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Introduction to Judges
Named after the Judges of the transitional period between the conquest of the land and the establishment of the Monarchy, this book has traditionally been ascribed to Samuel. As is the case with all of the books thus far, however, oral tradition and subsequent editing and compiling is the story of this work. Its primary fabric is a prose narrative, though it contains a long poem, and different sections of the book have distinct editorial formulas. The refrain "In those days there was no king in Israel" unifies chs 17-22 and thus represents a retrospective perspective of the author/s. It is clear that Judges was not completed before 722 BCE, as there is reference to the Assyrian invasion of Samaria in 18.30.
The initial chapters portray the southern tribe of Judah as uniquely succesful and the other, northern, tribes as faithless and hapless. The final chapters focus on the misdeeds of the tribe of Dan (in the far north) and Benjamin (just north of Judah), the very sites of shrines that rivaled Judah's own Temple in Jerusalem, and give special attention to the misdeeds of Saul's hometown Gibeah and his tribe Benjamin. Thus, though neither is mentioned, the shadows of David and Saul, heroes of southern and northern culture respectively, loom over the concluding section.
By the end of the book, the tribes are fractious, the judges are flawed, and without centralized religious and political leadership Israel's sense of identity and covenant are at risk of gradual assimilation into local cultures.
In its earliest version, Judges was an anthology of frontier legends about the time "when locks were long in Israel." This indicates a preexilic perspective, but in its current state, the book of Judges is framed in the context of growing chaotic lawlessness that could only be remedied by Kings, not Judges. But not just any Kings, Davidic Kings, whose shrine was the Jerusalem Temple, are who will save Israel. "There was no king" is the final refrain of Judges, suggesting the necessity of centralized political and religious authority.
Judges ends without closure, demanding that readers turn the page, as it were, to the next installment of Israel's story. In Christian Bibles, the next book is Ruth with its genial portrait of village life during the days of the Judges, its charming and quietly powerful female characters, and the birth of King David's grandfather. In Jewish Bibles, the next installment of the story comes in 1 Samuel with the emergence of David and his dynasty in Jerusalem.
Judges
Judg 1.1-2.5: The days after Joshua. Contradicting Joshua in multiple places, the account here suggests the prominent and singular success of Judah in terms of conquest, gesturing towards David without mentioning him.
Judg 1.1-20: The success of the Judahites.
Judg 1.8: 'Judah took Jerusalem,' contradicted by v 21. and 19.10-12.
Judg 1.10: In previous passages Caleb as an individual is credited with the attack on Hebron, not the tribe of Judah; here the tribe as a whole is credited.
Judg 1.19: The infamous chariots of iron. One could suppose that it was on the shoulders of the Israelites alone to commit to such conquest; though the Lord was with them, it was the actions of the Israelites themselves that determined success (as it was with Joshua's battles).
Judg 1.21-36: The failures of the northern tribes. The tribes that later comprised the northern kingdom of Israel fail to uproot the Canaanites in their areas.
Judg 2.1-5: An angel delivers a mixed message. A denouncement from the angel for religious impurity.
Judg 2.1: The angel emerges from the standing stones of Gilgal that the Israelites erected upon crossing the Jordan river.
Judg 2.4: In Gen 35.8, Bethel is said to be the site of a "weeping tree," here, the Israelites lift up their voices and weep.
Judg 2.6-16.31: The days of the judges. The core of the book is comprised of tales about the era's leaders.
Judg 2.6-3.6: Introduction to the days of the judges.
Judg 2.6-10: Recap of the ending of Joshua. Resumption of the narrative from Josh 24.28-31; at one point, this may have joined Judges to Joshua, suggesting that 1.1-2.5 are a later addition.
Judg 2.8: Joshua dies at the age of one hundred ten years, identical to that of Joseph.
Judg 2.11-23: The formula of the test of Israel's faith. The first appearance of the formula (vv. 11-19) that frames the central section (3.7-11; 3.12,15,30; 4.1-3,23; 5.31; 6.1,6; 8.28; 10.6-7,10; 11.33; 13.1): Israel sins, angering the Lord who allows a foreign people to dominate them, they pray for mercy, the Lord raises up a "judge" to deliver them, and the land has rest.
