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[When a commentator chooses to lump two books together in one study, there must be good reason. And that might be because the connection between the two books is established since Shophtiym/Judges demonstrates the immediate albeit unexpected consequences of taking possession of the ‘promised’ Land as narrated in detail in Yahushuwah’/Joshua—-consequences that are quite disappointing to readers of today.
We wonder with an air of self-righteous judgment: how could a people—so privileged with experiencing individually and communally the benefits and blessings attendant to a covenant with the all-powerful Creator/God—fail so dismally, so soon, so fast? Could we have done any better? Easy to say in hindsight, after reading the whole history of Israel not in a so-called ‘history book’ but in their Tanakh! Indeed, what nation would record the worst about themselves in their own sacred scriptures?
This commentary is from Pentateuch and Haftarahs; please remember that the commentators from this resource come from a non-Jewish background, hence their reference is mostly the ‘Old Testament’ of the Christian Bible. Additionally, since the approach is from a literary intent, the focus is more on format, symbolism, narrative movement, etc., as though these historical accounts are creative works.
To us, the very fact that literary critics have bothered to scrutinize the Hebrew Scriptures is evidence that writers of antiquity were not mindless crude recorders of cold facts; critics do take notice of literary conventions used in retelling stories of conquest and tribal governance amidst the overarching themes relating to covenant conditions and the character of Israel’s God, YHWH. In so doing, literary critics enable clueless readers of today to understand that there IS, after all, order and connection in the seemingly thrown-in hodgepodge of stories which teach consistent lessons amidst wise and unwise choices resorted to by protagonists. There is no theological agenda, only the text is scrutinized, and that is a perspective readers are seldom exposed to when reading Scripture.
There is much to learn from these critics, surprise, surprise . . . so don’t give up reading this series. If we have bothered to type, reformat, highlight these posts to share with our website visitors, it is because they are worth the read!–Admin1.]
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Joshua and Judges – David M. Gunn
Formal Connection and Plot
Viewed simply, the Book of Joshua recounts the entry of the people of Israel into the Promised Land, Canaan, the land of the Amorites / Canaanites.
- It takes up the story—a story running from Genesis to 2 Kings—where Deuteronomy leaves off:
- the people have left Egypt, the land of bondage,
- crossed the Red Sea,
- received the law of YHWH at Sinai,
- journeyed in the Wilderness,
- taken possession of land east of the Jordan(Num. 32),
- and now stand ready to possess the rest of the promise.
- As the Book of Deuteronomy culminates in the death of Moses,
- so the Book of Joshua will culminate in the death of Joshua.
- Thus it will begin “after the death of Moses” (Joshua 1:1),
- just as the Book of Judges in turn will begin “after the death of Joshua” (Judges 1:1; cf. 2 Sam. 1:1).
Chapters 1-12 tell of the ensuing war in a relatively expansive style marked by descriptive detail and reported speech, though pared toward the end to some skeletal reporting speech (see 10:28-39) intimating the characteristic prose of the next section, chapters 13-22.
Woven into the Jericho and Ai accounts are first the measured, ritualistic account of the crossing of the Jordan, and then the story of Achan’s transgression and execution, while another story of deception, the Gibeonites’ covenant, links easily with the end of the campaign (“Now the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai,” 9:3 [AR]); similarly linked are the main succeeding episodes (for example, “Now it came to pass, when Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem heard that Joshua had taken Ai …,” 10:1 “And it came to pass, when Jabin king of Hazor heard …,” 11:1. A summary listing of the kings defeated and land possessed east and west of the Jordan, brings the constant movement of the narrative (with its reiterated verbs of passing over/on/across, going up, retuning / turning back, and so on) to a pause.
Chapters 13-22 are set off formally in parenthesis, as it were (“Now Joshua was old and advanced in years,” 13:1 [AR], resumed at 23:1, 2), as if formally to declare a halt, a shift from the narrative of action to the rhetoric of listing and ordering. As in Numbers (or Chronicles), listing subdues narrative here, building a land and community out of names and connectives, though occasionally narrated speech and activity push though, as when Caleb (14:6-15) and the daughters of Zelophehad (17:3-6) remind Joshua of special treatment promised by Moses, or the tribe of Joseph grumbles at its lot (17:14-18), or surveyors are sent out on behalf of seven reluctant tribes (18:2-10). But we miss something of the book’s special texture if we allow our taste for action or character development to deflect us from this more static, administrative, prose. For out of it arises a powerful sense of the myriad elements that constitute “the people.” “Israel” takes on substance, as does the task at hand; for the challenge to Israel is to translate those lists and allotments into an actual community in actual possession of the Promised Land. The taking of Jericho and Ai and the other campaigns dramatically recounted in chapters 1-12 sweep us along in a vision of easy success.
Chapters 13-21 implicitly suggest that occupation involves much more. They also establish a sense of ambivalence which will not readily be resolved. Instructions for allotting each tribe’s “inheritance,” issued earlier by Moses in the prescriptive, Wilderness period (Num. 34), are now scrupulously fulfilled—perhaps.
Our grasp of narrative time tends to slip with this prose.
- Are we dealing with the ideal of the actual?
- And within what time frame—with reference to narrated time, the narrator’s time, or the implied reader’s time—might that actuality be located?
- Or do we slide between prescription and fulfillment?
Chapters 23-24 bring the book to a close with a report of all Israel gathering, programmatic speeches by Joshua and YHWH (related by Joshua), the people’s renewed commitment to the Covenant, and Joshua’s brief dismissal of the people to their inheritance, followed by his death.
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Viewed simply,
- Judges is an account of Israel’s earliest occupation of the Promised Land,
- in the period before the rise of the monarchy,
- the period which has become known from the major characters of the book as the Period of the Judges.
It is formally linked with the Book of Joshua
- not only by that opening phrase, “after the death of Joshua,”
- but also by its recapitulation of Joshua 24:28-31 (dismissal and death) in Judges 2:6-9 (and cf. 2:21-22 with Joshua 23), following the reiteration of still more Joshua material in Judges 1.
