The Age of the Judges

The book of Judges begins after the death of Joshua. A new generation arose, it says, that did not know the Lord or what he had done for Israel. The people served the Baals and were handed over to their enemies; when they groaned under oppression the Lord raised up judges who rescued them; and when each judge died they turned back to other gods (Judges 2:8–19). The stories that follow are set inside this pattern.

Deborah, a prophetess who sat as judge in the hill country of Ephraim, summoned Barak to gather ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun on Mount Tabor. They faced Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite king Jabin of Hazor, who had nine hundred iron chariots (Judges 4:2–10). Barak went down from the mountain and Sisera’s army was destroyed. Sisera fled on foot and was killed in her tent by Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite (Judges 4:14–22). The Song of Deborah tells of the same victory in verse and names the tribes that fought and those that stayed at home (Judges 5:12–23).

Gideon of Manasseh was called while he threshed wheat in a winepress to hide it from Midianite raiders (Judges 6:11–16). He pulled down his father’s altar of Baal by night (Judges 6:25–32). On the Lord’s instruction he cut his force to three hundred men, and with trumpets, jars and torches threw the Midianite camp into panic in the dark (Judges 7:2–8, 16–22). When the Israelites asked him and his sons to rule them he refused: “Yahweh shall rule over you” (Judges 8:22–23). But the ephod he made from the plunder became an object of worship in his town (Judges 8:24–27).

Samson, of the tribe of Dan, was dedicated as a Nazirite before his birth, in years when the Philistines ruled Israel (Judges 13:1–5). Alone, he killed a thousand of them at Lehi with the jawbone of a donkey (Judges 15:14–16). Delilah learned that his strength lay in his uncut hair and betrayed him. The Philistines blinded him and set him to grind grain in the prison at Gaza, and he died pulling down the house in which their rulers were celebrating a sacrifice to their god Dagon (Judges 16:15–30).

The last chapters tell of a private shrine with a carved image that the tribe of Dan carried off (Judges 17:1–6; 18:27–31) and of a war of the other tribes against Benjamin (Judges 20:8–14, 43–48). The book closes with the line, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). The books of Samuel carry the story on to Israel’s demand for a king (Saul Becomes Israel’s First King). The letter to the Hebrews names Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah among those who acted through faith (Hebrews 11:32–34).