An Introduction to Judges

The book of Deuteronomy prepares us -- and the nation of Israel -- for the entrance into Canaan and the  conquest of the Promised Land.  The book of Joshua then describes the conquest of Canaan. The book of Joshua, like its namesake, is upbeat, with an emphasis on miraculous events as YHWH, working through Joshua's leadership, delivers the land over to Israel.  But after the leadership of Joshua comes the Old Testament book of Judges. In this book, the line of leadership, from Moses to Joshua, dies out. Israel is ruled by a chaotic collection of leaders called "judges".  As these various judges reign in Israel, over two or three centuries, Israel's commitment to YHWH decays.

I find Judges a depressing book. Whereas Joshua has upbeat passages about the successes of the Israelites against a corrupt pagan populace, Judges counters this with episodes describing decay and corruption within the people of Israel.  The book is rated PG-13.  That last act of the blinded Samson may make it into Vacation Bible School curriculum but Samson's constant dalliance with prostitutes does not.  The judge Gideon lays a fleece and with a small band conquers the Philistines, but later he makes offerings to idols. The violence in the book includes a nail driven through an enemy soldier's head and a brutal gang rape followed by a massacre.

The theme of the book is repeated four times in the book, 

"In those days Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes." 

The anarchy of these centuries of judges explains why the people were eventually interested in having a king, an event that is described in I Samuel, the book that follows (after the brief interlude of Ruth.)

As described in this Bible Project video, the book of Judges is very disturbing.  The point of this disturbing book is that when the Israelites moved away from submission to YHWH and absorbed the idols and morals of the people around them, their nation deteriorated. This is emphasized in a sequence of downhill spirals of idolatry, oppression, repentance, deliverance and renewal, followed later by idolatry.

Problems and Questions

In addition to the repeated violence of the book, a number of questions arise in the study of the text. One of these is the dating of events. This issue with dates goes back to the Exodus -- one has to make different date assumptions depending on whether one has an early or a late date for the Exodus from Egypt and those dates depend on how precisely one interprets time periods such as "forty years".  Is "forty years" sometimes used to mean  a generation or a similarly long period of time? And do some of these time periods overlap?

A similar problem arises with the Old Testament use of large numbers.  At times an extremely large number of people are reported killed in a battle.  For example, according to Judges 12: 6, forty two thousand Ephraimites are killed in a dispute between Jepthah of Gilead and the tribe of Benjamin. If the NIV translation of the text is accurate then not only is this fight a massive battle larger than any in the American Civil War, but the Ephraimite dead exceed the total population of that tribe as given a generation or two previously in Numbers 26: 37. Similar examples abound in this book -- and also in subsequent Old Testament histories such as the book of Samuel or Kings. Some of these problems challenge our understanding of the ancient Hebrew.  I will try to devote a Sunday essay to this.

Resources and References

My practice is to read through the text from the New International Version (NIV), copied into the blog and italicized in blue.  At the head of each blue paragraph of text I place a short title; after the text I place my thoughts or comments in black.  I begin this process with my own reactions and thoughts and then supplement these comments with gleanings from a commentary or two.

The real goal of this blog is to force me to read every verse thoughtfully.  My comments are part of that process, creating a certain accountability for me in this study.  I hope that you, too, read the passages thoughtfully!   Feel free to disagree -- or to react in other ways! (I place hyperlinks in pink, created so that one can click on a link and see the linked site open in another window... and go down a rabbit hole if you wish!)

For the book of Judges I have found two commentaries helpful. 

• The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (published by Eerdmans) has a commentary on Judges by Barry Webb.  I have that on my Kindle. (This the same series of commentaries that has Hubbard's beautiful commentary on Ruth.)  
• I have also used a commentary by Herbert Wolf found in the third volume of the Expositor's Bible Commentary.

In addition, in the online commentaries provided by EasyEnglishBible, is one online commentary on Judges. (The Easy English Bible commentaries are easy to read, with deliberately simple language intended for those for whom English is a second language. The Old Testament text is included in the commentary.) 

There are a variety of free short courses or studies on Judges available online. I note a few below. (All of these seem to have a high view of Scripture but I have not investigated these very seriously.)

• The Gospel Coalition has a free ten-week online class (ten separate printed lectures) on the book. 
• There is an extensive written summary at a biblestudytools.com website.  
• Another summary, a shorter one, is at this Crossways.org website.
• There is an Agape Catholic Bible Study here. 
• There is an inductive study (a study led by questions) here.
• A study from Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee (from the 1990s) is available here.
• A study, apparently from Matthias Media, is available here as a pdf download. It includes this map (from Wikipedia) of the presumed possessions of Israel at the start of the time of the Judges.

We will begin the book of Judges towards the end of the coming week!