Theopedia

Book of Judges

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

— Judges 21:25

Overview

Judges is the second of the Old Testament’s historical books, recounting Israel’s affairs in Canaan between the death of Joshua and the rise of the monarchy under Saul.1 Like the other historical books, it presents the nation’s affairs “on the divine rather than the human side,” tracing God’s providential dealings with the covenant people rather than simply recording political and military events.2 The book takes its name from the judges themselves, men whom God raised up and equipped with extraordinary qualifications to deliver Israel from oppression and preside over its affairs, an office that was general and political rather than the ordinary judicial office described in Exodus 18.1

Timeline

  • Israel’s incomplete conquest: Judah and Simeon defeat Adoni-bezek but cannot drive out Canaanites from the plain. Benjamin fails to take Jerusalem. An angel rebukes Israel at Bochim for sparing these nations (Judg. 1:1-2:5).
  • The pattern of the cycles: Israel turns from God to worship other gods, so he lets an enemy oppress them. They cry out, he sends a judge to save them, then it repeats (Judg. 2-3).
  • Othniel delivers Israel from Cushan-rishathaim: Othniel, Caleb’s nephew and son-in-law, becomes Israel’s first judge after eight years under a Mesopotamian king. God’s Spirit comes on him, and the land is at peace (Judg. 3:7-11).
  • Ehud and Shamgar deliver Israel: Ehud, a left-handed man from Benjamin, kills King Eglon with a hidden dagger, ending eighteen years under Moab. Shamgar kills six hundred Philistines with a farm tool (Judg. 3:12-31).
  • Deborah and Barak deliver Israel: Deborah, a prophetess, calls Barak to fight Sisera’s iron chariots. He agrees only if she comes too. Israel wins, and Jael kills Sisera with a tent peg (Judg. 4-5).
  • Gideon delivers Israel from Midian: Gideon tests God with a fleece, then cuts his army to three hundred men. At night with torches he routs the Midianite camp and refuses to be king (Judg. 6-8).
  • Abimelech seizes kingship at Shechem: Gideon’s son Abimelech murders seventy half-brothers on one stone, sparing only Jotham. He rules three years, until a woman at Thebez kills him with a millstone (Judg. 9).
  • Tola and Jair judge Israel: Two minor judges get brief mention. Tola judges Israel twenty-three years. Jair the Gileadite, whose thirty sons ride thirty donkeys, judges twenty-two more with no recorded crisis (Judg. 10:1-5).
  • Jephthah delivers Israel from Ammon: Jephthah, an outcast and a prostitute’s son, is called to fight Ammon. He vows to sacrifice whoever first greets him home after battle. It is his own daughter (Judg. 10:6-12:7).
  • Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon judge Israel: Three more minor judges follow: Ibzan, known for marrying off sixty children; Elon of Zebulun; and Abdon, whose sons and grandsons ride seventy donkeys (Judg. 12:8-15).
  • Samson’s lifelong conflict: Samson, a Nazirite, wastes his strength on Philistine women and is betrayed at last by Delilah. Blinded and enslaved, he pulls down Dagon’s temple, killing more in death than life (Judg. 13-16).
  • Israel’s moral collapse: The book’s final chapters show a nation with no king. Dan steals Micah’s idols to conquer Laish. After a Levite’s concubine is killed at Gibeah, Israel nearly wipes out Benjamin (Judg. 17-21).

Author and Date

Judges does not name its own author.3 Jewish tradition ascribes it to Samuel, and it may have been written during his lifetime, possibly under his supervision, though this cannot be affirmed with certainty.3 Two internal notices bound the date of composition. The recurring statement that “there was no king in Israel” (Judg. 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25) presupposes that the book was written after the monarchy had been established, while the notice that the Jebusites still dwelt with Benjamin in Jerusalem “unto this day” (Judg. 1:21) places its composition before David’s conquest of that city (2 Sam. 5:6-9), together pointing to a date early in the monarchy.3 The chronology of the judges themselves is debated among interpreters: reckoning the years of servitude and rest recorded in the book in strict succession yields a shorter total than the four hundred fifty years Paul assigns to the period in Acts 13:20, a discrepancy resolved differently depending on whether some of the judgeships and oppressions are read as overlapping in different regions rather than strictly sequential.4