Judg 2.11: 'Baals,' meaning all foreign gods, not just the male Canaanite storm-god.
Judg 2.13: 'Astartes,' referring to Astarte, used here by the narrator as a generic term for all female deities.
Judg 2.19: 'Relapse and behave worse:' the book has a plunging arc; with each repetition of the cyclical formula Israel is worse off.
Judg 3.1-6: List of the peoples who will test Israel. A later addition, justifying Israel's incomplete conquest of Canaan. As with other lists of the peoples of Canaan, this one is inconsistent.
Judg 3.7-8.28: The deliverers.
Judg 3.7-11: Othniel. A judean Judge that goes to war with the occupying force of King Cushan-rishathaim.
Judg 3.10: The spirit of the Lord, an inspiring force that will also inspire Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Saul, and later, David.
Judg 3.12-30: Ehud. A Benjaminite warrior undertakes a solo mission to assassinate the Moabite king occupying Jericho.
Judg 3.31: Shagmar. A foreign mercenary who aided Israel, killing six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad; a cattle prod.
Judg 4.1-5.31: Deborah and Barak. A miraculous victory of Israelite forces under the command of Barak over the Canaanites led by Sisera.
Judg 4.1-24: Barak and the two women. Commissioned by Deborah, the warrior Barak wins the battle over the Canaanites, but because of his initial reluctance (v. 8), is denied the supreme martial honor, killing the enemy leader. Deborah told Barak that Sisera would fall to a woman (v. 9), whom we assume will be Deborah herself. As it turns out, a second woman, Jael, ends up besting both men "she comes out to meet" (vv. 18,22), stealing life from Sisera and "glory" (v. 9) from Barak.
Judg 4.5: Deborah is the only leader in Judges actually depicted as functioning as a "judge" to settle disputes.
Judg 5.1-31: The Song of Deborah. This ballad is one of the oldest extant pieces of Hebrew writing; it is difficult in many places. As a literary specimen it has more in common with the Late Bronze Age Syrian mythic poetry than with Hebrew poetry from the Iron Age.
Judg 5.17: Confused geography on the location of the tribe of Dan.
Judg 5.22: "Then loud beat the horses' hoofs with the galloping, galloping of his steeds." No idea why, but I really like this passage in this translation.
Judg 5.24-27: Sisera's death is described in slow motion and, possibly, in sexual terms ("feet" is a frequent euphemism for genitals).
Judg 5.28-31: Sisera's mother's anguish over waiting for a son who will never return humanizes her, uncommon for Israelite depictions of the Canaanites.
Judg 6.1-8.28: Gideon. Gideon and his warriors rescue Israel from seasonal attacks by Midianites and their allies. Gideon purifies Israel territory from the internal threat of assimilation to Canaanite religion before removing an external threat by driving out invaders from the east, and then leads a war party across the Jordan on a reprisal raid; traditions about two different heroes may be combined here.
Judg 6.1-8.3: Gideon and the wine presses.
Judg 6.1-10: Midiniate raids.
Judg 6.7-10: These verses may be a later addition, as they are missing in a Dead Sea Scroll manuscript of this chapter.
Judg 6.11-24: Gideon's commissioning. Mirrors Moses's call narrative in Ex 3-4; there is a charge, reluctance on the part of the recipient, divine reassurance, a theophany, and finally, the establishment of a shrine. Gideon is an Abiezrite, a subdivision of the tribe of Manasseh.
Judg 6.22: Gideon fears death from seeing the angel of the Lord face to face.
Judg 6.25-32: Gideon's ritual preparations for warfare. Gideon must destroy the shrine to Baal before proceeding into battle.
Judg 6.27: Gideon has reason to be afraid of his family for his actions; they benefited from stewardship of the shrine, thus, Gideon is sacrificing economic and social status due to his commitment to the lord.
Judg 6.32: Jerubbaal is Gideon's given name, its translation is tricky and indicates a possible blending of narratives.
Judg 6.33-35: Gideon musters his troops.