The book finds its continuation
- in 1 Samuel (according to the Hebrew Bible)
- or Ruth
- and then 1 Samuel (according to the ancient Greek versions and the Christian Bible).
Whereas Joshua appears to have a recognizable, if loosely constructed, plot—
- Israel crosses into the Land
- and surmounts major obstacles (in the form of fortified cities and indigenous peoples),
- the Land falls within its grasp
- and tribal territories are allotted—
Judges coheres less obviously in linear or cause-and-effect terms.
- It has often been described as a rather randomly assembled anthology of tales,
- at best an illustration of a cyclical pattern ofexpressive of an editor-compiler’s rigidly determinative theology of reward and punishment.
- sin,
- oppression,
- repentance,
- and salvation,
But so to describe it is to miss or misread three salient features of the book (to which we shall return later).
- First, a determinative pattern of response by God is neither explicit in the so-called editorial framework or formula passages (such as 2:11-19) nor inherent in the tales themselves.
- Second, the tales mesh through shared motifs and themes.
- Third, there is a discernible tendency for the models of leadership and community developed in the earlier books (Numbers-Joshua) as well as in the opening stories of Judges itself (such as Othniel and Ehud) to become increasingly blurred and distorted as the book continues.
- As we bear in mind that YHWH intends to test the people’s allegiance by means of the impinging “nations” (chap. 2), and as we recall the fierce injunctions against forsaking YHWH (cf. Joshua 23-24 and Deut. 28-29),
- we may begin to see that this deterioration creates a tension transcending the constituent tales and so at least a potential plot for the whole book.
- Will the promise of the Land be revoked and the people cast out?
Judges 1:1-3:6 introduces the whole book.
- It first recounts what appear to be the final stages of the taking of the Land, thereby partly recapitulating Joshua, though the focus is now upon the inhabitants of the Land who were not dispossessed (see 1:27-36).
- This focus is then developed in theological terms by—
- an angel of YHWH,
- by YHWH himself,
- and by the narrator:
- Israel’s coming to terms with the Canaanites–
- has endangered its relationship with YHWH
- and will lead to further deterioration,
- spelled out in summary fashion in 2:11-19, which we may recognize (by the end of the book) as a theological abstract of the whole work.
The next section, 3:7-16:31,
- recounts the tales of the judges (some are called “saviors”) who judge Israel or deliver the people (some do both) from oppression:
- Othniel (3:7-11);
- Ehud (3:12-30);
- Shamgar (3:31—hardly a tale);
- Deborah (and Barak) (chaps. 4-5);
- Gideon (chaps. 6-8) together with the “king,”
- Abimelech (chap. 9);
- Tola and Jair (10:1-2, 3-5);
- Jephthah (10:6-12:7);
- Izban,
- Elon,
- and Abdon (12:8-10, 11-12, 13-15);
- and Samson (chaps. 13-16).
- Six extended accounts accounts are interspersed with six brief notices in the pattern 1:2:3 (Shamgar:Tola and Jair:Izban, Elon, and Abdon).
- This pattern in the minor accounts corresponds to the noticeable lengthening of the major tales, the inverse of what we saw in Joshua. One effect, perhaps, if focal, placing the culminating story of Samson in a special relationship with the story of Jericho and drawing attention to the movement that occurs between the taking of Jericho and the taking of Samson, at the center of which lies the “completion” (in fact, noncompletion) of the taking of the Land (Judges 1) and the theological formulations of Judges 2.
Linking the major episodes is a rhetorical framework (so-called) comprising some or all of six elements (they occur within 2:11-19 and recur within the episodes starting at 3:7, 3:12, 4:1, 5:1, 10:6, and 13:1):
(1) Israel does what is evil in YHWH’s sight;
(2) YHWH gives/sells the people into the hand of oppressors;
(3) Israel cries to YHWH;
(4) YHWH raises up a savior/deliverer;
(5) the deliverer defeats the oppressor;
(6) the Land has rest. In fact this formula is as varied as it is constant, not only because in some cases certain elements are redundant in the particular context, but also because the pattern of responses is itself by no means adhered to rigidly.
Thus neither the Gideon nor the Samson story depicts the Land as regaining “rest,” nor, in the Samson story, do the people any longer remember to cry to YHWH, and, furthermore, Samson himself dies in captivity to the oppressor (in contrast to element 5). This framework, therefore, establishes a norm which can then be undermined, offering us strategic interpretive clues both to the associated tales and to the work as a whole.
Another set of rhetorical connectives within the central section of Judges derives from a pervasive chronological scheme, while also detectable is a certain spatial coherence.
- Echoing (though not precisely) the sequence in chapter 1, from south to north, Judah to Dan, are the tribal affiliations of the protagonists in chapters 3-16, from Othniel the Judahite to Samson the Danite.
- With Samson in chapters 13-16, however, we are not in the north, Dan’s eventual location, but in the middle (west), the allotted territory;
- that location allows to unfold the subsequent story of Micah and the northward migration of the Danites in chapters 17-18. The disjunction here between list and tale is thematically significant,
- underlining the failure of Dan in the face of the inhabitants of the Land,
- a paradigm of Israel’s failure.
Simplest among connecting devices, in classic paratactic style, are,
- first, the crucial variation of the introductory formula “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of YHWH” (2:11 [AR]),
- to read “And [they] again did [or “they continued to do”]
- what was evil in the sight of YHWH” (3:12[AR]; cf. 4:1, 10:6, 13:1);
- and, second, the use of the phrase “and after [him]”
- to introduce and integrate sequentially the “minor” judges (3:31; 10:1, 3; 12:8, 11, 13).
These devices are akin to several deployed in Joshua 1-12:
- first, as a connector of larger episodes,
- the narrator uses an introductory formula
- such as “And it came to pass, when all the kings which were beyond the Jordan … heard” (Joshua 9:1; see also 10:1, 11:1);
- second, for the listing of brief campaign notices while retaining an action sequence,
- the narrator uses chain repetition such as “And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon … and smote it … as he had done to Lachish. And Joshua went up from Eglon …unto Hebron … and smote it … as he had done to Eglon” (10:34-37 [Ar]).
