Judges. Abraham Kuruvilla

The pattern is obvious in the two panels ABB and A'B'B', with BB and B'B' each noting the Israelites’ continued evildoing, signified by @sy, ysp. This verb “consistently indicates or implies temporal sequence when it is collocated with an infinitive construct in the Former Prophets,” and so its omission has implications for the chronological sequence of events in the book.25 So Chisholm speculates that ABB and A'B'B' are chronologically concurrent, thus permitting some consolidation of time to approximate the 480 years of 1 Kgs 6:1. He estimates the period of the Judges as running from 1336–1130 BCE.26

In any case, the preacher must remember that these are behind-the-text speculations. What is important for preaching—and that is the concern of this commentary—is the way things, people, and situations are depicted by the inspired narrator to portray a world in front of the text.27 While not concocting data out of thin air, the textual presentation of what happened is a narratological choice based on the theological agenda of the author—the thrust of the text, the theology of the pericope. It is this pericopal theology that must be discerned, preached, and applied.

In Judges, the Jebusites live with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem “to this day” (1:21); the city that the man from Bethel built is named Luz “to this day” (1:26); Gideon’s altar to Yahweh, named “Yahweh is Peace,” is still in Ophrah “to this day” (6:24); the thirty sons of Jair had thirty cities in Gilead called Havoth-jair even “to this day” (10:4); the hollow place in Lehi where Samson miraculously found water was named by him as Enhakkore, and it is still in Lehi “to this day” (15:19); and the place where the Danites camped at Kiriath-jearim is called Mahaneh-Dan “to this day” (18:12). Besides, 18:30 mentions the captivity of Israel (between 734–721 BCE; the unauthorized Danite shrine persisted until 734 BCE), and it is asserted that there was no king in Israel “in those days” of the judges (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). All of these notations indicate editorial work on the book at different times and periods. In addition, the reference to “king” in 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; and 21:25 may suggest that Judges achieved its final form after the monarchical period of Israel. Both Epilogues I and II (Pericope 12: Jdg 17:1—18:31; and Pericope 13: Jdg 19:1–30 and Pericope 14: Jdg 20:1—21:25) have random, wandering, unemployed Levites. Webb thinks this places those events after the separation of the northern kingdom of Israel from the southern kingdom of Judah, either when Jeroboam I appointed non-Levites as priests (1 Kgs 12:31), or when Hezekiah’s reforms (or Josiah’s) involved the closure of a number of shrines (2 Kgs 19:1–4; 23:1–20).28 But “[t]he simple fact of the matter is that we are not in a position to reconstruct the history of the text’s literary evolution with any degree of confidence.”29

      Provenance

The Prologues establish the Israelites’ God as Yahweh, the one with a relationship to the patriarchs (Jdg 2:1, 10, 12, 17, 20, 22; 3:4), the one who had delivered them from the bondage of Egypt (2:1, 12; also see 6:8, 13), the one who had made a covenant with them at Sinai (2:1, 20; 5:5). But it is the Israelites’ evildoing that is prominent in Judges. Besides the text’s explicit statements to that effect (2:11; 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6; 13:1), the Israelites also fail to drive out the Canaanites according to Yahweh’s desire (1:18–36); they fail to pass on their faith in Yahweh to a future generation (2:10); they refuse to join in Yahweh’s military enterprises (5:15b–17, 23); they attack Yahweh’s deliverer who seeks to destroy a Baal altar (6:28–30); they play harlot after Gideon’s ephod (8:27); they replace Yahweh with Baal-berith (8:33); they turn over the Spirit-directed deliverer to the enemy (15:11–13); they manufacture sacred idols for private cults (17:1–13); a whole tribe sponsors paganism (18:14–31); brutality and immorality reign unchecked (19:1–30); and, finally, the entire nation is plunged into a civil war (20:1—21:25).30 The judge-deliverers that God raises go from bad to worse (except for Othniel who fits the paradigm of 2:11–19 precisely): Ehud is deceptive, Barak is fearful, Gideon is arrogant (and his offspring, Abimelech, ungodly and ruthless), Jephthah is manipulative, and Samson is profligate. Yet despite the despicable infidelity shown by his people, and the deplorable example set by his leaders, Yahweh remains, time and again, gracious and willing to intervene on behalf of his people and deliver them (2:16, 18; 3:9–10, 15; 4:6–7, 23; 6:11–12, 14, 16, 34, 38, 40; 7:2, 7, 9, 22; 11:29, 32; 13:3–5, 25; 14:6, 19; 15:14, 19).