Judg 6.36-40: Gideon tests God twice with the fleece. The use of 'Elohim' in reference to the Lord God here suggests that this version of the episode combined earlier stories.
Judg 7.1-8: The Lord tests Gideon twice with reduction of troops. Just as Gideon had tested God, now God tests Gideon, reducing his troops from 30,000 to 300, showing that it is ultimately God, not a large army, that provides victory.
Judg 7.9-14: Gideon's nighttime revelations. A barely cake, symbol of settled agriculturalists, crushes the Midianite tents, symbolic of nomadic transhumanists.
Judg 7.15-23: The midnight raid on the Midianite camp. Another instance of the Israelites' use of unconventional (read: inferior) weaponry beating the odds; the Midianites end up killing eachother in confusion.
Judg 7.24-8.3: The execution of enemy leaders.
Judg 8.2-3: Gideon is able to avoid violence through the skillful use of language, just as his father had in Ophrah. Really amusing, the Ephraimites have to safe face by conceding prospective spoils, lest they admit inferiority to Abiezer.
Judg 8.4-21: Gideon and the three towns.
Judg 8.22-28: Gideon and the ephod. Gideon refuses kingship and furnishes his family shrine with a divinatory device; his story ends ambiguously, he delivered Israel from the Midianites, but his legacy is tainted by the 'stain of idolatry'.
Judg 8.27: 'Ephod,' elsewhere a gilded vest worn by priests containing divinatory objects, here functioning as a ritual object; for another ephod in Judges, see 17.5.
Judg 8.29-16.31: The "empty men." The term "empty men" is used in the narratives of Abimelech and Jephthah to describe bandits and gangsters alienated from their clans.
Judg 8.29-9.57: Abimelech. Gideon's son Abimelech seeks the kingship his father refused by conspiring with his maternal kin in Schechem to kill his brothers and inhereit his father's regional chieftanship. The justice-making ("judging") function in this story is triggered by Jotham's curse that unleashes "an evil spirit" from God which plays each side off against the other.
Judg 8.29-35: Gideon's death and its aftermath.
Judg 9.1-6: Abimelech becomes king. Abimelech kills on a butchering stone in order to dispose of the blood before it soaks into the ground, seeking to avoid divine retribution. Clear and knowing intent, eh?
Judg 9.7-21: Jotham's fable and curse. Lone survivor of Abimelech's purge, Jotham stands overlooking Mount Gerizim and offers a plant fable, then uttering a curse to restore order to the social chaos unleashed by Abimelech's killing his brothers.
Judg 9.22-57: The end of Abimelech's rule. Jotham's curse of Abimelech and the Shechemites comes to pass.
Judg 9.22: 'Ruled over,' a different Hebrew word than that meaning "reigned," implying that Abimelech was not a legitimate king.
Judg 9.52-57: Abimelech falls to his hubris, defeated by a millstone cast down by a woman. He asks the young man who carried his armor to execute him so that "people will not say about [him], 'a woman killed him'".
Judg 10.1-5: The "minor judges." The addition of these sparsely-detailed judges allows the book to have a total of twelve judges: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Japhthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, and Samson.
Judg 10.6-12.7: Jephthah. An outcast, Jephthah is called back to rescue Gilead.
Judg 10.6-18: Introduction to the Jephthah cycle.
Judg 10.15: The only mention of Israel repenting in the entire book.
Judg 11.1-11: Jephthah and the elders of Gilead.
Judg 11.12-28: Jephthah's negotiation.
Judg 11.29-40: Jephthah's vow. Not much foresight on this one, Jephthah; he is to offer up his own daughter as a burnt offering according to his word.
Judg 12.1-7: Jephthah and the shibboleth. Ephraim are once again disgruntled, this time with fatal consequences, reflecting the devolution within the book of Judges. Shibboleth, sibboleth—this is some great escape nonsense!
Judg 12.8-15: The "minor judges," once more.
Judg 13.1-16.31: Samson. The solitary fighter Samson, enlisted from birth and filled with the Lord's light, begins to deliver Israel from Philistines who control the coastal plain.
Judg 13.1-25: Samson's birth.
