Judges: Chapters 1 to 5

 Last time, the Book of Joshua ended.  Now onto Judges, a much more interesting chapter all around. 

CHAPTER 1

Welcome to life after Joshua.  The Israelites don’t know who to follow or what to do, so the Lord tells them that Judah shall attack remaining Canaanites.  Wait – who exactly is the Lord talking to here? To the people as a whole?  If so, that is really noteworthy!   If it’s just a few people, they should be mentioned.  But the Bible just says, “The LORD answered” which comes after “the Israelites consulted the LORD.”  I guess it’s the priests.  It makes as much sense of anything.

It’s weird how the Bible discusses the attack, though.  Judah decides to attack and “said to his brother Simeon, `Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, and let us do battle with the Canaanites.’”   If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was just two guys, not two tribes with tens of thousands of people each.  Anyhow, they fight and win.

You get some weird/memorable details on the king they defeated.  Adonibezek is his name, and he tells the Israelites after he’s captured that he used to have 70 kings pick up scraps under his table – and he’d had their thumbs and big toes cut off.  Well, that’s memorable.  Naturally, the Israelites cut off his thumbs and big goes.  Hey, after the Book of Joshua, that comes off as really mild.  We’re also told that Jerusalem is captured, which is odd because I know David later captures it (and wasn’t it also captured in Joshua, or was it just mentioned then?)  For now, we’re told that the tribe of Benjamin lives there with Jebusites, who were not driven out of the town.

You also get other tribes taking land and not dispossessing the original inhabitants.  So even though this is the Promised Land and had a lot of genocide last time, there are still plenty of non-Hebrew milling about. 

There are some odds and ends here. The chapter writer goofs up notably, confusing Moses’ father-in-law with his brother-in-law. He calls Hobab the Kenite the father-in-law of Moses, when the footnotes tell me he’d previously been identified as a brother-in-law.  The dad-in-law is of course Jethro, one of the good guys from the Torah.  Then again, Jethro is called by more than one name even then. 

Oh, quick note – we also first (briefly) meet Orthniel, who apparently will be one of the heroes of this chapter.  For now, he’s just the son-in-law of Caleb, the legendary spy who told the Hebrew to invade a half-century ago or so.

CHAPTER 2

This chapter just warms us up for the rest of the book.  Essentially, we’re told that this will be a series of morality plays; and I got to admit, if you’re going to stage a morality play anywhere, you may as well stage it in the Bible.  Time and time again the people will forget the ways of the Lord, follow other gods.  Time and time again the Lord will get upset at them, and let them fall to their enemies.  Time and time again, the people will cry out to the Lord to save them, and he’ll send a judge to save them.  Then they’ll forget about God again.  Rinse, lather, repeat. 

You can actually get a nice Judges Drinking Game out of it.  Take a shot every time you read either “The anger of the LORD flared up against them” and/or “the Israelites cried out to the LORD.”

One little quirk – this chapter begins with Joshua still alive.  Oh-kay.  He dies again, still at age 110.  That is a bit of sloppy writing, especially given that this book was supposed to be written by the same guy who wrote the Book of Joshua.  We’re told that the generation of Joshua stayed loyal, but it was only after they died those things changed. 

Also, God makes a point near that end that he’ll test the Israelites.  He won’t remove all foreign influences from the land, to see how the people handle the temptations of other Gods.  The Bible says, “They will be made to test Israel, to see whether or not they will keep to the way of the LORD and continue in it as their ancestors did.”  Y’know, that last bit – “as their ancestors did” – can be taken two different ways.  On the face of it, is the intended meaning: we’ll see if they stay loyal to God as their forefathers did.  But think about that – have we seen much evidence that their forefathers have ever been loyal?  Oh, the generation of Joshua did, but mostly we’ve seen complaining and backsliding.  And that leads to the second, ironic potential meaning of “as their ancestors did.”  Will they screw it up as their ancestors did?  Turns out they will; they really will.  The generation of Joshua will be the aberration.

As for the judges themselves, my hunch is that these are the folk tales and oral traditions handed down over the generations that were already part of the collective consciousness by the time the Bible was compiled.  OK, so you better deal with these tales somehow.  It’s better to incorporate as best you can, so they did.  Similarly, I know when classical Japan began around 700 AD, the power structure wrote a history of Japan to justify their own rule.  They included local tales to bolster the position of the kings.  It incorporated popular beliefs, thus made it work with the beliefs put out by the kings.  Here, maybe different tribes have their own tale of heroes and great leaders.  OK, better to include it then to help create stronger ties between the tribes. 

