Judges

Judges covers the years between the death of Joshua and the rise of Israel’s kings. It opens, “Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass” (1:1), and it ends, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (21:25). In between it tells how Israel, settled in the land God gave it, kept turning away from him. Each time, God handed them over to an enemy, they cried out, and he “raised up judges, which delivered them” (2:16). The book shows both God’s patience and the downward slide of a people who forget him.

Chapter 1 shows a conquest left unfinished. Judah fights well but “could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron” (1:19), and tribe after tribe lets the Canaanites stay: “Neither did Manasseh drive out … Neither did Ephraim … Neither did Zebulun” (1:27–30). The angel of the LORD rebukes them at Bochim: “ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this?” (2:2). After Joshua and his elders die, “there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (2:10). Chapter 2 then lays out the pattern of the whole book: Israel does evil and serves Baal, God sells them to their enemies, they groan, God raises up a judge, and when the judge dies “they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers” (2:19).

The first judges follow this pattern closely. Othniel, Caleb’s nephew, delivers Israel from a king of Mesopotamia when “the Spirit of the LORD came upon him” (3:10). Ehud, “a man lefthanded” (3:15), kills the fat king Eglon of Moab with a hidden dagger, and the land rests eighty years. Shamgar kills six hundred Philistines “with an ox goad” (3:31). When Jabin of Canaan oppresses Israel with “nine hundred chariots of iron” (4:3), Deborah, a prophetess who “judged Israel at that time” (4:4), calls Barak to battle. God routs Sisera’s army, and Jael, a tent-dweller’s wife, kills Sisera with a tent peg. Chapter 5, the Song of Deborah, celebrates the victory: “They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera” (5:20).

Midian’s raids drive Israel into caves until the angel of the LORD finds Gideon threshing wheat in secret: “The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour” (6:12). Gideon, “the least in my father’s house” (6:15), tears down his father’s altar to Baal and asks for signs with a fleece. God cuts his army from 32,000 to 300, “lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me” (7:2). At night the three hundred break their pitchers, show their lamps, and cry, “The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon” (7:20), and Midian flees. Gideon refuses to be king: “the LORD shall rule over you” (8:23). Yet he makes a golden ephod that “became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house” (8:27), and after his death his son Abimelech kills seventy brothers to make himself king. Jotham’s parable of the trees and the bramble (9:7–15) warns Shechem, and Abimelech dies when a woman drops a millstone on his head.

After the short notes on Tola and Jair, Israel serves the gods of seven nations (10:6) and suffers under Ammon and the Philistines. When the people say, “We have sinned” and put away their idols, God’s “soul was grieved for the misery of Israel” (10:15–16). Jephthah, “a mighty man of valour” and “the son of an harlot” (11:1), driven out by his brothers, is called back to lead Gilead. He argues Israel’s case with the king of Ammon, and “the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah” (11:29). But he makes a rash vow to offer as a burnt offering “whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me” (11:31), and his only daughter comes out. Afterward a quarrel with Ephraim ends in civil war, and men who cannot say “Shibboleth” are killed at the fords of the Jordan (12:6). Ibzan, Elon and Abdon follow briefly.

The last judge, Samson, is promised before birth to a childless couple of the tribe of Dan: “the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines” (13:5). The Spirit of the LORD gives him great strength. He tears a lion apart, kills a thousand men with “a new jawbone of an ass” (15:15), and carries off the gates of Gaza. Yet he lives by his own desires, marrying a Philistine and visiting a harlot, and he tells his secret to Delilah. His hair is cut, and “he wist not that the LORD was departed from him” (16:20). Blinded and grinding in prison, he prays, “O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once” (16:28), and pulls down the temple of Dagon, killing more Philistines in his death than in his life.

Chapters 17–21 are not in time order after Samson. They are two stories from the period that show what life was like when “there was no king in Israel.” In the first, a man named Micah makes an idol from stolen silver and hires a wandering Levite as his priest, saying, “Now know I that the LORD will do me good” (17:13). The tribe of Dan, looking for land, steals Micah’s idols and priest, conquers the quiet city of Laish, and sets up the graven image there (18). Worship of the LORD has become private, bought and paid for, and mixed with idolatry.

In the second story, a Levite’s concubine is abused and killed by men of Gibeah in Benjamin, in a scene that echoes Sodom (Genesis 19). The Levite cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them through Israel, and all agree, “There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt” (19:30). The tribes gather “as one man” (20:1), but Benjamin refuses to hand over the guilty men, and the war that follows nearly wipes out the tribe. To keep Benjamin from dying out, the other tribes destroy Jabesh-gilead to take wives and then let the Benjamites seize the daughters of Shiloh (21). The book closes with its refrain: “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (21:25).

Several themes run through Judges. The cycle of sin: evil, oppression, crying out, deliverance and rest repeat seven times, each time worse (2:11–19). God’s mercy: he hears his people’s groaning and raises deliverers again and again (2:18; 10:16). The Spirit of the LORD: God works through flawed and unlikely people, a left-handed man, a woman, the least of a poor family, a harlot’s son (3:10; 6:34; 11:29; 14:6), and Hebrews 11:32 lists several among the faithful. Compromise: leaving the Canaanites and their gods brings a snare (2:3). The need for a king: the refrain “no king in Israel” prepares for Samuel, Saul and David, and many see it pointing to God’s ideal king. Readers understand some parts in different ways. Date: this site follows the early date (about 1380–1050 B.C.); many scholars place the judges about 1200–1050 B.C., and both views see some judges overlapping. Jephthah’s vow: some believe he sacrificed his daughter, which the law forbade; others think he gave her to lifelong service at the tabernacle, since the text stresses that “she knew no man” (11:39). The judges’ faults: some read Gideon’s ephod and Samson’s choices as part of the book’s warning, others stress God’s grace in using them. This outline simply follows the text.