Association connectors, such as motifs or wordplay, are numerous. Some of these work to associate adjacent or nearly adjacent episodes; others function over much broader extents.
- In the first category is–
- Ehud’s killing of an unsuspecting Eglon, with the unexpected weapon “thrust” (taqa’) into the king’s belly (3:21),
- paralleling Jael’s killing of an unsuspecting Sisera with the unexpected weapon (a tent peg) “thrust” (taqa’) into the king’s temple (4:21);
- or the “worthless fellows” (‘anashim reqim) who support Abimelech (9:4),
- paralleled by Jephthah’s followers in the next story (11:3).
- Likewise the Nazirite vow,
- implicit in the angel’s speech to Samson’s mother (13:3-5),
- conjures recollection of Jephthah’s fateful and fatal vow in the preceding story (11:30-31).
- In another case,
- the song (chap. 5) that crowns the prose account of Jael’s exploit (chap. 4;
- the two are usually treated as discrete sources by biblical critics) brings the prose narrative of Sisera’s death unto focus by wordplay as well as by precise repetition. “He asked for water—milk she gave” (5:25 [AT]) distills the irony of the more prosaic 4:19 (“and he said to her, ‘Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty’; and she opened the skin of milk and gave him some to drink” [AT].
- In the prose account Jael drives the tent peg into Sisera’s temple (raqah, 4:21, 22);
- the song picks up the term and plays on the syllable raq and the sound q, especially through the guttural h (hard, as in Scottish “loch”). “She crushed his head [ro’sh], / and shattered and struck through [halaf; cf.halav, “milk”] his temple [raqah]” (5:26 [AT]);
- to Sisera’s mother the wise women respond reassuringly: “Are they not finding / and dividing [halaq] the spoil? / —a womb [raham], two wombs [rahmatayim], / per head [ro’sh], per hero; / spoil of dyed-stuff for Sisera, / spoil of dyed-stuff, shot-stuff [riqmah], / dyed-stuff, two pieces of shot-stuff [riqmatayim], / for the neck of the spoiler” (5:30 [AT]).
As with the framework passages, motif parallels serve not only a formal cohesive function but also a typical heuristic purpose, in this case inviting comparative evaluation by drawing attention to similarities and contrasts in situations and characters.
Similar functions are effected by various long-range connectors,
- such as the seizure of the fords at the Jordan (Ehud, Gideon, Jephthah)
- and the associated motif of the quarrel between east Jordan and west Jordan tribes (Gideon, Jephthah).
- The latter motif also finds prominent expression in Joshua (chap. 22)
- and in turn associates with a civil war motif in Judges (involving, in addition, the Abimelech story and burgeoning into the account of the war against Benjamin and the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead, in chaps 20-21).
- At the level of scene or episode, too, we find significant connection:
- for example, the angel’s visitation to Manoah and his wife in Judges 13 (Samson)
- strongly recalls the beginning of Gideon’s story in chapter 6
- (which in turn evokes the paradigm of Moses at the burning bush in Exod. 3:1-12).
Chapters 17-21 have often been viewed as a supplement to Judges with only superficial connection to the main body of the book. To be sure, the chronological scheme and the framework passages cease with the story of Samson; nor is there any further mention of a judge. Yet the term coda might better describe this section which does have strong thematic links with the rest of the book (see the last section of this essay). (At the formal rhetorical level the introductory formula in 17:1 perhaps links with 13:2, the outset of the Samson story.) Other repetitions bind chapters 17-21 internally.
Thus the prefatory “In those days there was no king in Israel” (18:1)
- associates the tale of Micah and the Danites
- with the succeeding one of the Levite and his concubine (see 19:1) and then serves a double function:
- as a concluding comment enveloping the larger tale (chaps. 19-21) into which the Levite/concubine story grows and as an invitation to continue reading into the next book.
- Or we may observe that the young Levite of Bethlehem who journeys to the hill country of Ephraim in the one story (17:7-8) gives place in the other to the Levite sojourning in the hill country of Ephraim, who journeys to Bethlehem (19:1-3).
Thematic Connection: Joshua-Judges 3
Viewed simply,
- Joshua is an account of the Israelites’ entry into the Promised Land,
- Judges as account of their initial period of occupation.
As we have already seen, however, such a description allows little glimpse of what enlivens these books, little clue to their singular complexities—and it is in the complexities that we often discover thematic significance.
One major source of complication is a question that begins to arise in Joshua and is focused sharply in Judges 1-2, namely, did the Israelites wholly succeed in possessing the Land?
Biblical scholars have been accustomed to discern two disparate views of the occupation:
- whereas Joshua presents an account of a devastating and successful conquest, all but eliminating the native population,
- Judges reflects a more gradual process, including a crucial failure to dislodge significant Canaanite elements.
Yet this is an overly neat division, for elements of a story of partial occupation appear in Joshua itself.
Certainly the Joshua narrator seems to assert explicitly YHWH’s total fulfillment of his promises regarding the Land.
- For example, “And YHWH gave to Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and settled in it… Not a word broken of every good word which YHWH had spoken to the house of Israel; all arrived” (21:43-45 [AT]) is echoed by Joshua’s own words near the close of the book (23:14-15).
- Yet already by the end of chapter 9 we are aware that the Gibeonites remain, protected by an Israelite covenant;
- from 11:22 we learn that none of the Anakim were left in the land of the people of Israel—except in Gaza, Gath, and Ashod!
- Likewise the Geshurites and Maacathites “dwelt in the midst of Israel to this day” (13:13 [AT]), as did “the Jebusites with the people of Judah at Jerusalem to this day” (15:63 [AT]),
- while the Canaanites of Gezer, not driven out, “dwelt in the midst of Ephraim to this day and became forced labor” (16:10 [AT]; see also 17:11-12).
- At this point we should recall that, according to the prescriptions for implementing the promise (such as Deut. 7:1-2, 20:16-18), possession of the Land means
- not only dispossession of the inhabitants
- but also their total removal.
