges: first, the picture of a tribal society without a unified leadership engaging in uncoordinated local actions seems to fit the society of the hill country in IA I, as evidenced by the archaeology....Secondly, perhaps the one exception to the historical ambiguity of the text is the Song of Deborah in Judges 5 (cf. Knauf 2005b)."</ref>

Among anthropologists, few believe in a leap from independent tribes to monarchy. Most accept an intermediate stage of chiefdom as described in the Book of Judges. These chiefdoms were inter-tribal confederacies temporarily formed for the purpose of war and led by military chief, called Judge.<ref>Miller, Robert D. (2005). Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the 12th and 11th Centuries. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co), p XV, 6-8.</ref><ref>Portugali, Yuval (1994). From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel. (Eds. Finkelstein, Israel & Naaman, Nadav, Washington: Biblical Archeology Society), p 214, https://archive.org/details/fromnomadismtomo0000unse/page/214/mode/2up</ref> Historian Max Ostrovsky finds the law of bun (herem) a characteristic element of chiefdom-level warfare worldwide, wherever culture reached the level of chiefdom. Similar buns were practiced before the introduction of slavery and empire which are more characteristic of monarchies. Hence the accounts of the Book of Judges probably reflect historical reality.<ref>Ostrovsky, Max (2006). The Hyperbola of the World Order. (Lanham: University Press of America), p 299-300.</ref>

SourcesEdit

The basic source for Judges was a collection of loosely connected stories about tribal heroes who saved the people in battle.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

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 the source material to introduce and conclude his themes.Template:Sfn Archaeologist Israel Finkelstein proposed that the author(s) of the "book of saviours" collected these folk tales in the time of King Jeroboam II to argue that the king's Nimshide origins, which appear to originate in the eastern Jezreel Valley, were part of the "core" territory of Israel.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>

The Deuteronomistic HistoryEdit

A statement repeated throughout the epilogue, "In those days there was no king in Israel"<ref>Template:Bibleverse, Template:Bibleverse-nb, Template:Bibleverse-nb, and Template:Bibleverse-nb</ref> implies a date in the monarchic period for the redaction (editing) of Judges.Template:Sfn 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,<ref>Template:Bibleverse and Template:Bibleverse-nb</ref> and the epilogue, in which the tribe of Judah is assigned a leadership role, implies that this redaction took place in Judah.Template:Sfn

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.Template:Sfn 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").Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

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).Template:Sfn

Themes and genreEdit

File:Judges Bib Germ 1485 d.1 375.jpg

An illustrated page from the Book of Judges in a German Bible, dated 1485 (Bodleian Library)

The essence of Deuteronomistic theology is that Israel has entered into a covenant (a treaty, a binding agreement) with the God Yahweh, under which they agree to accept Yahweh as their God (hence the phrase "God of Israel") and Yahweh promises them a land where they can live in peace and prosperity. Deuteronomy contains the laws by which Israel is to live in the promised land, Joshua chronicles the conquest of Canaan, the promised land, and its allotment among the tribes, Judges describes the settlement of the land, Samuel the consolidation of the land and people under David, and Kings the destruction of kingship and loss of the land.Template:Sfn The final tragedy described in Kings is the result of Israel's failure to uphold its part of the covenant: faithfulness to Yahweh brings success, economic, military and political, but unfaithfulness brings defeat and oppression.Template:Sfn

This is the theme played out in Judges: the people are unfaithful to Yahweh and He therefore delivers them into the hands of their enemies; the people then repent and entreat Yahweh for mercy, which He sends in the form of a judge; the judge delivers the Israelites from oppression, but after a while they fall into unfaithfulness again and the cycle is repeated.Template:Sfn Israel's apostasy is repeatedly invoked by the author as the cause of threats to Israel. The oppression of the Israelites is due to their turning to Canaanite gods, breaking the covenant and "doing evil in the sight of the lord".<ref name="BullockJr.2007">Template:Cite book</ref>

Further themes are present: the "sovereign freedom of Yahweh" (God does not always do what is expected of him); the "satirisation of foreign kings" (who consistently underestimate Israel and Yahweh); the concept of the "flawed agent" (judges who are not adequate to the task before them) and the disunity of the Israelite community, which gathers pace as the stories succeed one another.Template:Sfn

The book is as intriguing for the themes it leaves out as for what it includes: the Ark of the Covenant, which is given so much importance in the stories of Moses and Joshua, is almost entirely missing,Template:Efn cooperation between the various tribes is limited, and there is no mention of a central shrine for worship and only limited reference to a High Priest of Israel (the office to which Aaron was appointed at the end of the Exodus story).Template:Efn Template:Sfn

Although Judges probably had a monarchist redaction (see above), the book contains passages and themes that represent anti-monarchist views. One of the major themes of the book is Yahweh's sovereignty and the importance of being loyal to Him and His laws above all other gods and sovereigns. Indeed, the authority of the judges comes not through prominent dynasties nor through elections or appointments, but rather through the Spirit of God.Template:Sfn

Anti-monarchist theology is most apparent toward the end of the Gideon cycle in which the Israelites beg Gideon to create a dynastic monarchy over them and Gideon refuses.Template:Sfn The rest of Gideon's lifetime saw peace in the land, but after Gideon's death, his son Abimelech ruled Shechem as a Machiavellian tyrant guilty for much bloodshed (see chapters 8 and 9). However, the last few chapters of Judges (specifically, the stories of Samson, Micah, and Gibeah) highlight the violence and anarchy of decentralized rule.Template:Sfn

Judges is remarkable for the number of female characters who "play significant roles, active and passive, in the narratives."Template:Sfn Rabbi Joseph Telushkin wrote,

Most of the great women in the Bible either are married to a great man or related to one. ... A rare exception to this tradition is the prophetess and judge Deborah, perhaps the Bible's greatest woman figure. Deborah stands exclusively on her own merits. The only thing we know about her personal life is the name of her husband, Lapidot.Template:Sfn{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
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NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

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External linksEdit

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Original text

שֹּׁפְטִים – Shoftim – Judges (Hebrew – English at Mechon-Mamre.org)

Jewish translations

Judges at Mechon-Mamre (Jewish Publication Society translation)
Shoftim – Judges (Judaica Press) translation [with Rashi's commentary] at Chabad.org
Book of Judges (G-dcast interpretations)

Christian translations

Judges at Bible Gateway (various versions)
Judges at Wikisource (Authorised King James Version)
Template:Librivox book Various versions

Articles

Book of Judges article (Jewish Encyclopedia)
Template:Cite EB1911 A detailed description from an Anglican point of view.

Brief introduction

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