Book of Judges

Book of Judges (Hebrew: Sefer Shoftim ספר שופטים) is a book of the Bible originally written in Hebrew. It appears in the Hebrew Bible and in the Christian Old Testament. Its title refers to its contents; it contains the history of Biblical judges (not to be confused with modern judges), and of their times, who helped rule and guide the ancient Israelites.

As Judges stands today, the last judge it mentions is Samson. The story of two additional judges, Eli and Samuel, are told in the first of the Books of Samuel. As for the stories at the end of the Book, which are set in the same time period as the judges, but discuss people other than the judges, there is much affinity between these and the Book of Ruth, and many people believe Ruth originally belonged amongst them.

The Judges

The following (in order) are identified as Judges in the Book of Judges. The so-called "great judges" — those deemed worthy of large narratives in the Book — can be researched further by accessing the articles associated with their names:

• Othniel — Won renown by taking the town of Debir and married the daughter of Caleb, Joshua's lieutenant. The story of Othniel (Judges 1:11-15) appears to have been taken from its earlier mention in Joshua 15:15-19.
• Ehud — A left-handed man, who when sent on a mission to bring tribute to the King of Moab, assassinated him with a hidden sword. He then led the Israelites against Moab, reportedly killing 10,000 Moabites and making the nation a tributary of Israel.
• Shamgar — Killed six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad.
• Deborah— A prophetess, the only female judge, and one of Israel's greatest leaders. Headquartered between Bethel and Ramah, she challenged the overlordship of a Canaanite king called Jabin and his military commander Sisera, who was salin a female assassin named Jael. The lengthy poem known as the "Song of Deborah" commemmorates the battle and is considered one of the most ancient parts of the Bible.
• Gideon — An unlikely choice for a hero, Gideon gained victory gained victory over the Midianites with only a small force. The first judge to rise to truly national prominence, he is said to have sired seventy sons through many wives. Gideon turned down the kingship but — in an act reminiscent of Aaron's creation of the golden calf — fashioned for himself a golden ephod, a sacred breastplate, which reportedly became an object of idolatrous adoration in his hometown of Orphah. When none of his legitimate sons assumed leadership after his death, Gideon's illegitimate son Abimelech, with the support of the citizens of [[Schechem], mounted a rebellion, slaying all but one of Gideon's heirs. He was then crowned king in Schechem, where he is still recognized as a legitimate ruler by the Samaritans. He reported governed Israel as king for three years. Although he is given a full chapter in the Book, the biblical editors clearly disapprove of him. He considered an anti-judge, and thus not counted among the true judges.
• Tola — Of him little is said except that he governed for 20 years in the hill country of Ephraim after the death of Abimelech.
• Jair — Ruled in the area of Gilead with his 30 sons as lieutenants.
• Jephthah — A tragic figure, Jephthah was the son of a prostitute who rose to power by leading the Gileadites in battle against the Ammonites. With the Holy Spirit upon him, Jephthah vowed to sacrifice "whatever comes first out of my house" upon his return if God will give him victory. Jephthah won a decisive battle, but when he returned to his home in Mizpah, it was his only daughter who greeted him with an ironically joyous victory dance. Unlike in the story of Abraham's bind of Isaac, there is no last-minute reprieve for Jephthah's daughter. After her sacrifice, Jephthah became embroiled in an inter-tribal war against the Emprhaimites, who had refused to join him in battle against Ammon and denigrated the Gileadites as a renegades. His reign lasted six years.
• Ibzan — A man of Bethlehem who had 30 sons as well as 30 daughters, and ruled for seven years.
• Elon — A Zebulunite who ruled for ten years.
• Abdon — Ruled eight years and had 40 sons.
• Samson — The most famous judge, but also the most tragic, Samson's birth was miraculous; and he had amazing physical powers, related to his fulfillment of the Narzarite vows to avoid strong drink and never cut his hair or beard. Against his parents will, he married a Philistine woman but slew thirty of her kinsmen at their wedding party after she revealed the secret of a riddle he had posed. The father of the bride gives her to another, and when Samson returns, the father offers him her sister. Samson again becomes enraged and burns the Philistines fields. The Philistines avenge this act by killing Samson's beloved, prompting Samson to "smite the Philistines hip and thigh." Later, picking up the jawbone of an ass, he slew a thousand of them single-handed. These exploits display his strength but also his fatal attraction to Philistine women. In the final episode, it is the beautiful Delilah who betrays him to his enemies. With his hair cut and his powers gone, the Philistines take him captive and put out his eyes. He is now as blind phsyically as he has been spiritually. Samson's revenge does nothing to liberate his people, and comes at the tragic and humiliating end of a what had been an uncommonly promising life.

The Appendices

Two intriguing stories are appended to the those relating to the twelve judges.