Judg 13.4-5: Interesting that the angel of the Lord declares that Samson shall be a Nazirite from birth.
Judg 14.1-16.31: Samson and the three women.
Judg 14.1-15.20: Samson and the woman from Timnah.
Judg 14.1-2: "Went down . . . came up," verbs describing descent and ascent are common throughout the story; may have something to do with Samson's name ("Shimshon," derived from "shemesh," sun)?
Judg 14.1: Samson is figuratively blinded by love with Delilah, and ultimately, literally, by his Philistine captors.
Judg 14.6-9: Indicative of folk tradition, Samson fights barehanded (in contrast to the inferior weaponry characteristic of other Israelite heroes) and enlists wildlife to help him in his battles.
Judg 14.10-15.8: The riddle contest and its aftermath.
Judg 14.18: "Plowed with my heifer," sexual innuendo.
Judg 15.9-20: Samson at Lehi. A thousand men slain with one jawbone!
Judg 16.1-3: Samson and the prostitute of Gaza.
Judg 16.4-31: Samson and Delilah. Delilah solves the riddle of Samson's strength.
Judg 16.24-25: "Entertain . . . performed," sexual innuendo too, apparently!
Judg 17.1-21.25: The days before a king. The concluding section consists of two stories about religious and social chaos in an era summed up in the refrain "In those days there was no king in Israel". The focus is on the ritual and moral misdeeds of Dan and Benjamin, the sites of shrines that come to rival the Temple in Jerusalem.
Judg 17.1-18.31: Micah and the Danites. The first story is about the tainted origins of the artifacts and priesthood of the shrine at Dan.
Judg 17.1-13: Micah's shrine and its idol.
Judg 17.1-13: Micah's idol and his priests.
Judg 17.1-6: A woman's silver is stolen, her guilty son cursed, and an idol, contrary to commandment, forged.
Judg 18.1-31: The migration of Dan. Dan migrates from the Judean hills to the far north, acquiring a priest and equipment for a shrine along the way.
Judg 18.30: Jonathan son of Gershom, son of Moses mentioned here. According to the narrative of Judges, this event would have taken place scores of years would have passed since Jonathan's generation; this suggests that this episode is placed here for thematic rather than chronological reasons.
Judg 19.1-21.25: The Benjaminite war. This graphic and horrific account serves as a final statement about the era's social and religious anarchy.
Judg 19.1-30: The outrage in Gibeah. This episode closely resembles the story of Sodom.
Judg 19.10: "Jerusalem," later to be David's royal city; the only safe place in this pro-Davidic story.
Judg 20.1-48: The war against Benjamin. The Israelite coalition seeks to avoid warfare if Benjamin delivers the culprits from Gibeah.
Judg 20.28: Phineas is here! Much like Jonathan, this is chronologically anachronistic.
Judg 20.49: Gibeah is subjected to the herem.
Judg 21.1-24: The war against the daughters. Since the patriarchal family of twelve tribes must be preserved, the slaughter of the Benjaminite women and children must be rectified by allowing the surviving Benjaminite men to intermarry.
Judg 21.1-14: Bride capture at Jabesh-gilead. The Israelite coalition annihilates the village of Jabesh-gilead, which did not participate in the war against Benjamin, in order to secure wives for the surviving Benjaminite warriors.
Judg 21.15-24: Bride capture at Shiloh. The Israelite elders allow the young women of Shiloh to be captured in order to avoid breaking a vow.
Judg 21.21: "The young women come out to dance," like Jephthah's daughter.
Judg 21.25: Conclusion to the book of Judges. The final refrain leaves Israel in disarray, hinting at the necessity of establishing a monarchy, the theme of the following book of Samuel.
A lot of chaos here, indeed. Very enjoyable vignettes of the judges; I am especially fond of that of Ehud's. Quite tired at the time of writing, so not much to add. Ruth next.
Selfless
in the necessity of your tribulations
you act
as though worthy of esteem
Posturing
in your inadequacy
Adopting countenances
of better men
Avoiding responsibility
like leprosy
Selfless
on the avertable eve of your destruction
you act
as though worthy of pity
What have you achieved with your life
that was not given to you?
