Chapter By Chapter: Judges
Israel, led by the tribe of Judah, attempts to complete the conquest of the land after Joshua’s death. They are mostly successful, but there are several notable failures, including leaving the Jebusites in Jerusalem.
After Joshua’s death, no new leader is appointed. The Israelites have not driven out the inhabitants of the Promised Land as God commanded, so despite some success, their downward spiral begins here.
28: When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not drive them out completely.
God condemns Israel for not driving out the Canaanites as commanded. The death of Joshua is recounted. Within a single generation after Joshua’s death, Israel starts worshipping foreign gods. The cycle of judges is introduced.
Without a strong leader, the people lose faith. The cycle of judges is always the same: the people disobey; God raises up a judge to save them; the land has rest; the judge dies; the people disobey.
19: But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.
A list of nations God leaves in place to test Israel. The story of Othniel, saving Israel from a Mesopotamian king and leading Israel. The story of Ehud, saving Israel from Eglon, the king of Moab, and leading Israel. Also Shamgar.
The Spirit of the Lord was explicitly on Othniel, the first judge; later judges spiral downward even as they save Israel. As soon as a judge dies, Israel begins worshiping the many gods of the Canaanite natives.
7: And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.
At Deborah’s command following the word of God, Barak gathers an army and defeats the army of King Jabin of Hazor, who had conquered Israel. As Barak hunts Sisera, the commander, a woman named Jael kills him with a tent peg.
Deborah is the most godly judge (and also the only female judge), following the word of the Lord and judging justly without falling into disobedience or apostasy.
4: Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time.
The song of Deborah and Barak after defeating King Jabin of Hazor. They recount the battle, praise God for victory, and call Israel to worship. They mention which tribes fought and which were absent.
In the song, nature itself fights for Israel, indicating the superiority of Israel’s God over the Canaanite nature deities. Jael’s killing of Sisera is particularly highlighted as heroism by a common woman.
20: From heaven the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera.
The people disobey, but when they repent, God first sends a prophet to condemn them instead of a judge to save them. Then God calls Gideon, who is reluctant at first, but destroys the local altar of Baal and builds one to God. Gideon tests God by asking for miracles.
Gideon’s reluctance recalls Moses; as with Moses, God promises Gideon He will support him. But Gideon continues to lack faith: he destroys the altar at night, he calls other tribes to help fight Midian, and he asks God to prove Himself by miracles.
34: But the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called out to follow him.
God reduces Gideon’s army from 32,000 to 300. Gideon sneaks into the Midianite camp and overhears soldiers talking about a dream of Gideon. The 300 men cause chaos in the camp during the night with shouting and trumpets, and the Midianites awake and fight each other, then flee.
God reduces Gideon’s army to demonstrate that the victory is God’s, not Gideon’s (Gideon had called on four tribes to help him, because he still doubted). The Israelites don’t even use swords: just trumpets, torches, empty jars, and voices.
22: When they blew the 300 trumpets, the Lord set every man’s sword against his comrade and against all the army. And the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah, as far as the border of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath.
Gibeon and his 300 men pursue the Midianites. When they capture their two kings, they punish the people of Succoth and Penuel who had not helped them on their way. Then they kill the kings. The people make Gideon king, but he leads them into idolatry. After ruling forty years, he dies.
While God’s command and blessing covered Gideon’s initial defeat of Midian, God is hardly mentioned in this chapter as Gideon does what he wishes. Not surprisingly, Gideon says the right things, but leads Israel astray. As soon as he dies, Israel returns to idolatry.
27: And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.
Gideon’s son Abimelech kills his brothers to become king. His remaining brother curses him. The Shechemites, who put him on the throne, rebel under the leadership of Gaal. Abimelech razes Shechem, burning over a thousand people to death; when he sacks Thebez, a woman drops a millstone on him, killing him.
The quality of Israel’s leaders is declining, even though Abimelech calls himself a king. Deborah and Barak were heroes; Gideon at least spoke to God and obeyed Him; Abimelech comes to power by murdering his brothers. When both the leader and the people disobey God, both are destroyed.
23: And God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem, and the leaders of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech…
Tola judges Israel twenty-three years. Jair judges Israel twenty-two years. Then Israel falls back into disobedience and idolatry, so God gives them to the Philistines and Ammonites for eighteen years. The Ammonites cross the Jordan to invade Israel. The people repent, and God reminds them of their disobedience despite His faithfulness.
Israel apparently worships the gods of everybody they come across; the author lists seven nations whose gods they worship, suggesting the totality of their depravity. They do not repent until the Ammonites invade the land itself; even then, before the battle, they look for a human leader, not God’s leadership.
18: And the people, the leaders of Gilead, said one to another, “Who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites? He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.”
The Gileadites call Jephthah, whom they had previously exiled, to lead the army. He negotiates with the Ammonite by reminding them of the true history of their rivalry, stretching back to Moses. He vows a sacrifice to God if he defeats Ammon; he does, but his vow requires his daughter’s life.
Jephthah, like Abimelech, is made leader by the people, not by God. Although he understands Israel’s history, and God later gives him victory, his foolish vow and tragic follow-through show he is not the leader Israel needs. (Vows should be kept, but vows that result in sin are invalid.)