“So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord [had] said to Moses,” we read in 11:23.
Yet in 13:1, as the book shifts into its second phase (chaps. 13-21), YHWH intimates to Joshua that “there remains a great extent of land to possess” [AT], and if we observe both the temporal ambiguities fostered by the allotment accounts and the sporadic itemizing of the remnant nations, we shall be the less surprised to discover by chapter 18 that seven tribes still await even the process of allotment, let alone have taken possession of their inheritance. “How long,” says Joshua to the reluctant tribes, “will you make no effort to enter and take possession of the land, which YHWH, the God of your fathers, has given to you?” (18:3 [AT]).
Faced with this range of tempering voices we may find ourselves concluding that the intimations of sweeping victory are perhaps to be taken as implying strict geographic limitations (“he took all that particular part of the land”), are at the very least the language of hyperbole, are even, conceivably, ironic.
Once attuned to the voices of incomplete fulfillment, we are bound to review what may have earliest passed unremarked.
- The preservation of Rahab and her family is, of course, an infringement of the command to “devote” (“put to the ban,” “utterly destroy”) those given into Israel’s hand (see Deut. 7:2, 20:10-18). No matter that the agreement reached by the spies seems reasonable and reciprocal;The uncompromising execution of the Israelite Achan and his company (chap. 7) for infringing the prohibition against taking booty reinforces the point.
- it is an illegal covenant according to the rules governing the war of occupation,
- the law of YHWH,
- the law just mediated by the voice of Moses the servant of God in Deuteronomy,
- the law that lies at the heart of God’s (splendidly concentric) exhortation to Joshua at the beginning of his book (1:5-9)
- to do according to the law which Moses commanded
- so that he might successfully bring the people to inherit the Land.
- The sparing of the Canaanite Rahab compromises the law.
- It is the beginning of the account of how the Canaanite remained in the Land.
- Likewise the sparing of the Canaanites of Gibeon becomes another episode in the story of Israel’s failure wholly to possess the Land. That agreement, too, contravenes the letter of the law.
At the heart of YHWH’s speech to Joshua at the opening of the book is the law.
At the heart of Joshua’s final speeches at the closing of the book (chaps. 23-24) is—-the issue that above all else links law and Land in the commandment to dispossess the inhabitants completely (23:6-8; see also 24:14-15, 19-20):
And be very strong [says Joshua] to keep and do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses … that you do not go amongst these nations, these remnant ones with you; and you shall not call to mind the names of their gods and you shall not swear by them and you shall not serve them and you shall not bow down to them, but rather to YHWH your God you shall cling, as you have done today. [AT]
The speech resonates with others before it, most strikingly with Deuteronomy 20:17-18:
And you shall truly devote them to destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as YHWH your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done for their gods, and you sin against YHWH your God. [AT]
The issue concerns the essence of the covenant that binds YHWH and people (hence both speeches in chaps. 23-24 issue naturally in the covenant of 24:25).
- Will Israel forsake YHWH for other gods?
- The injunction against a remnant expresses a fundamental pessimism on YHWH’s part:On the other hand, the covenant itself is an expression of optimism, as is the promise which gives shape to our story.
- only a people living in a world sealed off from the world seems to promise much hope of an enduring loyalty;
- a people rubbing shoulders with other peoples with other gods will inevitably break faith.
- Of central interest, therefore, is how this optimistic God will confront the realization of his pessimism.
In the gap between the rhetoric of fulfillment and the rhetoric of incompletion we discover a confluence of basic questions.
- Is the promise of the gift of land to the ancestors truly unconditional?
- Or does the punishment consequent upon the people’s failure strictly to observe YHWH’s commandments override the promise?
- Does success depend upon adherence to the law (cf. Joshua 1:8)?
- If YHWH as covenant God allows modification or compromise of the divinely ordained commandments (cf. Rahab or the Gibeonites or the conscription of remnant Canaanites), will not this latitude threaten the very relationship that the commandments are designed to preserve, namely that YHWH alone is Israel’s God?
- If the story of Achan models the strict application of covenant justice, what prospect is there that the people, whose propensity for backsliding has been amply narrated in the preceding books, will ever enter the Land to inherit the gift, let alone remain in it?
We are but a narrative stone’s-throw away from the devastating curses that buttress the book of the Law (Deut. 28:15-68; cf. Joshua 23:15-16 and 24:19-20), prominent among which is the threat of forcible removal from the Land.
Yet the gift is gratuitous, the law buttressed also with blessings (Deut. 28:1-14).
The task of realizing the promise is immense in human terms, as Joshua 13-21 makes eminently plain, but a matter of merely mundane proportions in divine terms. It is truly a gift, as the narrator and YHWH are at pains to point out:
No person shall be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Joshua 1:15 [AR])
See, I have given unto thine hand Jericho … and the wall of the city shall fall … (6:2; see also 8:1; 10:10-11; 10:29, 32)
And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. (10:42; see also 24:11-12)
As even Joshua gropes cautiously for the gift (“And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho” 2:1 [AR]—how appallingly reminiscent of that earlier, disastrous mission in Num. 13), as Israelites treat with Canaanites, as Achan seeks the security of mammon, and as seven tribes tarry at the boundaries of the Land, we are aware that the gift is still being proffered after a journey through many books filled with much reluctance and much searching for more tangible securities than the elusive presence of YHWH.
In other words, a further complicating factor in that confluence of factors is —
YHWH’s already abundantly narrated loyalty, mercy, and propensity for compassion.
In the gap between fulfillment and nonfulfillment we discover also the tension between divine justice and mercy.
“YHWH is slow to anger and abundant in loyalty,
forgiving iniquity and transgression;
but he will not hold them innocent,
visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children,
upon the third and upon the fourth generation” (Num.14:18 [AT]; cf. Deut. 5:8-10).
The tension in that formulation is also one of the central tensions in the books of Joshua and Judges.