Introduction to Judges
Named after the Judges of the transitional period between the conquest of the land and the establishment of the Monarchy, this book has traditionally been ascribed to Samuel. As is the case with all of the books thus far, however, oral tradition and subsequent editing and compiling is the story of this work. Its primary fabric is a prose narrative, though it contains a long poem, and different sections of the book have distinct editorial formulas. The refrain "In those days there was no king in Israel" unifies chs 17-22 and thus represents a retrospective perspective of the author/s. It is clear that Judges was not completed before 722 BCE, as there is reference to the Assyrian invasion of Samaria in 18.30.
The initial chapters portray the southern tribe of Judah as uniquely succesful and the other, northern, tribes as faithless and hapless. The final chapters focus on the misdeeds of the tribe of Dan (in the far north) and Benjamin (just north of Judah), the very sites of shrines that rivaled Judah's own Temple in Jerusalem, and give special attention to the misdeeds of Saul's hometown Gibeah and his tribe Benjamin. Thus, though neither is mentioned, the shadows of David and Saul, heroes of southern and northern culture respectively, loom over the concluding section.
By the end of the book, the tribes are fractious, the judges are flawed, and without centralized religious and political leadership Israel's sense of identity and covenant are at risk of gradual assimilation into local cultures.
In its earliest version, Judges was an anthology of frontier legends about the time "when locks were long in Israel." This indicates a preexilic perspective, but in its current state, the book of Judges is framed in the context of growing chaotic lawlessness that could only be remedied by Kings, not Judges. But not just any Kings, Davidic Kings, whose shrine was the Jerusalem Temple, are who will save Israel. "There was no king" is the final refrain of Judges, suggesting the necessity of centralized political and religious authority.
Judges ends without closure, demanding that readers turn the page, as it were, to the next installment of Israel's story. In Christian Bibles, the next book is Ruth with its genial portrait of village life during the days of the Judges, its charming and quietly powerful female characters, and the birth of King David's grandfather. In Jewish Bibles, the next installment of the story comes in 1 Samuel with the emergence of David and his dynasty in Jerusalem.
Judges
Judg 1.1-2.5: The days after Joshua. Contradicting Joshua in multiple places, the account here suggests the prominent and singular success of Judah in terms of conquest, gesturing towards David without mentioning him.
Judg 1.1-20: The success of the Judahites.
Judg 1.8: 'Judah took Jerusalem,' contradicted by v 21. and 19.10-12.
Judg 1.10: In previous passages Caleb as an individual is credited with the attack on Hebron, not the tribe of Judah; here the tribe as a whole is credited.
Judg 1.19: The infamous chariots of iron. One could suppose that it was on the shoulders of the Israelites alone to commit to such conquest; though the Lord was with them, it was the actions of the Israelites themselves that determined success (as it was with Joshua's battles).
Judg 1.21-36: The failures of the northern tribes. The tribes that later comprised the northern kingdom of Israel fail to uproot the Canaanites in their areas.
Judg 2.1-5: An angel delivers a mixed message. A denouncement from the angel for religious impurity.
Judg 2.1: The angel emerges from the standing stones of Gilgal that the Israelites erected upon crossing the Jordan river.
Judg 2.4: In Gen 35.8, Bethel is said to be the site of a "weeping tree," here, the Israelites lift up their voices and weep.
Judg 2.6-16.31: The days of the judges. The core of the book is comprised of tales about the era's leaders.
Judg 2.6-3.6: Introduction to the days of the judges.
Judg 2.6-10: Recap of the ending of Joshua. Resumption of the narrative from Josh 24.28-31; at one point, this may have joined Judges to Joshua, suggesting that 1.1-2.5 are a later addition.
Judg 2.8: Joshua dies at the age of one hundred ten years, identical to that of Joseph.
Judg 2.11-23: The formula of the test of Israel's faith. The first appearance of the formula (vv. 11-19) that frames the central section (3.7-11; 3.12,15,30; 4.1-3,23; 5.31; 6.1,6; 8.28; 10.6-7,10; 11.33; 13.1): Israel sins, angering the Lord who allows a foreign people to dominate them, they pray for mercy, the Lord raises up a "judge" to deliver them, and the land has rest.
