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.
Structure and content
Academics treat the text of Judges as having three distinct sections:
- The Introduction (1:1-3:10 and 3:12) giving a summary of the book of Joshua
- The Main Text (3:11-16:31), discussing the five Great Judges, Abimelech, and providing glosses for a few minor
Judges
- The Appendices (17:1-21:25), giving two stories set in the time of the Judges, but not discussing the Judges
themselves.
- The introduction
The introduction summarises much of the material discussed in Joshua, in some cases giving additional details:
- The choosing of Judah to lead the attack (Judges 1:1-3)
- The capture of Adonibezek, and destruction of Jerusalem, (Judges 1:4-8)
- The story of Othniel Ben Kenaz (Judges 1:11-15) almost identical to its mention in
Joshua (Joshua 15:15-19)
- A list of the successes and failures of Judah and Simeon's
campaigns (1:17-20)
- The descendants of Moses' father-in-law (either Hobab or
Raguel/Reuel/Jesse -
this is unclear) move to the Negev (Judges 1:16)
- Caleb driving away the sons of Anak from Hebron (Judges 1:10 and 1:20) as mentioned in Joshua (Joshua 15:14)
- The destruction of Luz and sparing of an individual who aided the Israelite spies
(1:22-26)
- A list of the failures of the campaigns by the northern
tribes (1:21-36)
- A threat by an angel at Bochim (2:1-5)
- The death of Joshua (Judges 2:6-9) similar to the account in Joshua (Joshua 24:28-31)
- An introduction to the role of Biblical judges (2:10-3:6)
- The falling of the Israelites into heathen practices (2:10-14)
- A very brief overview of the main part of the Book of Judges (2:15-19)
- An explanation of why God allowed some Canaanites to remain (2:20-3:4)
- A recap of the Israelites falling into heathen practices, as the start of the main part of the book (3:5-6)
- The story of Othniel Ben Kenaz (Judges 3:7-10) again, presented differently to the
earlier mention (Judges 1:11-15)
- The main text
The main text mostly 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 number of their sons.
- The appendices
There are two appendices, with no apparent narrative connection to each other, or the remainder of the text:
- Dan and the Idols of Micah (17-18)
- Gibeah and the Levite Concubine (19-21)
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
somehow becoming disconnected and misplaced at a later date.
According to some (but not all) experts in textual analysis known as textual
criticism, the majority of Judges was originally part of a continuous work known as the Deuteronomic History stretching from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, which was later broken up, in accordance with the documentary hypothesis, 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 textual critics also treat
1 Samuel 1:1-7:2, which discuss Eli and
Samuel, as having originally been part of the Judges section of the Deuteronomic History
narrative.
The 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 (c.f. 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 critical 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.
The 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 - Ehud
(3:11, and 3:13-29), Deborah (4:1b-5:31), Gideon (6-8), Abimelech (9:1-57), Jephthah (11:1-12:7), and Samson (13:2-16), 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 (71) 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, the name coming from 5:6.
Three of these six earlier texts each contain partly duplicate accounts:
- Judges 4 is believed to be based on two separate stories, one based on the ancient Song of
Deborah (Judges 5) concerning Sisera, the other a story concerning Jabin, which had merged together when Barak of Issachar
(identified at 5:15 as the one who defeats Sisera) was confused with Barak of Naphtali (identified at 4:6 as the one who defeats
Jabin), and consequently Sisera is reinterpreted in Judges 4 as Jabin's general rather than as the chief of a confederation (as
in Judges 5)
- Although difficult, to a degree, to separate, there are considered to be two distinct interwoven narratives about Gideon; the
first narrative (which includes at least 6:2-6, 6:11-24, 6:33-35, 7:1, and 7:9-25) describing a surprise assault on the
Midianites on Mount Gilboa with the fugitive Kings Oreb and Zeeb being killed, and the second narrative (which includes at least
6:7-10, 6:25-32, and 6:36-40, and 8:4-27) discussing Gideon capturing the fugitive Kings Zebah and Zalmunna.
- The narrative of Judges 9, concerning Abimelech, is thought not to have originally contained the parable of Jotham (9:7b-20),
it being inserted into the story at a later date. However, the parable itself is believed to be earlier than the rest of the
narrative, which is thought to be at least partly based upon it.
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
- According to 11:1-2, it is Jephthah's own brothers which expelled him, whereas according to 11:7 it is the elders of
Gilead
- The message to the Ammonites at 11:12-27 is written as if directed at Moabites.
- 11:35-40 has the appearance of abridging a more extensive original text, glossing over the existence in the text of human
sacrifice to Yahweh, which is mentioned fairly obviously at 11:31
The 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 not at its end, 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
interruption due to the narrative of the Appendices were simply not present. Hence scholars view the Appendices as texts that
were not originally present but later added due to 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 who 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 due to later scribal interpolations. The
story is significantly notable as 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, as everyone in the story is anonymous, except Phinehas, has
led many Biblical critics to 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
This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible
Dictionary, originally published in 1897.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