The issue of fulfillment and nonfulfillment is focused sharply in Judges 1-2, where the equilibrium shifts decisively toward the latter despite the ostensible premise upon which the story continues to be built, namely that the Land has indeed been occupied, the gift now received.
Located at the center of the two books, these chapters, together with Joshua 23-24, take on a somewhat programmatic quality, influencing our reading both forward and backward.
To readers expecting neat temporal progression, this prose is puzzling; and indeed, generations of source-critics have ingeniously unscrambled it, removing hypothetical editorial accretions and quite missing any sense of the rhetoric. There is no single way to read this text, but one that helps to expose its coherence (and to account for what otherwise may appear to be some abrupt temporal shifts) takes Joshua 23 and 24 as a starting point and observes some broad measure of correspondence between those chapters and Judges 1:22-36 and 2:1-10, respectively. Within this envelope lies a roughly concentrically shaped account of Judah (and Benjamin) campaigning. Thus the arrangement as a whole appears broadly concentric.
A YHWH will dispossess the remaining nations; but if Israel should join with them, YHWH will leave them to be a snare leading to the destruction of Israel from off the Land (Joshua 23).
B YHWH (via Joshua) recounts Israel’s story from Abraham; Joshua presses the people to choose between God of the gods; the people choose YHWH; a covenant is sworn (24:1-27).
C Joshua sends the people to their inheritance; he dies and is buried; summary: Israel served YHWH all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua (24:28-31).
D The bones of Joseph are brought up from Egypt and buried; Eleazar dies and is buried (24:32-33).
E Judah campaigns (with Simeon) against the Canaanites: Bezek and Adoni-Bezek; Jerusalem; Hebron; Debir—Caleb’s gift (Judges 1:1-8).
F The descendants of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, settle with Judah in the Wilderness of Judah (1:16).
E’ Judah campaigns (with Simeon) against Zephath, Gaza, etc.;Hebron is given to Caleb; Benjamin does not drive the Jebusites fromJerusalem (1:17-21).
A’ The other tribes fail to dispossess and drive out various groups of inhabitants who are listed (1:22-36).
B’ The angel of YHWH recites the story from Egypt and reproaches the people for having broken the command to make no covenant with the inhabitants; therefore, their gods will become a snare to Israel. The people weep and sacrifice to YHWH (2:1-5).
C’ (1) Joshua [had] sent the people away to take possession of their inheritance;
(2) they [had] served YHWH all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived him;
(3) and Joshua [had] died and been buried (2:6-9).
D’ “And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, who did not know the Lord or the work which he had done for Israel” (2:10 [AR]; cf. “And Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation … And there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph”; Exod. 1:6-8 [AR]).
Among various points of exegetical potential exposed by this ordering of the text are,
- first, the unmistakable decline from the possibility of optimism in A and B, to the ominous foreclosing of options, whether by Israel or by YHWH, in A’ and B’;
- and, second, the establishment of a generational scheme—2:10 parallels, again ominously, the prelude to the story of enslavement in Egypt.
The scheme signals a new story within the greater story. It also has the ambiguous effect of both confirming the nonfulfillment (or partial fulfillment) thread from the Book of Joshua and elevating the Joshua generation to model status.
Whatever the faults of that generation, they turn out to be relative,
bearing no comparison to the sins of the new one;
and this is but the beginning of a downward spiral signaled by the narrator’s unhesitating claim
that each successive generation “behaved worse than their fathers” (2:19 [AT]).
Reading 1:27-35 (failure to dispossess) and 2:1-10 (the angel’s accusation of covenant-breaking and his announcement that the nations would become a snare) in terms of the speeches and covenant-making of Joshua 23 and 24, as the concentricity urges us to do, makes evident what is otherwise not explicit in the Judges text, namely the confidently predicted outcome of such behavior on Israel’s part—that Israel will perish from off the Land (23:12-13, 15-16; 24:20).
At this point the end of the greater story (in 2 Kings 25) is brought directly into focus for the narrator’s contemporary audience, not because the audience necessarily knows 2 Kings 25, but because it is almost certainly in exile, driven from the Land.
In the event, Israelite and Canaanite share the same fate.
Neither deserves the Land.
It is a gift.
That is a sobering perception for the reader who would find satisfaction in a simple story of good against evil (the chosen against the rejected) or find contemporary justification for human action in the model of ruthless dispossession. It perhaps explains why this may be a story for both possessor and dispossessed.
The pattern of decline which has already been intimated as the pattern of the new generation is spelled out in 2:11-3:6. Verses 11-13 confirm the fact of apostasy, verses 14-19 tell the spiraling tale which is to be the story of the new book. Repeating verse 14 (“And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel”) at verse 20, the narrator then explains
- YHWH’s decision to refrain from further aid to Israel
- in driving out the remnant nations as a decision
- to “test” Israel,
- a somewhat ambiguous notion that leaves open
- whether this is punishment
- or opportunity for a renewed relationship,
- or indeed both.
Repeating verse 14 yet again at 3:8, the narrator draws us back once more to the beginning of the spiral and into the first of the stories in the main body of the book, the story of Othniel.
Thematic Connection: Judges 3-21
Othniel story is nothing if not skeletal, with just a hint of flesh on the bones—some names, a lineage, a time span.
The people of Israel do what is evil in the sight of YHWH,
forgetting God and serving other gods;
YHWH is angry and sells them into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim (= Chushan-Double-Wickedness?), king of Mesopotamia (“Aram of the Two Rivers,” that is, northern Mesopotamia / eastern Syria);
the people serve that king eight years;
they cry (za’ag, “appeal for help”) to YHWH, who raises up a deliverer, Othniel;
he (YHWH or Othniel—the syntax is, perhaps deliberately, ambiguous; so, too, at 2:18, though not at 2:16) delivers them
YHWH’s spirit comes upon Othniel,
he “judges” them (there are obvious connotations of “rule” in this use of the term) and goes out to war;
YHWH gives the king into his hand so that Othniel prevails over him;
whereupon the land has rest for forty years before Othniel dies (3:7-11).