Judg 2.11: 'Baals,' meaning all foreign gods, not just the male Canaanite storm-god.
Judg 2.13: 'Astartes,' referring to Astarte, used here by the narrator as a generic term for all female deities.
Judg 2.19: 'Relapse and behave worse:' the book has a plunging arc; with each repetition of the cyclical formula Israel is worse off.
Judg 3.1-6: List of the peoples who will test Israel. A later addition, justifying Israel's incomplete conquest of Canaan. As with other lists of the peoples of Canaan, this one is inconsistent.
Judg 3.7-8.28: The deliverers.
Judg 3.7-11: Othniel. A judean Judge that goes to war with the occupying force of King Cushan-rishathaim.
Judg 3.10: The spirit of the Lord, an inspiring force that will also inspire Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Saul, and later, David.
Judg 3.12-30: Ehud. A Benjaminite warrior undertakes a solo mission to assassinate the Moabite king occupying Jericho.
Judg 3.31: Shagmar. A foreign mercenary who aided Israel, killing six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad; a cattle prod.
Judg 4.1-5.31: Deborah and Barak. A miraculous victory of Israelite forces under the command of Barak over the Canaanites led by Sisera.
Judg 4.1-24: Barak and the two women. Commissioned by Deborah, the warrior Barak wins the battle over the Canaanites, but because of his initial reluctance (v. 8), is denied the supreme martial honor, killing the enemy leader. Deborah told Barak that Sisera would fall to a woman (v. 9), whom we assume will be Deborah herself. As it turns out, a second woman, Jael, ends up besting both men "she comes out to meet" (vv. 18,22), stealing life from Sisera and "glory" (v. 9) from Barak.
Judg 4.5: Deborah is the only leader in Judges actually depicted as functioning as a "judge" to settle disputes.
Judg 5.1-31: The Song of Deborah. This ballad is one of the oldest extant pieces of Hebrew writing; it is difficult in many places. As a literary specimen it has more in common with the Late Bronze Age Syrian mythic poetry than with Hebrew poetry from the Iron Age.
Judg 5.17: Confused geography on the location of the tribe of Dan.
Judg 5.22: "Then loud beat the horses' hoofs with the galloping, galloping of his steeds." No idea why, but I really like this passage in this translation.
Judg 5.24-27: Sisera's death is described in slow motion and, possibly, in sexual terms ("feet" is a frequent euphemism for genitals).
Judg 5.28-31: Sisera's mother's anguish over waiting for a son who will never return humanizes her, uncommon for Israelite depictions of the Canaanites.
Judg 6.1-8.28: Gideon. Gideon and his warriors rescue Israel from seasonal attacks by Midianites and their allies. Gideon purifies Israel territory from the internal threat of assimilation to Canaanite religion before removing an external threat by driving out invaders from the east, and then leads a war party across the Jordan on a reprisal raid; traditions about two different heroes may be combined here.
Judg 6.1-8.3: Gideon and the wine presses.
Judg 6.1-10: Midiniate raids.
Judg 6.7-10: These verses may be a later addition, as they are missing in a Dead Sea Scroll manuscript of this chapter.
Judg 6.11-24: Gideon's commissioning. Mirrors Moses's call narrative in Ex 3-4; there is a charge, reluctance on the part of the recipient, divine reassurance, a theophany, and finally, the establishment of a shrine. Gideon is an Abiezrite, a subdivision of the tribe of Manasseh.
Judg 6.22: Gideon fears death from seeing the angel of the Lord face to face.
Judg 6.25-32: Gideon's ritual preparations for warfare. Gideon must destroy the shrine to Baal before proceeding into battle.
Judg 6.27: Gideon has reason to be afraid of his family for his actions; they benefited from stewardship of the shrine, thus, Gideon is sacrificing economic and social status due to his commitment to the lord.
Judg 6.32: Jerubbaal is Gideon's given name, its translation is tricky and indicates a possible blending of narratives.
Judg 6.33-35: Gideon musters his troops.