CHAPTER 3

Now we get into the judges themselves.  The Israelites backslide, God’s anger flares up against them – DRINK – and they cry out to God – DRINK – for a savior.  They’re under a guy named Cushan-rishathaim, who has ruled them for eight years.  But God sends Othneil, who is not only Caleb’s son-in-law, but also his nephew.  I missed that in Chapter 1, but looking back – yup, he totally is.  That makes Othneil a member of the tribe of Judah. 

Anyhow, Othneil frees them and for 40 years things are cool. 

Then they backslide and the process reboots.  Eglon, king of Moab takes over and rules them for 18 years.  Enter the new judge, Ehud, a Benjaminte.  Now comes one of the funnier moments in the Bible.

Ehud wants to kill King Eglon and goes to see Eglon in his chamber.  He says he has a secret message for Eglon, so Eglon dismisses his servants. Dumb king, this Eglon.  Ehud says it’s a secret message from the Lord, and takes out his dagger and with his left hand, stabs Eglon to death in the gut.  So far, this scene reminds me of Godfather II when Don Corelone kills the man who killed his mother. 

But then it gets humorous.  King Eglon is a fat guy.  So fat that the blade and hilt of the sword enters his guts, and Ehud can’t get it out.  He is able to get away as the servants are as dumb as their king.  The king doesn’t go out, so they assume he’s resting.  They’re so dumb I wonder if this is some sort of sabotage on their part.  Maybe they hope he’s dead and/or are just looking for an excuse to not see him.  Ehud escapes and they overthrow Moab.  80 years of happiness ensue.

Lastly, there is a brief verse on a different judge, Shamgar.  There are supposed to be six major judges, six minor judges, and one cautionary tale anti-Judge.  Orthniel and Ehud take up less than a chapter between them, but are still major judges.  Shamgar is the first minor judge.  It just says he kills 600 Philistines with an oxgoad.  I guess his legend was too overshadowed by Samson to make him memorable.  Or maybe he’s associated with a northern tribe.  It just says he killed people and was a savoir.

CHAPTER 4

Now we get a new type of judge, a female judge: Deborah.  She is a woman who would sit by a tree and serve as a prophet.  People would come to her with problems and she’d give them answers. 

By the way, the fact that you have this female prophet sitting by a tree giving answers makes he realize one hidden fact in Judges – where are the priests?  Yeah, we haven’t seen any here.  Oh, there is tons of info on priests and their rules and regulations in the Torah, but where are they here in Judges?  The Torah was written in the divided kingdom or later and reflected the roles of the priests at that time (or at least the roles the priests wanted for themselves).  But here it looks like he have Hebrew life before the establishment of an effective priesthood.  Everything is less organized and centralized.  And that makes sense.  It starts out informal and then later gets formalized.  The reason the priests will often have problems with religious practices and beliefs of the people is because the people are doing the actual traditions while the priests are the revolutionary ones, even if they see themselves as restorers. 

Actually, one of the great achievements of Judges is to incorporate all the traditional heroes within the framework of the priests’ theology.  Why did they need a hero?  Because the people kept breaking with the Lord’s ways.  (As it happens, doing traditional practices was breaking with the Lord’s ways, but the priests won’t say that, though it does explain why it keeps happening).

Anyhow, on to Deborah.  She calls for a rebellion against the Canaanite King Jabin, and orders Barak to lead it.  He agrees, but only on the condition that Deborah comes. She agrees, but only if he doesn’t take the glory for himself – remember this is God doing it through a woman, not you.  Interesting – unless most of Judges, the military leader is secondary here.

They fight the bad guy, named Sisera, who is the muscle for King Jabin, I guess. Well, Sisera has 900 iron chariots.  His army is completely wiped out and he flees on foot.  He comes to the tent of a woman named Jael, and here we get to a memorable scene in the Bible. 

He comes in and asks for water.  She gives him milk – hey, that’s even better.  He gives him a rug to dry in and agrees to stand by the tent to keep anyone from entering.  Sisera falls asleep, content in the knowledge that he’s found a safe refuge.  Sucker.  Jael kills him.  And she doesn’t just slightly kill him.  She takes a mallet and drives a tent peg right through his skull.  Yeah, that would kill him alright.