As already remarked, the story buds naturally from the antecedent narrative through verses 7-8, which imitate 2:13-14 and 2:20 (Israel’s evil and YHWH’s anger). The characteristic language of the spiral described in chapter 2—“raise up,” “judge,” “deliver” (or “save”)—is immediately recognizable. Othniel we have met before.
The story is a model one not only in the sense that it gives substance or particularity to the abstractions of the chapter 2 summary but also in the sense that it is an ideal paradigm.
Othniel is Caleb’s son, a lineage hard to surpass at this point in the story (cf. Num. 14:21-24, 30; Joshua 14:6-15; Judges 1:20). YHWH’s spirit initiates the action, says the narrator, and it is YHWH who gives the enemy king into his hand, inviting favorable comparison with YHWH’s own earlier paradigms of war against the nations in Deuteronomy and Joshua.
Above all, we notice that the people, having lapsed into the service of other gods, do belatedly cry for help to YHWH, thereby signaling that they recognize the impotence of their new gods and their dependence upon the sovereign power of YHWH.
Perhaps one reason why the Othniel episode succeeds as a model is that neither Othniel nor the people are allowed any life in it. Flesh out a character or two and there is every probability of their slipping the knots of perfection, especially if their narrator-creator is partial to a story about two people, a god, and a garden.
As these tales in Judges expand, so does the picture of imperfect and vulnerable humanity, the imperfections pertaining to judge as well as to people. Moreover, beyond the end of the tale and the book and the larger story of which it is a part stands its contemporary audience, most likely Judean, in Mesopotamia, and highly conscious of that vulnerability. For them the model story of Judah and its Mesopotamian oppressor must have conveyed an especially poignant irony.
A sensitivity to variations upon, and development of, the Othniel model can help us to chart our way through the contours of the book. Thus, for example, the absence of that cry for help in the chapter 2 summary becomes immediately apparent in retrospect and the discrepancy proves proleptic. Despite recurrence in the framework to four of the succeeding stories (3:15, 4:3, 6:6-7, 10:10), the cry is significantly absent before the climactic Samson story (the last of the framework stories), where the people not only fail to address their God out of oppression but are even unable to recognize the “judge” upon whom the divine spirit has fallen. The men of Judah (Othniel’s tribe!) give him into the hands of the Philistine oppressors with the exasperated comment (the irony bypasses the characters and is for the reader alone to enjoy) “Knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us?” (15:11).
Here we are but one remove from the men of Israel who respond to victory over the Midianites by inviting Gideon to “rule over us, not only you but your son and grandson also [that is, rule as a king]; for you have delivered us out of the hand of Midian” (8:22 [AT]). The reader knows otherwise: it is in fact YHWH who has delivered Israel, by the hand of Gideon (see 7:7, 7:9, or 7:14, where even a Midianite knows this to be so).
The consequence of YHWH’s precautions “lest Israel elevate themselves over me, saying ‘My own hand has delivered me” (7:2 [AT]—his motivation for reducing the numbers of Gideon’s troops) has been to deflect the adulation to Gideon! And even Gideon’s reply to the men, “I shall not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; YHWH will rule over you” (8:23 [AT]), while formally insisting one the proprieties, is delightfully reticent on the subject of deliverance. (Also ambiguous, at least momentarily, is whether the reply constitutes outright refusal or conditional acceptance on Gideon’s part, meaning something like “Very well, I accept, but remember that it is not I or my son but YHWH who will truly be ruler”).
The narrator teases us further. Gideon’s next action is to behave like a king (“ ‘give me, each of you, the earrings from your spoil’ … and the weight of the golden earrings that he demanded was seventeen hundred shekels of gold,” 8:24-26 [AT]), bringing strongly to mind Moses’ injunction that a king shall not “greatly amass for [AR] himself silver and gold” (Deut. 17:17). In turn we confront a potential apostate, an Aaron at Sinai making a golden calf forged from the gold earrings of his people (Exod. 32). “And Gideon made it into an ephod and put it in his city, in Ophrah [where, ironically, stands Gideon’s altar built to YHWH in the opening phase of the story,6:24]; and all Israel prostituted itself after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family” (8:27 [AT]).
“My son will not rule over you,” says Gideon; but the story will recount that very circumstance in the next chapter, the bloody tale of the reign of Abi-melech (= “My Father Is King”!), son of (Gideon =) Jerubbaal (= “Let Baal Contend”; see 8:33).
That it is YHWH who delivers,
YHWH who rules,
YHWH who is king inIsrael,
—–is no longer a datum of consequence to the people who now populate the book.
“In those days there was no king in Israel,” observes the narrator in the refrain that punctuates the closing tales (18:1, 19:1), thereby prolonging the irony conjured by Samson’s Judean captors. A similar irony closes the book, too: “In those days there was no king in Israel: people did what was right in their own eyes” (21:25 [AR]). We recall the formula prefacing the model tale, Othniel’s, as well as subsequent tales, but palpably absent from chapters 17-21: “And the people of Israel did what was evil in YHWH’s eyes” (3:7 [AT]; see also 2:11).
The evaluative standard is no longer divine, but human and individual.
We are a long way from the nation of YHWH that marched in procession past the Ark of the Covenant into the Promised Land.
We are a long way from the decrees of YHWH that doomed Jericho and put Achan to death.
It was YHWH who sold the people into the hand (power) of the king of Mesopotamia, and YHWH who gave the king of Mesopotamia into the hand of Othniel. The issue of sovereignty is, at least in part, a question of power, and the motif of hand/power can be traced throughout the book. It forms, for example, one of the central motifs in the story of Ehud and Eglon (3:12-30), immediately following the Othniel paradigm. Ehud and Benjaminite (that is, the “son of the right hand,” or “right-handed”) is a “man bound, restricted as to his right hand,” that is, left-handed! The people choose to send “by his hand” tribute (minhah, a “present” or “gift,” or indeed an “offering”) to Eglon, king of Moab, whom they have been serving for eighteen years. But Ehud has a short sword secretly strapped under his clothes to his right thigh; reaching for it with his left hand—and so unsuspected of foul play—he thrusts it into Eglon’s belly. Unknowingly the people have sent Eglon, by Ehud’s hand, a “gift” indeed (perhaps a pun is intended—the minhah, “tribute,” may point toward menuhah, “rest” or “resting-place”). Escaping, Ehud summons the people of Israel to follow him, “for YHWH has given your enemies, Moab, into your hand” (v. 28 [AT]).