Block speculates that the prophetic message of Judges would have been most appropriate for the protracted and pernicious reign of Manasseh (790–739 BCE; see 2 Kgs 21:1–18; 2 Chr 33:1). This regent reconstructed pagan cultic installations and “worshipped all the host of heaven and served them” (2 Kgs 21:3), not to mention the altars he raised to them in Yahweh’s temple (21:4–5)—not very different from the Israelites in the days of the judges (Jdg 2:3, 11–13, 17, 19; 3:6–7; 6:25–32; 8:27, 33; 10:6–16; 17:1–13; 18:14–20, 30). Indeed, Manasseh, like Jephthah, engaged in child sacrifices, and involved himself in demonic practices—“great evil in the sight of Yahweh, provoking him to anger” (2 Kgs 21:6). As did Abimelech, Manasseh, too, was a brutal tyrant who “shed much innocent blood” that “filled Jerusalem from one end to another.” And, as the nation followed Gideon, so, under the aegis of Manasseh, Israel was plunged into sin, doing more evil than the nations around (21:6, 9), and failing to listen to the warnings of God through his prophets (21:10–15).31

      Purpose

The book is gory, with bloodletting without remit. There is the assassination of Eglon (Jdg 3:21–25); the killing of Sisera (4:21); the execution of Oreb and Zeeb (7:25) and of Zebah and Zalmunnah (8:21); the murder of sixty-nine of his siblings by Abimelech (9:5); the assassination of Abimelech (9:53–54); the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter (11:39); Samson’s suicidal exertions (16:30); and the murder of the Levite’s concubine (19:27). That adds to seventy-nine specific individuals killed. But it is the large-scale killings that are shocking: ten thousand Canaanites and Perizzites “struck down” by the Judah-Simeon coalition (1:4); “about” ten thousand Moabites killed by Ehud and his army (3:29); six hundred Philistines struck down by Shamgar (3:30); 120,000 Midianites killed by Yahweh (7:22; 8:10); the burning alive of “about” a thousand in Shechem (9:49); 42,000 Ephraimites felled by Jephthah (12:6); Samson’s killing of thirty Philistines (14:19), later another thousand (15:15), and finally three thousand more (16:27, 30); 22,000 Israelites killed by Benjamin on one day (20:21) and 18,000 on another (20:25); and 25,100 Benjaminites killed by Israel (20:35). That comes to a total of 242,730 in numbered military casualties alone. Whew! It is certain that the defeats of Canaanite armies and cities—and some internecine warfare by Israel—involved killing as well, but no victim tallies are given (1:4, 5, 8, 9–10, 17, 18, 25; 3:10; 4:15–16, 24; 8:12, 17; 9:43, 45; 11:32; 12:4; 15:8; 18:27; 21:10). In addition, there might have been more wars fought by Israel as suggested in Yahweh’s reproach of his people in 10:11–12 that lists some defeated people groups not mentioned elsewhere in Judges.32 Altogether, roughly a quarter of a million people perish in Judges!33 No wonder there is weeping by the nation at the beginning (2:4), and there is weeping by the nation at the end (20:23, 26; 21:2). Webb is right: “Judges does not simply give us raw violence, but interpreted violence. The challenge for those of us who read it as Scripture is not whether we can identify with the violence, but whether we