Whose land anyway?
Summary of Judges...
The book of Judges follows on from the events of Joshua, as the Israelites seek to strengthen their hold over the Promised Land. Chapter 1 commences with a listing of all the nations who have not yet been conquered, and immediately proceeds toward battles towards the end of removing them from the land. In Chapter 2, Israel is condemned for not destroying the worship places of the god Baal, for which reason God decides to allow the continued existence of various Canaanite tribes to make life difficult for them (Judges 2:3). The continued presence of tribal enemies led to the emergence of idol worship in Israel, which in turn leads to God stirring up those same enemies against them (2:14). However, God does not want the Israelites destroyed, and so provides them with leaders, called ‘judges’, to lead them out of trouble and into victory against the other nations (2:16-18). After the judges’ deaths, Israel would fall back into bad habits again, leading to further trouble from their enemies (2:19-21).
This behaviour forms a pattern that carries throughout the book of Judges: failure, trouble from enemies, the raising of a judge, overcoming peril, and the relapse of the Israelites after the peril had past. The judges are raised intermittently through the course of Israel’s settlement period, coming from various tribes in response to the varying enemies.
There are a number of figures raised as judges, and there is no fixed criteria. They included assassins (Ehud - 3:21-22), a prophetess (Deborah – 4:4), an ill-equipped army leader (Gideon – 6:1-8:35) and a famous wild man with superhuman strength (Samson – 13:1-16:31). From there, the book then descends into intertribal conflict among the Twelve Tribes, ultimately resulting in the near extinction of the Tribe of Benjamin and its restoration (Chapters 19-21. For more on this story, see important questions, below).
What Judges may have meant to its original audience...
One of the significant functions of Judges is role in explaining the continuing presence of Canaanite tribes in the Promised Land, who are never really fully defeated despite the assurances given by God earlier in the Torah. God allows the enemies to remain as a reminder to the Israelites of what happens if they do not remain faithful to the Covenant.
In this sense, the whole of Judges emphasises and carries through Israelite history the core idea from Deuteronomy (called the Deuteronomistic history), that emphasises the importance of faithfulness to the covenant in exchange for God’s protection. It sets a pattern that fills the books of Samuel and Kings, demonstrating that trials will befall Israel if they are unfaithful, while God’s help is not far away if the people return to the law.
Indeed, the failures of the Israelites become more accented as the story progresses, with errors in judgement and behaviour leading to atrocious events that are among some of the most traumatic in the Bible.
How Jesus might have read Judges...
It is interesting to note that one of the nations in conflict with Israel in Judges was Moab. Moab was one of the nations descended from Abraham’s nephew, Lot (Gen 19:36-38), and it is their King who is assassinated by Ehud (Judges 3:21-22).
The next book in the biblical narrative, the book of Ruth, is about a woman from Moab who marries an Israelite, and she ends up being a forbearer of David, arguably Israel’s most famous king. She is also listed as one of the ancestors of Jesus (Matt 1:5). Other foreign women are also mentioned in Jesus’ family tree, including Rahab from the book of Joshua (Matt 1:5). For Matthew, it seems important to emphasise Jesus’ ‘foreign’ heritage, to demonstrate the participation of other people in God’s action for the world.
However, it’s also interesting to look at Jesus’ own reaction when he encounters a ‘Canaanite’ woman in Matthew 15:22 (called a Syrophoenician in Mark 7:26 – either way, the implication is ‘gentile’, or non-Jewish). In this story, the woman comes to Jesus seeking healing for her daughter who is afflicted by a demon. To her request, he says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24, NRSV). He then mentions that “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Matt 15:26, NRSV). Depending on your perspective, this passage either represents a tongue-in-cheek comment inviting the woman to challenge him (a more conservative approach, represented by this older article), or shows that Jesus actually first carries the ethnic biases of Israel and is changed in his thinking by the encounter (see an example of this perspective here).
Either way, the verse demonstrates Jesus’ awareness of the historical religious bias against gentiles, and, either way, it demonstrates an understanding that religion and ethnicity should not shape one’s response to others. Whether he understood this from the outset, or it took an encounter with a desperate woman, I’ll leave to you to debate in the comments.
What Judges might mean for our faith today...