This way of expressing what has transpired invites a telling comparison with that later exchange between Gideon and the men of Israel in 8:22-23. Ehud the deliverer moves our focus (and that of the people of Israel) away from himself to YHWH the deliverer and to the people, who are the true beneficiaries of YHWH’s gift of power.
At the heart of Ehud’s deliverance lies the power of words—the narrator’s to shape our perceptions, Ehud’s to ensnare the fat calf (Eglon connotes ‘egel, “calf”). The rare word bari’ (v. 17), meaning “fat,” has occurred before, far back in the larger story but then memorably, six times within Genesis 41, to describe the seven fat cows and ears of corn doomed to be devoured by the seven lean ones (see also 1 Kings 4:23, Ezek. 34:3, Hab. 1:16, Zech 11:16). Eglon and bari’ are a pregnant combination,” “repent”!) from The Images (or Idols, Pesilim; KJV: “quarries”) near Gilgal. “I have a secret davar for you, king,” he says (3:19 [AT]); and Eglon, expecting perhaps an oracle (davar, “word”) from the gods nearGilgal, commands “Silence!” Ehud’s restatement confirms expectation: “I have a divine word, [devar-‘elohim] for you” (v. 20 [AT]). But the reader reads differently: the “divine word” (or “word of the gods”) is rather the “word of God [YHWH],” or then again, as Ehud draws his sword, it becomes a “thing” (davar) of God. Like the sword which Ehud made for himself, his words are two-edged (“and [the sword] had two mouths,” v.16 [AT]. Thus against expectation is Eglon secured by a “word” that does indeed, for him, spell silence. And so Ehud “passes beyond The Idols” (v. 26 [AT]) and YHWH delivers Israel.
The story of Deborah and Barak begins with the relapse of Israel and their being sold by YHWH into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan. Again we are told that the people cried to YWHW for help, “for [Jabin] had nine hundred chariots of iron and had oppressed the people of Israel with violence for twenty years” (4:3 [AT]).
A jaundiced reader might wonder at the length of time elapsed before the renewed interest in YHWH and also at the motivation of this sudden interest. It arises out of the oppression, it does not seem to be interest in YHWH for YHWH’s own sake or in recognition of any covenant obligation on the people’s part.
The mention of the chariots of iron, moreover, recalls Joshua’s words regarding this same valley of Jezreel: “you shall dispossess the Canaanites, even though they have chariots of iron, even though they are strong” (Joshua 17:18 [AT]). Behind Joshua’s words lie YHWH’s words at the very beginning of his book: “Be strong and bold; for you shall cause this people to inherit the land … [Take care] to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded you” (1:6-7 [AT]).
The beginning of chapter 4 (vv. 1-3) conveys a sense of the gap between those words of Moses and these people, who, oppressed once more, cry once more to the god of their convenience. The words of YHWH, Moses, and Joshua are but dimly remembered, if at all. The covenant words of Shechem (Joshua 24) are long since broken. It will not be the people who witness against themselves as they swore then (vv. 22-23), but YHWH’s prophet who will first remind them of their disobedience (Judges 6:7-10).
Among the most devastating words of the book are Jephthah’s—not his bargaining with the elders to secure headship over the people of Gilead(11:5-11), nor his elaborate exercise in diplomatic rhetoric (vv. 12-27) which ends with the narrator’s laconic observation that “the king of the Ammonites did not listen to Jephthah’s words” (v. 28 [AT]), but the vow uttered to YHWH as he crosses over to the Ammonites, with the spirit of YHWH upon him, to sacrifice whomever or whatever comes forth form the doors of his house to meet him, if YHWH will but grant him the victory.
The vow encapsulates one of the great themes of the book (and of the rest of the history), namely the tension between human craving for security and the insecurity risked by allegiance and obedience to an imageless and unfathomable divinity. The larger story holds out blueprints of security—
- a nation (and a system of tribal affiliation),
- a land,
- institutions of leadership (judge, king, priest, prophet, and patriarchy)
- or cult (ark, ephod, and temple)
—only to undermine and fracture them by recounting their fragility, corruption, or irrelevance.
Even the law and commandments are subject to critical review, as the forbearance and compassion of YHWH erode their claim to absoluteness.
Here in the Jephthah’s story it is perhaps the insecurity of the rejected “son of Gilead” (see 11:1-3) that goads him to play hostage to fortune in order to secure the victory and headship over the rejecters. (And there is a certain intriguing parallel between the rejection and recall of YHWH in 10:6-16 and of Jephthah in 10:17-11:11).
To secure the victory means to secure YHWH. But the compositional scheme exposes the superfluity of the vow by isolating it through ring composition (“he crossed over to the Ammonites,” v. 29 [AT], resumed in v. 32—is there irony here, that the vow should be framed by such potential ambiguity?). The sequence of “passing/crossing on/over” verbs (‘abar) which bypasses the vow in verse 29 is prefaced by the announcement that YHWH’s spirit came upon Jephthah and concludes (v. 32) with YHWH’s gift of the enemy into his hand. That is to say, the movement toward victory has already begun.
The vow, however, starts a new plot line; and, line Ehud’s words, those of Jephthah turn out to be two-edged as his daughter comes out (like Miriam at the Red Sea, Exod. 15:20) to meet him—his only daughter, his only child (v. 34; cf. Isaac in Gen. 22:2, 12, 16). Having risked all for the victory, he is unwilling to risk its undoing by offending YHWH through reneging on the vow; and from Jephthah’s perspective the vow-victory sequence has to be captivating.