Quick final note – Deborah is apparently in the tribe of Ephraim.  At least that’s where her tree is.  Barak is from the tribe of Naphtali.

CHAPTER 5

Now for the Song of Deborah.  Technically, we’re just going over the same thing as Chapter 4, but it’s still interesting and fascinating.  First, we learn a little more about how Sisera lost.  The details are hazy, but it looks like it rained a lot, and his chariots got stuck in the mud.  No wonder Chapter 4 made a point to say he had iron chariots repeatedly. 

More than that, there is a roll call of the tribes of Israel and what they did – or didn’t do – at this time.  Reuben comes off poorly.  They were indecisive and stayed in their homes and by their herds.  Deborah’s song calls them out.  Dan spent all his time in ships and Gilead spent all his time beyond the Jordan River.  Asher stayed in his havens along the shore.  Meanwhile, Zebulun is the only tribe to merit two mentions in the song, as we learn they were “wielders of the marshal’s staff” and “a people who defied death.”  So they are the heroes of the day. 

Also congratulated are Naphtali (the tribe of Barak), Issachar, Machir, Ephraim, and Benjamin.

A keen reader will notice a few very interesting things from the last two paragraphs.  First, only 10 tribes are mentioned – six are thanked and four chided.  So which two tribes aren’t mentioned?  Here’s where it gets fun – four tribes aren’t mentioned.

Wait – what?  How can that be?  There are only 12 tribes.

True, but look back above.  Deborah’s song says Gilead spent all his time beyond the Jordan River, and that Machir did a good job in the fight – but who are these tribes? They haven’t shown up at all earlier and they won’t show up again later.  They may have been tribes in the time of Deborah, but later on, they have vanished. 

Like I said earlier, this chapter is about folk memory and oral tradition passed down.  Maybe the best way to pass down folk memories in via a song.  That way the cadences and rhythms of the song help keep the words passed down exactly.  Some scholars think that this song is the oldest part of the Bible, and at the very least it’s the among the oldest parts.  It’s from a time when the 12 tribes that later exist hadn’t congealed as they later would.  The people were still in flux. 

So eight known tribes are mentioned, two odds ones are thrown in, and four traditional ones are thrown out.  Those tribes are: Judah, Simeon, Gad, and Manasseh. 

What happened to the older tribes and where did the new ones come from? Good question.  Keep in mind –Judah will be by far the biggest one later.  Maybe those two other tribes would later merge into it.  Or maybe more Canaanites joined up with the Israelis and became Judah.  One of those extra tribes – Gilead – supposedly stayed beyond the Jordan.  Maybe it drifted away from the others altogether.  Manasseh is always associated with Ephraim as the tribes of Joseph, maybe it’s a splinter sect.  Some tribes, like Reuben and Benjamin, lose their numbers drastically (Reuben between the two censuses in Numbers and Benjamin at the end of this book).  Maybe some of their members peeled off to form the new tribes.

It’s all conjecture, but apparently, those tribes weren’t there at the time of Deborah.  You could argue they existed but she didn’t mention them.  But then again, she chides tribes for not showing up.  And that still leaves the conundrum of what about the two tribes she mentions that are never heard from again?

The chapter ends with us being told Israel is fine for 40 years after his.  Let me do some quick math here.  There are eight years under the first bad guy, 40 years free, 18 under the Moab king, 80 free, 20 under the people that Deborah will fight against, and then 40 free after that. 

I don’t know when this all begins, but let’s go with my guesstimate of Joshua’s death in 1245 BC as a starting point. 

1245-1237 BC – Under Cushan-rishathaim

1237-1197 BC – Free after Othniel

1197-1179 BC – Under Moab’s King Eglon

1179-1099 BC – Free after Ehud

1099-1079 BC – Under the Canaanite King Jabin

1079-1039 BC – Free after Deborah.

This is breaking down.  Judges is taking up too much time.  I know by around 1000 BC, David is King.  You have 2,708 years between Creation and Moses’ death by my reckoning, and 206 years from the first problem here under the next problem.  That really doesn’t leave much time to play with.  Well, there aren’t many important judges left until Samuel. 

The point is these first five chapters take about 200 years, which is interesting because ever since Exodus things either haven’t moved at all or moved with an unclear timeline.  

EDITED to add: click here to read the next chunk of Judges.