In the first, (ch. 17-18) a wealthy Ephraimite named Micah creates several valuable sacred objects and hires a Levite to serve as seer/priest in his household. A large group of migrating Danite tribesmen, however, persuade the Levite to join them, taking the artifacts with them. They succeed in conquering the territory of Laish, later called Dan, and set up a tribal sanctuary there. In verse thirty, possibly representing a different version of the story, the priest of the Danites is identitified as Moses' grandson, Johnathan. The story serves both to explain the origins of the Danite priesthood and to denigrate the Danite shrine as idolatrous.

The second is a story of another Levite, whose unfortunate concubine is raped by Benjaminite men near the town of Gibeah. In a scene uncannily similar to the story of Lot's visitors in the city of Sodom, the men demand that the Levite be brought out to them so that they can "know" him. The Levite's host offers the men his own virgin daughter instead, and the mob ends up settling for the Levite's concubine. They brutally rape and torture her, and the next morning her husband discovers her dead. He returns home and divides her body in twelve parts, sending them to each of the Israelite tribes in a dramatic call to join him in vengeance. The other tribes join in a war against Benjamin. In this exceedinly bloody battle, the Benjaminites initially prevail, but the Israelites ultimately gain the upper hand. After the battle, the Israelites pledge not to intermarry with the Benjaminites. Believing that all twelve tribes must survive, however, they decide to provide wives for the remaining Benjaminites by massacring the men of Jabesh-Gilead and forcing their women to marry Benjaminite men. When the number of wives proves insufficient for the Benjaminites, the Israelites instruct them to kidnap wives from among the girls of the town of Shiloh.

(17-18)

• Gibeah and the Levite Concubine (19-21)

Authorship

While the authorship of Judges has traditionally been ascribed to Samuel, the great majority of modern scholars have come to a much more complex conclusion, regarding the work as having hardly any literary unity at all. Many suspect the brief Book of Ruth to have originally been part of the Appendices of Judges, owing to its style, linguistic features and the time period in which its contents are set, it somehow becoming disconnected and misplaced at a later date.

According to textual criticism, the majority of Judges was originally part of a continuous work known as the Deuteronomic History stretching from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, which was later broken up, in accordance with the documentary hypothesis, when the Torah was constructed by its redactor from the early parts of the Deuteronomic History and other writings such as JE and the Priestly source. It is for this reason that many textual critics also treat 1 Samuel 1:1-7:2, which discuss Eli and Samuel, as having originally been part of the Judges section of the Deuteronomic History narrative.

The introduction

Some passages (1:12-15, 2:6-9 and 3:7-11) of the introduction are almost identical to ones in the Book of Joshua. On the other hand, part of the text which surrounds them (1:1-11, 1:16-2:5) instead presents a summarised overview of the events in Joshua, recording differing traditions, such as that concerning Adonibezek (c.f. Joshua 10), or those concerning the continuing presence of Jebusites in Jerusalem to this day (1:21) or not (1:8). For those who support Hexateuch-like theories, where the sources that the documentary hypothesis ascribes to the Torah extend through the Book of Joshua, these passages are often seen as deriving from such sources parallel to the corresponding ones of Joshua.

The majority of critical scholars believe that that first part of the introduction (1:1-2:5) was a late addition to the text, added after the Deuteronomist version of Judges was constructed. Hence 2:6-3:7 is viewed as the original introduction by the Deuteronomist to the Judges period, spinning the later stories to imply that the history of the period involved the Israelites repeatedly turning to worship of other gods, suffering for it, and being alleviated of their suffering by five great leaders, and Abimelech; whereas the original source texts were independent and without the Deuteronomist's alterations, some could be regarded as parallel local events rather than sequential national ones.

The main text

The text is believed under textual criticism to contain further compositional structure. The Deuteronomist here is believed to have combined together six earlier separate texts, one for each of the five Great Judges and one for Abimelech - Ehud (3:11, and 3:13-29), Deborah (4:1b-5:31), Gideon (6-8), Abimelech (9:1-57), Jephthah (11:1-12:7), and Samson (13:2-16), adding passages to join them together (4:1a, 8:29-31, 10:17-18, and 13:1), sometimes interrupting the narrative to do so.

The text is believed to have been further altered by the (possibly later) addition of passages concerning Minor Judges (10:1-5 and 12:8-15) in order to make the total number of Judges a more religiously significant number, harmonizing them chronologically so that the total number of years of their reign (71) is close to the number of years of oppression under the Great Judges (70). The presence of 3:31, placing Shamgar in the list of Judges, is believed to be a later recension, created in order to remove Abimelech from being counted amongst the Judges without disturbing the total number, in order that someone so apparently wicked not taint the role, the name coming from 5:6.