Judg 6.36-40: Gideon tests God twice with the fleece. The use of 'Elohim' in reference to the Lord God here suggests that this version of the episode combined earlier stories.
Judg 7.1-8: The Lord tests Gideon twice with reduction of troops. Just as Gideon had tested God, now God tests Gideon, reducing his troops from 30,000 to 300, showing that it is ultimately God, not a large army, that provides victory.
Judg 7.9-14: Gideon's nighttime revelations. A barely cake, symbol of settled agriculturalists, crushes the Midianite tents, symbolic of nomadic transhumanists.
Judg 7.15-23: The midnight raid on the Midianite camp. Another instance of the Israelites' use of unconventional (read: inferior) weaponry beating the odds; the Midianites end up killing eachother in confusion.
Judg 7.24-8.3: The execution of enemy leaders.
Judg 8.2-3: Gideon is able to avoid violence through the skillful use of language, just as his father had in Ophrah. Really amusing, the Ephraimites have to safe face by conceding prospective spoils, lest they admit inferiority to Abiezer.
Judg 8.4-21: Gideon and the three towns.
Judg 8.22-28: Gideon and the ephod. Gideon refuses kingship and furnishes his family shrine with a divinatory device; his story ends ambiguously, he delivered Israel from the Midianites, but his legacy is tainted by the 'stain of idolatry'.
Judg 8.27: 'Ephod,' elsewhere a gilded vest worn by priests containing divinatory objects, here functioning as a ritual object; for another ephod in Judges, see 17.5.
Judg 8.29-16.31: The "empty men." The term "empty men" is used in the narratives of Abimelech and Jephthah to describe bandits and gangsters alienated from their clans.
Judg 8.29-9.57: Abimelech. Gideon's son Abimelech seeks the kingship his father refused by conspiring with his maternal kin in Schechem to kill his brothers and inhereit his father's regional chieftanship. The justice-making ("judging") function in this story is triggered by Jotham's curse that unleashes "an evil spirit" from God which plays each side off against the other.
Judg 8.29-35: Gideon's death and its aftermath.
Judg 9.1-6: Abimelech becomes king. Abimelech kills on a butchering stone in order to dispose of the blood before it soaks into the ground, seeking to avoid divine retribution. Clear and knowing intent, eh?
Judg 9.7-21: Jotham's fable and curse. Lone survivor of Abimelech's purge, Jotham stands overlooking Mount Gerizim and offers a plant fable, then uttering a curse to restore order to the social chaos unleashed by Abimelech's killing his brothers.
Judg 9.22-57: The end of Abimelech's rule. Jotham's curse of Abimelech and the Shechemites comes to pass.
Judg 9.22: 'Ruled over,' a different Hebrew word than that meaning "reigned," implying that Abimelech was not a legitimate king.
Judg 9.52-57: Abimelech falls to his hubris, defeated by a millstone cast down by a woman. He asks the young man who carried his armor to execute him so that "people will not say about [him], 'a woman killed him'".
Judg 10.1-5: The "minor judges." The addition of these sparsely-detailed judges allows the book to have a total of twelve judges: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Japhthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, and Samson.
Judg 10.6-12.7: Jephthah. An outcast, Jephthah is called back to rescue Gilead.
Judg 10.6-18: Introduction to the Jephthah cycle.
Judg 10.15: The only mention of Israel repenting in the entire book.
Judg 11.1-11: Jephthah and the elders of Gilead.
Judg 11.12-28: Jephthah's negotiation.
Judg 11.29-40: Jephthah's vow. Not much foresight on this one, Jephthah; he is to offer up his own daughter as a burnt offering according to his word.
Judg 12.1-7: Jephthah and the shibboleth. Ephraim are once again disgruntled, this time with fatal consequences, reflecting the devolution within the book of Judges. Shibboleth, sibboleth—this is some great escape nonsense!
Judg 12.8-15: The "minor judges," once more.
Judg 13.1-16.31: Samson. The solitary fighter Samson, enlisted from birth and filled with the Lord's light, begins to deliver Israel from Philistines who control the coastal plain.
Judg 13.1-25: Samson's birth.
