Book of Judges

Hebrew Bible
Tanach.jpg
Judaism portal
Christianity portal

The Book of Judges (Hebrew: Sefer Shoftim ספר שופטים) is a book of the Bible originally written in Hebrew. It appears in the Tanakh and in the Christian Old Testament. Its title refers to its contents; it contains the history of Biblical judges (not to be confused with modern judges), who helped rule and guide the ancient Israelites, and of their times.

As Judges stands today, the last judge it mentions is Samson, and although there are two further stories, the traditional view is that Samson's exploits probably synchronise with the period immediately preceding Eli, who was both high priest and judge. Both academic views and traditional thought hence view the narrative of the judges as ending at Samson, picking up again at 1 Samuel 1:1 to consider Eli, and continuing through to 1 Samuel 7:2. As for the stories at the end of the Book, which are set in the same time period as the judges but discuss people other than the judges, there is much affinity between these and the Book of Ruth, and many people believe Ruth originally belonged amongst them. There were thirteen Biblical Judges.

Contents

Structure

  1. Othniel, the son of Kenaz from the tribe of Judah (3:7-11)
  2. Ehud, the son of Gerah from the tribe of Benjamin (3:12-30)
  3. Shamgar, the son of Anath from the tribe of Levi (3:31)
  4. Deborah (and Barak) (4:1-5:31)
  5. Gideon (also named Jerubbaal), the son of Joash from the tribe of Manasseh (6:1-8:32)
  6. Tola, the son of Puah from the tribe of Issachar (10:1-5)
  7. Jair, from the tribe of Gilead (10:1-5)
  8. Jephthah, the son of Gilead from Gilead (10:6-12:7)
  9. Ibzan, from the tribe of Judah (12:8-15)
  10. Elon, from the tribe of Zebulun (12:8-15)
  11. Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Piratoni, from the tribe of Ephraim (12:8-15)
  12. Samson, the son of Manoah, from the tribe of Dan (13:1-16:31)

Content

Introduction

Judges in the Bible

In the Book of Joshua: Joshua
In the Book of Judges: Othniel • Ehud • Shamgar • Deborah • Barak† • Gideon • Abimelech† • Tola • Jair •Jephthah • Ibzan • Elon • Abdon • Samson
In First Samuel: Eli • Samuel

†Not explicitly described as a judge

The Introduction (1:1-3:10 and 3:12) gives a summary of the book of Joshua, in some cases giving additional details.

Main text

The main text (3:11-16:31) discusses the five Great Judges and Abimelech. It consists of six stories each concerning a major judge and their struggles against an oppressive foreign overlord. There are also brief glosses of the rule of lesser judges, often only giving their name and the numbers of their sons.

Appendices

The appendices (17:1-21:25) give two stories set in the time of the judges but the content does not describe a particular specific judge as does the rest of the book.

Authorship

While the authorship of Judges has traditionally been ascribed to Samuel, the great majority of modern scholars have come to a much more complex conclusion, regarding the work as having hardly any literary unity at all. Many suspect the brief Book of Ruth to have originally been part of the Appendices of Judges, owing to its style, linguistic features and the time period in which its contents are set. It is thought that the Book of Ruth became disconnected and misplaced at a later date.

The majority of modern scholars believe that Judges was originally part of a continuous work known as the Deuteronomic History stretching from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, which was later broken up when the Torah was constructed by its redactor from the early parts of the Deuteronomic History and other writings such as JE and the Priestly source. It is for this reason that many critics also treat 1 Samuel 1:1-7:2, which discusses Eli and Samuel, as having originally been part of the Judges section of the Deuteronomic History narrative.

Introduction

Some passages (1:12-15, 2:6-9 and 3:7-11) of the introduction are almost identical to ones in the Book of Joshua. On the other hand, part of the text which surrounds them (1:1-11, 1:16-2:5) instead presents a summarised overview of the events in Joshua, recording differing traditions, such as that concerning Adonibezek (cf. Joshua 10), or those concerning the continuing presence of Jebusites in Jerusalem to this day (1:21) or not (1:8). For those who support Hexateuch-like theories, where the sources that the documentary hypothesis ascribes to the Torah extend through the Book of Joshua, these passages are often seen as deriving from such sources parallel to the corresponding ones of Joshua.