It is significant that one of the key leaders listed in the book of Judges is a woman. Deborah is stated to be a prophetess to whom the Israelites came for judgement (Judges 4:4-5). She has the authority to summon and direct military leaders (v6). Her story is significant, because no qualification or limitation is given to her leadership in light of her gender... something that many church traditions still struggle with today. We can't pretend that this makes the entire book of Judges a beacon of gender equality and egalitarianism (just see the later stories on Japhtheth and his daughter, or the story about the concubine, both discussed in 'difficult questions' below). But it does challenge some all-too-popular notions about the place of women in religious and political leadership.
Deborah aside, some of the most recognisable stories in the Hebrew Bible come from the book of Judges. Samson with his long hair and superhuman strength and Gideon with his miraculous fleece stand out in particular. In Sunday schools, the stories are held up as heroic examples of what people can do when channelling the power of God (putting aside the actual violence of the events, which always seems to be downplayed).
However, evidence of such intervention seems so limited in our modern world. It can be hard to find anything directly relatable in these stories, other than on a superficial entertainment level where we find them as good ‘biblical alternatives’ to the superheroes of comic books or film.
Perhaps more relatable in these stories… and for that matter in many stories throughout the Hebrew Bible… are the character flaws that cause good people to fail. Samson had a weakness for women. Gideon is racked by doubt and uncertainty. More horrifically, the judge Jephthah makes a rash vow and follows through by sacrificing his daughter as a burnt offering (Judges 11:30-40). The flaws in the characters are part of their stories of faith. That’s the accessible part of so many of the books of the Bible. Failure and faith often go hand in hand—whether in ridiculous piety, like Jephthah, or in a more subtle wrestle with doubt like Gideon. It’s part of the human journey, our journey.
Some important questions to ask about Judges...
+ Not just men's work: Deborah and Jael
Deborah of Ephraim (Judges 4 and 5) stands out in the book of Judges as a female leader in a patriarchal world.
While she is aided by Barak of Naphtali who serves as her general, Deborah makes the decisions in this story about a conflict with the Canaanites. However, another twist that breaks traditional gender roles appears when another woman, named Jael, is the one who delivers the somewhat graphic killing blow to the enemy general, Sisera.
While the violence itself is not something to be celebrated, the story needs to be acknowledged for the power and assertiveness it recognises in its women. When Christianity has historically diminished the leadership of women, it serves to be reminded that voices in the Bible do celebrate and elevate them on more gender-equal terms.
Of course, this is not a universal theme in even the book of Judges itself. As the story progresses, women are sadly the victims of some of the worst stories in the Bible.
+ Suicidal Sacrifice: The Story of Samson
Perhaps the most famous story is about Samson (Judges 13-16), from the tribe of Dan. Using superhuman strength, he is an infamous enemy of the Philistines until he is tricked by his girlfriend Delilah who cuts off his hair, the source of his strength. Blinded and thrown into prison, Samson prays for one last burst of strength from God, which he uses to literally pull the house down over a gathering of Philistine nobility.
It is interesting that Samson is often held up in Sunday School as a hero of virtue and redemption, 'coming through' at the end of his story to defeat the bad guys, with his death an unfortunate, but necessary end to achieve the destruction of God's enemies. While not a popular idea, someone's got to say it here... Samson's activity effectively mirrors that of suicide bombers who seek to achieve their religious and political goals through maximum damage by sacrificing their own lives.
When we in the west rightly condemn the activities of those in our own world who use and promote violence like this, we normally point to the barbarism of the religious ideals, the essential evil of this kind of behaviour. I think this is correct to do - but we should also, to paraphrase Jesus (Matthew 7), look to our own backyard.
Perhaps we need to re-think the meaning of Samson's story when we tell it to one another. Perhaps rather than thinking of it as a heroic story to be emulated, it should be read for the lessons of its tragedy - condemning all uses of violence, acknowledging the unrelenting harshness of war, and decrying the senslessness of conflicts that ultimately only exist because we as humans try to dominate one another.
+ Death of a Concubine
Chapter 19 provides one of Judges more disturbing narratives in a display of crime and punishment that spirals out of control. Following the
+ An Unholy Oath
Jephthah's Daughter