Judg 13.4-5: Interesting that the angel of the Lord declares that Samson shall be a Nazirite from birth.
Judg 14.1-16.31: Samson and the three women.
Judg 14.1-15.20: Samson and the woman from Timnah.
Judg 14.1-2: "Went down . . . came up," verbs describing descent and ascent are common throughout the story; may have something to do with Samson's name ("Shimshon," derived from "shemesh," sun)?
Judg 14.1: Samson is figuratively blinded by love with Delilah, and ultimately, literally, by his Philistine captors.
Judg 14.6-9: Indicative of folk tradition, Samson fights barehanded (in contrast to the inferior weaponry characteristic of other Israelite heroes) and enlists wildlife to help him in his battles.
Judg 14.10-15.8: The riddle contest and its aftermath.
Judg 14.18: "Plowed with my heifer," sexual innuendo.
Judg 15.9-20: Samson at Lehi. A thousand men slain with one jawbone!
Judg 16.1-3: Samson and the prostitute of Gaza.
Judg 16.4-31: Samson and Delilah. Delilah solves the riddle of Samson's strength.
Judg 16.24-25: "Entertain . . . performed," sexual innuendo too, apparently!
Judg 17.1-21.25: The days before a king. The concluding section consists of two stories about religious and social chaos in an era summed up in the refrain "In those days there was no king in Israel". The focus is on the ritual and moral misdeeds of Dan and Benjamin, the sites of shrines that come to rival the Temple in Jerusalem.
Judg 17.1-18.31: Micah and the Danites. The first story is about the tainted origins of the artifacts and priesthood of the shrine at Dan.
Judg 17.1-13: Micah's shrine and its idol.
Judg 17.1-13: Micah's idol and his priests.
Judg 17.1-6: A woman's silver is stolen, her guilty son cursed, and an idol, contrary to commandment, forged.
Judg 18.1-31: The migration of Dan. Dan migrates from the Judean hills to the far north, acquiring a priest and equipment for a shrine along the way.
Judg 18.30: Jonathan son of Gershom, son of Moses mentioned here. According to the narrative of Judges, this event would have taken place scores of years would have passed since Jonathan's generation; this suggests that this episode is placed here for thematic rather than chronological reasons.
Judg 19.1-21.25: The Benjaminite war. This graphic and horrific account serves as a final statement about the era's social and religious anarchy.
Judg 19.1-30: The outrage in Gibeah. This episode closely resembles the story of Sodom.
Judg 19.10: "Jerusalem," later to be David's royal city; the only safe place in this pro-Davidic story.
Judg 20.1-48: The war against Benjamin. The Israelite coalition seeks to avoid warfare if Benjamin delivers the culprits from Gibeah.
Judg 20.28: Phineas is here! Much like Jonathan, this is chronologically anachronistic.
Judg 20.49: Gibeah is subjected to the herem.
Judg 21.1-24: The war against the daughters. Since the patriarchal family of twelve tribes must be preserved, the slaughter of the Benjaminite women and children must be rectified by allowing the surviving Benjaminite men to intermarry.
Judg 21.1-14: Bride capture at Jabesh-gilead. The Israelite coalition annihilates the village of Jabesh-gilead, which did not participate in the war against Benjamin, in order to secure wives for the surviving Benjaminite warriors.
Judg 21.15-24: Bride capture at Shiloh. The Israelite elders allow the young women of Shiloh to be captured in order to avoid breaking a vow.
Judg 21.21: "The young women come out to dance," like Jephthah's daughter.
Judg 21.25: Conclusion to the book of Judges. The final refrain leaves Israel in disarray, hinting at the necessity of establishing a monarchy, the theme of the following book of Samuel.
A lot of chaos here, indeed. Very enjoyable vignettes of the judges; I am especially fond of that of Ehud's. Quite tired at the time of writing, so not much to add. Ruth next.
Selfless
in the necessity of your tribulations
you act
as though worthy of esteem
Posturing
in your inadequacy
Adopting countenances
of better men
Avoiding responsibility
like leprosy
Selfless
on the avertable eve of your destruction
you act
as though worthy of pity
What have you achieved with your life
that was not given to you?