- He is a prisoner of his words (“I have opened my mouth to YHWH, and I am unable to return [repent?],” v. 35 [AT]),
- as he is a prisoner of his understanding of the immutability of both the vow (see Num. 30:1-2) and YHWH.
- (Is YHWH’s word, too, thus immutable?) Whereas Ehud could return (repent) from the idols with a death-dealing but liberating word, Jephthah is unable to return (repent) from the death-dealing and imprisoning word-idol of his own creation.
- In consequence,
- his daughter bears his unjust rebuke (v. 35),
- speaks what he needs to hear (v. 36),
- and, receiving no paternal dispensation (see Num. 30:3-5),
- pays the terrible price of his bargain (for her, no hand from heaven stays the torch)—
- and wrenches the emotional center of the whole story from Jephthah to herself.
Juxtaposed with the story of the excess word is the farcical account of the neglected word (12:1-6), in which the men of Ephraim rebuke Jephthah for failing to call them and threaten to burn his house over him (as within a few chapters Samson’s “companions” will threaten to burn the Timanite and his daughter, 14:15; cf. 15:6), and forty-two thousand Ephraimites die at the hand of fellow Israelites, slaughtered by a word: “Shibboleth” (12:5-6).
In the Samson story many of the book’s thematic interests coalesce. YHWH’s sovereignty is truly unfettered here. Exposed, too, is the fragility of knowledge, so susceptible to the vagaries and prejudices of perception and the nuances of language.
Manoah’s nameless wife, content to recognize the presence of God’s messenger and not even ask his name (13:6), knows far more (and is told far more) than her husband, whose anxious inquiry seeks to secure the future.
Key speeches reflect the play and power of words, which have a way of shaping action, whether they be–
- prescriptive words,
- riddling words,
- wheedling words,
- ingratiating words,
- or prayerful words.
Conjured by the speech of the visiting angel (13:3-5; see Num. 6:1-20), the Nazirite vow permeates the narrative, and through it the author manipulates both character and reader, exposing and fracturing expectations and norms.
Samson, urged on by the spirit of YHWH, battles our expectation of what it is to be dedicated to / by God.
The pattern of his life is indeed separation (nazir, “separated,” “dedicated”), but not as we might have assumed.
Severed from all enduring relationships, he dies, YHWH’s agent, blind and alone amidst a mocking crowd.
We read that Samson “shall begin [yahel] to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines” (13:5; the use of yahel, from the root halal, “begin,” plays appropriately upon the other meaning of the root, “pollute,” “profane”).
We look for a “judge”—for an Othniel or Gideon waging a heroic war of independence—and find instead a singular figure destroying, as he pulls down upon the Philistines the temple of Dagon, a god and a theological convention. “Our god has given into our hand Samson our enemy” [AR], they reiterate in 16:23-24. But the reader knows (and an Exilic reader might ponder) that it is not the captor’s but the captive’s god who has given captivity, and that in his death the captive makes known the impotence of Dagon and the power of YHWH.
If the Israel of the story recognizes this manifestation of YHWH, we are not told so. The silence is ominous.
On the contrary, the only person to call upon YHWH here—or anywhere—in the story is Samson.
Absent from the exposition in 13:1 is the expected cry by the people for help; subjection, moreover, is no longer “oppression” but a modus vivendi, which quietly mocks Joshua’s tale of the possessing of the Land.
- So what of the ending of the tale?
- Does that family burial party (16:31) look upon the temple rubble and reflect upon the author of Dagon’s discomfiture?
- Is the institution of judgeship then a failure?
- Has the spiral of decline been broken only to become plummeting descent?
- Where in all this, for the Israel of the story, lie the beginning of Israel’s deliverance?
The coda (chaps. 17-21) is bleak.
Chapters 17-18 present a parody of the self-made cult. In the Levite, the Ephraimite Micah finds a security. “Now I know that the Lord will do me good, because I have a Levite as priest,” he exclaims with unconscious irony (17:13 [AR]). In the hijacked porta-shrine with its built-in oracle the marauding Danites find security. And at the prospect of a vastly swelled congregation the priest is elated: “And the priest’s heart felt good [AR]; and the took the ephod,” the narrator adds sardonically, “and the teraphim, and the graven image [pesel, ‘image’ or ‘idol,’ recalling the Ehud story, 3:19, 26], and went in the midst of the people” (18:20).
The story of the Levite’s concubine (chaps. 19-21) echoes that of Jephthah’s daughter, for she, too, falls victim to idolatrous words. An extended contest in the exercise of offering and receiving hospitality (together with prejudice against the Canaanite Jebusites) leads to the travelers’ late arrival in Gibeah; in turn, the words of hospitality offered by the sojourning Ephraimite lead to the sacrifice of the concubine, when Israelite Gibeah turns out to be the new Sodom. The words and security of hospitality are absolute—if, that is, one is male. This society is already divided and one part oppressed, without a foreign oppressor and even before the concubine is abused and divided and used as the excuse for the ensuing orgy of civil war and rape.
YHWH, consulted only when the vital decisions have been made, plays out with ironic detachment his role as a god of convenience. “Who shall go up first for us to fight against the Benjaminites?” ask the people. “Judah shall go up first,” replies YHWH (20:18 [AT]).
We have come full circle. We are back at the opening of the book (1:1-2),
except that now Israel battles Israel,
and, trapped like Jephthah by rash words,
Israelite men seize Israelite women (chap. 21; cf. 3:6).
The framework passages cease with the opening of the Samson story (cf. 13:1). With chapters 17-21 alien oppression is gone, alien subjection is gone, even the Baals and the Ashtaroth are gone. No more does the narrator need to deploy that formula to remind us that “the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of YHWH.”
For these are but stories of Israel “enjoying” the Land, stories growing out of everyday life in the Land—a little family theft, a wandering Levite seeking somewhere to stay, a domestic quarrel, and a matter of hospitality. Here, actualized in devastating detail, is the community whose mundane actuality we glimpsed in the ordering and allotting of Joshua 13-22.
The narrator’s earlier refrain is now unnecessary, for these stories are the formula transformed.
