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The Book of Judges
For easier reading, divide the
21 chapters into three weeks:
Week One: Chapters 1-7
Week Two: Chapters 8-14
Week Three: Chapters 15-21
Before you begin your daily or
weekly reading, you may want to
visit our Guided Prayer pages or
visit the spiritual formation
page in order to center yourself
without distractions in more
prayerful reading.
As the newspapers daily cover
stories about contemporary
battles between Israel and
Palestine, and about acts of
terrorism and acts of war, the
ancient history of Israel’s
conquest over Western Palestine
is anything but dry and
uninteresting.
The conquest of Western
Palestine thousands of years ago
was made possible by the lack of
any central governing
Palestinian body and by the
relative weakness of Egyptian
overlords in the land.
Palestine’s lack of unity was
matched by Israel’s - “In those
days,” the Book of Judges tells
us, “there was no king in
Israel. Everyone did what was
right in his own eyes.” The
conquest of Palestine was slow,
much like tribal warfare; like
terrorism today, the “hits” were
scattered and not complete. .
Although the Canaanites lacked a
central, unified “control
center,” they had superior war
weaponry. Moreover, even if the
Israelites weren’t doing battle
with trained military men, the
native civilians in the land
were like unofficial militia.
They were not willing to give up
the land under their feet
without a fight! These fighters
were well practiced. Bedouin
tribes from the desert made
annual raids into the
Palestinian cities and
countryside. Sometimes Israel
won the day. Sometimes they
co-existed alongside the
Canaanites.
Israel struggled to build both
military and theological unity.
The Hebrew tribes were held
together by a common faith in
the God of Abraham. Co-existence
alongside the Canaanite
inhabitants proved dangerous.
Acculturation and
“contamination” from Canaanite
pagan religions threatened their
united faith. After forty years
in the desert and then some, the
nicities of civilized life -
Palestinian civilized life - was
extremely appealing.
Intermarriages between
Canaanites and Israelites
further threatened Israel’s
theological unity. It is in this
light that we must read the
stories which compelled Israel
to slay the Palestinian
inhabitants - killing the pagan
inhabitants seemed to be the
only way to avoid the religious
“contamination.” The Bible
suggests that it was only by the
hand of God that Israel was not
totally assimilated and absorbed
into the prevailing Canaanite
culture. Their religious
passions were kept aflame by the
constant tribal wars of
defense...and offense. They
fought for their identity
through the local wars -
cultural wars as well as
military wars.
The period of Judges, then, is
remembered as a time of testing
and transition.
The Book itself is divided into
three main sections:
(1) the introduction (1:1-2:5);
(2) the stories of the judges
and wars (2:6-16:31):
(3) the appendix illustrating
Israel’s national situation
(17:1-21:25).
The Book claims to tell the
history of Israel from Joshua’s
death till the time of
Philistine oppression - roughly
400 years. There was no simple,
clean chronological succession
of rulers. This was a tribal
era, with different rulers
presiding over different
locales.
The judges were not like
magistrate or superior court
judges, but rather were
charismatic leaders who were to
turn the hearts of the
Israelites to God. Oppression
and danger arose because of the
peoples’ sin; therefore,
deliverance could only come from
repentance.
Theologically, the Book wrestles
with issues of individual and
corporate sin, and God’s
response. Consider this
theological struggle in our own
day. When a child is neglected
by his parents, lost in a faulty
child welfare system, left to
his own devices on the streets
until he finally falls prey to
predators and drugs and
eventually commits a crime, who
is responsible? Surely every
individual has the
responsibility to choose his or
her own actions, so the
individual is responsible. On
the other hand, the community
also bears some responsibility,
for its failure was a
contributing factor in the
child’s demise. The Bible
wrestles with individual versus
corporate responsibility. In
the whole, the Bible declares
God holds both responsible. We
then become responsible for one
another, and what happens to us
as a community or nation is
directly related to our
individual and corporate
actions.
The stories in Judges present
the crisis of idolatry. Do we
accept the Absolute Other or
serve some relative “absolute”
created by human (and sometimes
religious) hands? The stories
seek to consider God’s anger,
punishment, justice, repentance,
forgiveness and leadership.
Many are morality lessons,
intended to teach some practical
religious lesson about life. The
predominant lesson is that sin
does NOT pay but is enormously
costly!
The oldest section of Judges is
in the song of Deborah and dates
back as far as 1200 BC. Other
elements are later - some dating
c. 900 -700 BC. Scholars believe
final editors collected and
polished the book in the Sixth
Century BC. (Inspired by God, of
course!). The final redaction
probably dates to the period
immediately after the Exile
during a religious and cultural
revival.
For more on specific sections of
Judges, click below:
Deborah,
Gideon,
Jephthah
and daughter,
Samson
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