Three of these six earlier texts each contain partly duplicate accounts:

• Judges 4 is believed to be based on two separate stories, one based on the ancient Song of Deborah (Judges 5) concerning Sisera, the other a story concerning Jabin, which had merged together when Barak of Issachar (identified at 5:15 as the one who defeats Sisera) was confused with Barak of Naphtali (identified at 4:6 as the one who defeats Jabin), and consequently Sisera is reinterpreted in Judges 4 as Jabin's general rather than as the chief of a confederation (as in Judges 5)
• Although difficult, to a degree, to separate, there are considered to be two distinct interwoven narratives about Gideon; the first narrative (which includes at least 6:2-6, 6:11-24, 6:33-35, 7:1, and 7:9-25) describing a surprise assault on the Midianites on Mount Gilboa with the fugitive Kings Oreb and Zeeb being killed, and the second narrative (which includes at least 6:7-10, 6:25-32, and 6:36-40, and 8:4-27) discussing Gideon capturing the fugitive Kings Zebah and Zalmunna.
• The narrative of Judges 9, concerning Abimelech, is thought not to have originally contained the parable of Jotham (9:7b-20), it being inserted into the story at a later date. However, the parable itself is believed to be earlier than the rest of the narrative, which is thought to be at least partly based upon it.

In addition, the Samson narrative (13-16) contains two distinct cycles; the first a series of tableaux concerning his romance of a Philistine woman and subsequent problems arising from it; the second is the tale of his relationship with Delilah, which begins with him standing between two gateposts at dawn, and ends with him standing between two temple pillars in the evening. Though these two cycles may have been collected separately from each other, textual criticism favours the view that the whole Samson narrative originates from one author. That the narrative of Samson is easily broken into 12 episodes is considered to be a deliberate literary conceit, owing to the significance of the number 12 to the Israelites.

In addition to such parallel narratives, the story of Jephthah (11:1-12:7) is often suspected to have been subject to later editing in three locations, though the reasons for the first two are not at all clear

• According to 11:1-2, it is Jephthah's own brothers which expelled him, whereas according to 11:7 it is the elders of Gilead
• The message to the Ammonites at 11:12-27 is written as if directed at Moabites.
• 11:35-40 has the appearance of abridging a more extensive original text, glossing over the existence in the text of human sacrifice to Yahweh, which is mentioned fairly obviously at 11:31

The appendices

The Appendices cover two stories from the time of the Judges, rather than Judges themselves, and so only have contextual relationship in passing with the remainder of the work. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the Appendices is that they cover events occurring at the start of the period of Judges not at its end, and so, chronologically, belong before the remainder of the book, not after it. Even more noticeable is that the narrative preceding the Appendices continues in 1 Samuel, as if the interruption due to the narrative of the Appendices were simply not present. Hence scholars view the Appendices as texts that were not originally present but later added due to the shared time frame, though the reason they were inserted at the end rather than the beginning is unclear.

The story of Micah and his Idols (17-18) is thought by some scholars (e.g. Ernst Bertheau, Karl Budde, Rudolf Kittel, and Carl Heinrich Cornill) to be composed from two distinct accounts, one recording Micah making an Ephod and Teraphim and hiring a Levite to be "father and priest", the other recording Micah making a graven image and a molten image and hiring a Levite as a priest who he treated as a son. Were this to be the case, it may indicate that at least part of the Appendices could be considered further continuations of the Jahwist, Elohist, or Priestly sources, hence explaining their origin. However, other critical scholars have proposed that such discrepancies may simply be due to later scribal interpolations. The story is significantly notable as it describes a cult and priesthood at Dan which is mentioned nowhere else in the entire Hebrew Bible, and hence is considered to be based on a particularly early source, prior to later recensions glossing over cult centres of Yahweh outside Jerusalem and Shiloh.

The other story of the appendices (19-21), concerning the Levite and his concubine, is thought to date from a similarly early era based on linguistic similarities to the first appendix. However, as everyone in the story is anonymous, except Phinehas, has lead many Biblical critics to regard the story as fictional. Nevertheless, Hosea (10:9) says that "...since the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel...", evidencing at least the presence of traditions resembling parts of the story, though some scholars, beginning with Noldeke, believe the story is actually based on something from a slightly later time period - the ruining of the tribe of Benjamin by the war between David and the son of Saul.

See also

• Tanakh
• Bible
• Biblical canon
• Documentary hypothesis
• Deuteronomic Cycle

External links

• 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
• Christian translations:
  • Online Bible at GospelHall.org
  • Judges at The Great Books (New Revised Standard Version)
  • Judges at Bible Gateway (Various versions)
  • Judges at Wikisource (Authorised King James Version)
• Articles:
  • Book of Judges article (Jewish Encyclopedia)
  • The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran (Chronology for Israel's Period of the Judges 1412 B.C.E. to 1039 B.C.E.)

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