Historical and Literary Context

Judges narrates a period without an organized central government, in which the tribes acted largely independently of one another except on rare occasions of general concern, such as the punishment of Benjamin after the crime at Gibeah (Judg. 19-21).1 This lack of central authority did not favor national military strength, but it suited the theocracy’s moral and religious purpose: it compelled Israel to depend on God’s own presence and intervention for deliverance rather than on a standing central power.5 Sin and oppression by surrounding nations, followed by repentance and deliverance through God’s direct intervention, is on this reading the story the book tells repeatedly, each cycle bearing out both the nation’s perverseness and God’s own faithfulness to his covenant promises and warnings.5

Structure

Judges opens with a two-part introduction: a summary of the wars the tribes fought against the remaining Canaanites after Joshua’s death, including their failure to complete the conquest and an angel’s rebuke for that failure (Judg. 1:1-2:5), followed by a survey of the pattern of events to come, focused on God’s faithfulness to his covenant despite Israel’s unfaithfulness (Judg. 2:6-3:6).5 The body of the book narrates seven successive periods of servitude to foreign oppressors and the judges God raised up to deliver Israel from each, together with incidental episodes such as Abimelech’s kingship at Shechem (Judg. 9) and the conflict between Jephthah and the Ephraimites (Judg. 12:1-6).5 A two-part appendix closes the book: the Danites’ conquest of Laish and Micah’s idolatrous shrine (Judg. 17-18), and the punishment of Benjamin for the crime of Gibeah (Judg. 19-21); both episodes belong to, rather than following after, the period covered by the body of the book.6

Major Themes

“Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”

The book’s closing verse, echoing an identical statement earlier in the book (Judg. 17:6), reads: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25). Matthew Barrett cites this refrain as evidence that depravity in the Old Testament characterized not only the nations Israel was to dispossess but Israel’s own leaders and people, who did “what was right in their own eyes” rather than what was right in God’s, in violation of the standard Deuteronomy itself sets (Deut. 12:8).7

The need for a king

Micah John McCormick argues that Judges advances the Bible’s storyline by exposing Israel’s need for a righteous leader: though a succession of judges provided temporary relief from oppression, none secured lasting righteousness or peace, a need the book leaves unresolved at its close.8 Ken Magnuson traces the same decline in the book’s own narrative arc, describing it as “a devolution from [Israel’s] God-ordained conquest to a bloody civil war,” a decline that culminates, in the opening of 1 Samuel, in Israel’s demand for “a king like the other nations” to fight its battles, in place of reliance on God as its king (1 Sam. 8:5).9

God’s patience and covenant faithfulness

Despite Israel’s recurring unfaithfulness across the book’s cycles of apostasy and deliverance, the pattern itself is read as displaying God’s own faithfulness: each deliverance came not because Israel had earned it but because God kept the promises and warnings of his covenant with the nation regardless of its perverseness.5

Related Doctrines

References

References

  1. Barrows, 245. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 240. ↩

  3. Barrows, 247. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Barrows, 247-248. ↩

  5. Barrows, 246. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. Barrows, 246-247. ↩

  7. Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 94: “Even within Israel, God’s chosen people, depravity characterized not only the people but also the leaders, so that Judges concludes, ‘In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ (Judges 21:25; cf. 17:6).” ↩

  8. Micah John McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Foreshadowed,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 197: “The book of Judges continues the story by showing Israel’s need for a righteous leader, the book ends soberly: ‘In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ (21:25). While various judges provided temporary periods of relief, none brought in everlasting righteousness.” ↩

  9. Ken Magnuson, “15. Just War, Pacifism, and the Use of Lethal Force,” in Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2020): “The book of Judges depicts a devolution from their God-ordained conquest to a bloody civil war. Israel later rejects God as their king, and demands a king like the other nations (1 Sam. 8:5), who will fight their wars for them.” ↩