The majority of modern scholars believe that that first part of the introduction (1:1-2:5) was a late addition to the text, added after the Deuteronomist version of Judges was constructed. Hence 2:6-3:7 is viewed as the original introduction by the Deuteronomist to the Judges period, spinning the later stories to imply that the history of the period involved the Israelites repeatedly turning to worship of other gods, suffering for it, and being alleviated of their suffering by five great leaders, and Abimelech; whereas the original source texts were independent and without the Deuteronomist's alterations, some could be regarded as parallel local events rather than sequential national ones.

Main text

The text is believed under textual criticism to contain further compositional structure. The Deuteronomist here is believed to have combined together six earlier separate texts, one for each of the five Great Judges and one for Abimelech, adding passages to join them together (4:1a, 8:29-31, 10:17-18, and 13:1), sometimes interrupting the narrative to do so.

The text is believed to have been further altered by the (possibly later) addition of passages concerning Minor Judges (10:1-5 and 12:8-15) in order to make the total number of Judges a more religiously significant number, harmonizing them chronologically so that the total number of years of their reign (73) is close to the number of years of oppression under the Great Judges (70). The presence of 3:31, placing Shamgar in the list of Judges, is believed to be a later recension, created in order to remove Abimelech from being counted amongst the judges without disturbing the total number, in order that someone so apparently wicked not taint the role.

Three of these six earlier texts each contain partly duplicate accounts:

In addition, the Samson narrative (13-16) contains two distinct cycles; the first a series of tableaux concerning his romance of a Philistine woman and subsequent problems arising from it; the second is the tale of his relationship with Delilah, which begins with him standing between two gateposts at dawn and ends with him standing between two temple pillars in the evening. Though these two cycles may have been collected separately from each other, textual criticism favours the view that the whole Samson narrative originates from one author. That the narrative of Samson is easily broken into 12 episodes is considered to be a deliberate literary conceit, owing to the significance of the number 12 to the Israelites.

In addition to such parallel narratives, the story of Jephthah (11:1-12:7) is often suspected to have been subject to later editing in three locations, though the reasons for the first two are not at all clear

Appendices

The Appendices cover two stories from the time of the Judges, rather than Judges themselves, and so only have contextual relationship in passing with the remainder of the work. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the Appendices is that they cover events occurring at the start of the period of Judges and so chronologically belong before the remainder of the book, not after it. Even more noticeable is that the narrative preceding the Appendices continues in 1 Samuel, as if the narratives of the Appendices are not present. Hence scholars view the Appendices as texts that were not originally present but later added because of the shared time frame, though the reason they were inserted at the end rather than the beginning is unclear.

The story of Micah and his Idols (17-18) is thought by some scholars (e.g. Ernst Bertheau, Karl Budde, Rudolf Kittel, and Carl Heinrich Cornill) to be composed from two distinct accounts, one recording Micah making an Ephod and Teraphim and hiring a Levite to be "father and priest"; the other recording Micah making a graven image and a molten image and hiring a Levite as a priest whom he treated as a son. Were this to be the case, it may indicate that at least part of the Appendices could be considered further continuations of the Jahwist, Elohist, or Priestly sources, hence explaining their origin. However, other critical scholars have proposed that such discrepancies may simply be later scribal interpolations. The story is notable because it describes a cult and priesthood at Dan which is mentioned nowhere else in the entire Hebrew Bible, and hence is considered to be based on a particularly early source, prior to later recensions glossing over cult centres of Yahweh outside Jerusalem and Shiloh.

The other story of the appendices (19-21), concerning the Levite and his concubine, is thought to date from a similarly early era based on linguistic similarities to the first appendix. However, since everyone in the story is anonymous except Phinehas, many Biblical critics regard the story as fictional. Nevertheless, Hosea (10:9) says that "...since the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel...", evidencing at least the presence of traditions resembling parts of the story, though some scholars, beginning with Noldeke, believe the story is actually based on something from a slightly later time period—the ruining of the tribe of Benjamin by the war between David and the son of Saul.

See also

External links

Original text
Jewish translations
Christian translations
Articles

References

This article incorporates text from Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), a publication now in the public domain.

Preceded by
Joshua		 Hebrew Bible Followed by
Samuel
Christian Old Testament Followed by
Ruth