Judges. Abraham Kuruvilla
One also gets the sense of a geographic layout in the narration, a south-to-north arrangement commencing with Judah and concluding with Dan: Judah + Simeon, Benjamin, Joseph, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Napthali, Dan. While this pericope mostly focuses on a human perspective of the war—a socio-political decline—the next (Pericope 2: Jdg 2:6—3:11), takes a divine perspective, providing reasons for the general failure of Israel’s military effort—a religious decline.
One notices that Benjamin stands alone in 1:21 as an orphan in the “house of Joseph.” This may well be an allusion to Epilogue II (especially Pericope 14: Jdg 20:1—21:25) where, again, Benjamin’s isolation shows up—the victim of Israel’s civil war. The insularity here in 1:21 is underscored by an unusual word order: “And the Jebusites [inhabitants] . . . were not driven out [verb] by the sons of Benjamin [tribal name]”; this is unlike the descriptions in 1:27, 29, 30, 31, 33, where the order is verb-tribal name-inhabitants.74 Another reason for Benjamin’s isolation may also be its geographic location between the major tribes of the south and the north.
1. Judges 1:1—2:5
| THEOLOGICAL FOCUS 1 | ||
| 1 | Uncompromising faithfulness to God manifest in behavior distinct from that of unbelievers, maintenance of godly traditional values, and reliance on divine strategies for success results in the enjoyment of divine blessing (1:1—2:5). | |
| 1.1 | Failure of uncompromising obedience to divine commands precludes the enjoyment of divine blessing. | |
| 1.2 | Faithfulness to God involves behavior distinct from that of unbelievers, maintenance of godly traditional values, and abandonment of reliance on human strategies for success. |
NOTES 1
1.1 Failure of uncompromising obedience to divine commands precludes the enjoyment of divine blessing.
There is an adumbration of danger right at the start. A comparison of Josh 1:1 with Jdg 1:1 immediately strikes the reader: the passage of the prior leader (Moses) in Josh 1:1 is juxtaposed to the appointment of the leader of the next generation (“Joshua, Moses’s servant”). But in Jdg 1:1, there is no subsequent leader waiting in the wings when Joshua exits. Besides, in Josh 1:1, Yahweh took the initiative to give directives; in Jdg 1:1, he is strangely silent, until the Israelites take the initiative. Things do not look good!
The living arrangements between the Israelites and Canaanites as this pericope progresses are revealing. Initially, with the endeavors of the Judah-Simeon alliance, we are not told of Canaanites living among the Israelites; then from Benjamin to Zebulun, the Canaanites are found living with the Israelites; the situation worsens with Asher and Naphtali: here it is the Israelites who are living among the Canaanites; in the final phase, they are themselves displaced, unable to occupy the valley. Far from a conquest, this is an “anticonquest”75:
In sum, this pericope portrays a failed project to take over Canaan.
Unlike most ancient military reports, the aim of this document is not to celebrate the achievements of the generation of Israelites that survived Joshua but to lament their sorry response to the divine mandate to occupy the land and to eliminate the Canaanites. Although the author delays sermonizing on the subject (cf. 2:1–5; 2:6—3:6), the structure of the chapter declares that this military failure accounts for the disastrous history of the nation in the next two or three centuries, as it is reported in the remainder of the book.76
And so while there is a seeking of God at the beginning of this pericope (1:1–2), there is, unfortunately, a weeping before him at the end (2:4–5; see below).
The verb “go up” (hl[, ‘lh, in the militaristic sense of “go against”) is a key word in this pericope (1:1, 2, 3, 4, 16, 22; 2:1; it does not occur at all in the next pericope). Of all these uses of hl[, only those indicating the key movements of Judah, Joseph, and the angel of Yahweh (1:4, 22; 2:1) are emphasized by location at the head of the sentence, at the commencement of the appropriate section (1:4–20; 1:22–36; 2:1–5). Certainly some of this upward movement is related to geography (for there is a “going down,” dry, yrd, as well, in 1:9), but it also serves as a link: the consequence of all the (failed) “goings up” in 1:1–36 is the ominous “going up” of the angel of Yahweh from Gilgal to indict the Israelites (2:1).
One also notices that in these “goings up” in Judges 1, Yahweh is associated only with the movements of two tribes (1:4, 19, with the Judah and Simeon alliance; and 1:22, with the house of Joseph—a broad south-north division of the nation77); both these campaigns at least begin well. Judah’s war is initially successful, but later meets with failure (1:19, 21—with the failure of Benjamin against Jerusalem; also see 1:8). Joseph’s war, though gainful, is suspect from the very start: despite a victory at Bethel/Luz, the informant from Bethel is allowed to go free in exchange (1:24–26), and he promptly rebuilds the destroyed city. A litany of incomplete “successes” and outright failures then follows (1:27–36). All of these miscarriages in Judges 1 form the basis for Yahweh’s indictment of Israel in 2:1–5. The same “sons of Israel” who had sought Yahweh’s counsel in 1:1 are now rebuked by him, for they were disobedient, making covenants with foreigners and not destroying their altars (2:2). Therefore, Yahweh announced, he would not completely drive out the land’s inhabitants who would end up as thorns to the Israelites (and their gods as snares; 2:3).78 Of course, Yahweh would be faithful to keep his covenant and Israel would possess the land, as he had promised the “fathers” (2:1). The question is why they failed to possess it now.
There was Moses who was unlike any other prophet in Israel, whom Yahweh knew face to face (Deut 34:10); then there was Joshua, “Moses’s servant” (Exod 24:13; Num 11:28; Josh 1:1), one attested by Yahweh as having his Spirit (Num 27:18; also Deut 34:9), and who followed Yahweh fully as his servant (Num 32:12; Jdg 2:8). Now Joshua had died. Who would be the next godly servant to lead Israel? Yahweh’s choice of a tribe, Judah, rather than an individual, is surprising. But then again, the Israelites did not ask him for a leader, only for a tribe to lead the battle. Indeed, a note of hesitancy is introduced into the Israelites’ question in Jdg 1:1 that literally reads: “Who will go up for us, against the Canaanites, first, to battle them?” Did Israel need to know who would go up? And why “first,” which has the limited sense of a beginning—“Who will . . . start to battle”? “Victory is relativised from scratch,” only a commencement of operations is envisaged by the Israelites.79 Commitment and confidence is thereby shown to be shaky. This, when the divine utterance is unambiguous: “Behold! I have given [perfect tense in Hebrew] the land into his [Judah’s] hand” (1:2). Though Judah conducts the most successful military exercises in this pericope, no longer in Judges will Judah appear in a leadership role before 20:18. There, Judah leads an utterly failed enterprise that becomes the conflagration of a civil war.
And why did Judah decide to include Simeon (1:3)?80 The specificity of God’s assurance that he had given the land into Judah’s hands (1:2) is consistently maintained in the narrative, despite Judah’s unilateral co-opting of Simeon into its martial endeavors: Judah conquers peoples and lands (1:4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 19), but Judah + Simeon conquers only peoples (1:17)—and besides, even in this particular battle against the Canaanites of Zephath/Hormah, Simeon is not described as doing any fighting.81 All this renders Judah’s initial forays suspect.
Judah’s ascent in 1:3–7 (“going up,” 1:3, 4) and descent in 1:9–18 (“going down,” 1:9) bookend its efficacious exploits in Jerusalem (1:8), making its engagements