31: …then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I [Jephthah] return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
Ephraim again complains they were not invited to the war. Jephthah counters that they did not come when called, and civil war erupts. Jephthah defeats Ephraim, in part by holding the fords over the Jordan and killing the Ephraimites that try to flee. After Jephthah arose Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon to judge Israel.
Ephraim has made this complaint before, but Gideon was able to pacify them. This time, Jephthah cannot or does not, and the resulting civil war is devastating to Ephraim. This war is the origin of the English term “shibboleth,” meaning a password or identifier.
1: The men of Ephraim were called to arms, and they crossed to Zaphon and said to Jephthah, “Why did you cross over to fight against the Ammonites and did not call us to go with you? We will burn your house over you with fire.”
An angel tells Manoah’s barren wife (who goes unnamed) that she will bear a child who will save Israel from the Philistines. Manoah doesn’t believe her, so the angel appears to him, too. The prophecy comes true, and they name the child Samson.
God loves to use outcasts—widows, orphans, barren women, and second sons—to accomplish His glorious purpose. Samson’s Nazirite vow is unusual: it was made involuntarily (before he was even born), and it had no time limit as they usually did (his would last until his death).
24: And the woman bore a son and called his name Samson. And the young man grew, and the Lord blessed him.
Samson takes a Philistine wife. During the feast, he sets her people a riddle they cannot solve; she pesters him into giving her the answer, which she betrays to her people. He murders thirty Philistines to take their cloaks to pay off his debt; meanwhile, his bride is given to his best man.
Samson disobeys God repeatedly, especially regarding his strict Nazirite vow.: he desires a foreign wife; he touches a dead animal; he drinks alcohol at the feast; he murders thirty men. Yet God planned before he was born to use him for God’s purposes.
4: His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel.
Samson goes to have sex with his wife, but her father refuses. So he catches three hundred foxes (or jackals), ties torches to their tails, and burned down the Philistines’ fields and olive orchards. They retaliate by killing his wife and her father, then attacking Lehi in Judah. Samson kills 1,000 men with a donkey’s jawbone.
Burning her and her father to death is ironically the fate Samson’s wife tried to avoid by betraying the answer to his riddle. Despite Samson’s shortcomings, and even his own people trying to hand him over, God blesses him with strength to overcome.
14: When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands.
Samson falls in love with Delilah, who betrays him to the Philistines, who capture him and gouge out his eyes. At a sacrificial feast to Dagon, they call Samson to entertain them, but he calls on God for one more miracle and tears down the temple around them, killing 3,000 Philistines.
Samson fails to learn from his wife’s betrayal (and Delilah’s repeated betrayals), and follows his heart instead of his God. It leads to his death, but because God had a purpose for him (and perhaps because he regained some faith at the end), he hands the Philistines a huge defeat.
28: Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.”
An Ephraimite named Micah returns money he stole to his mother, who makes idols from the silver. Micah sets up a shrine in his house and ordains his son a priest. He also hires a traveling Levite as his private priest.
This small, private story of a single household shows the depths of apostasy of Israel at this time: with no God-called leader (specifically, no king), every detail is corrupted. Micah stole from his mother; she made graven images; they corrupted a Levite. The disobedience is endless.
5: And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods, and ordained one of his sons, who became his priest.
A group of men from the tribe of Dan encounter Micah, take his graven images and his Levite, and conquer a town called Laish, which they rename Dan. They set up Micah’s cultic worship for the entire city.
The disobedience grows from a single family to an entire tribe. The Levite is from Moses’s lineage, showing how far Israel has fallen. This arrangement in Laish/Dan lasts for centuries (until the Assyrian invasion).
30: And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.
A Levite goes to retrieve his unfaithful concubine. On the way home, they spend the night in Gibeah. The men of the city try to rape the Levite, and when he gives them his concubine, they rape her to death. He divides her corpse into twelve pieces and distributes the pieces around Israel.
This story is nearly identical to the story of Lot and Sodom, suggesting that Benjamin at this time is no better than Sodom. In contrast to the evil Gibeahites, the woman’s father shows extraordinary hospitality, as does the old Ephraimite they encounter.
30: And all who saw it said, “Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak.”
Israel gathers to avenge the abomination of Gibeah, but the tribe of Benjamin defends their brothers instead of giving them up. In the war, tens of thousands of Israelites and Benjaminites die and many cities of Benjamin are destroyed; in the end, only 600 Benjaminites are left.
The evil of Gibeah almost results in Israel losing one of its tribes, and more than 65,000 dead. Despite the sin of the people, God shows up to give Israel the victory over Benjamin. This civil war marks Israel’s lowest point yet.
13: “Now therefore give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel.” But the Benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel.
Israel has compassion on Benjamin and works to save the tribe from total destruction. They go to war with Jabesh-gilead, because it did not contribute to the war effort, but the leave alive virgin women for the remnant of Benjamin to start again.
Despite their deep corruption and evil, Benjamin is part of God’s kingdom, and He ensures they survive, even though the means are terrible. The book ends with no resolution; Israel is in serious trouble.
6: And the people of Israel had compassion for Benjamin their brother and said, “One tribe is cut off from Israel this day.”