Judges - Introduction

Introduction

Joshua was a generally positive book, with many victories for Israel, given to her by the Lord. But there were failures, most importantly Joshua seemed to know that Israel would fail to follow the Lord and suffer the consequences. Judges is a rather depressing book, with failure being the overwhelming nature of the book, with God providing relief every so often by sending a “judge” who would rescue the nation. There are also some pretty harrowing incidents. 

There is a tendency to just focus on the “good bits”, but 2 Tim 3:16 tells us that “all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”, so that includes all of Judges. In the Hebrew Bible Judges, along with Joshua, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings is referred to as part of the “Former Prophets”. The book is prophetic. That certainly does not mean that the “nasty” behaviour is approved off. Rather the book shows what we are like, why we need a saviour who will clear our guilt, and change our hearts.

These books are also sometimes referred to as “Deuteronomic history”. This idea sees these books as why the curses of Deut 28 came upon Israel and Israel seemed to have been abandoned by God. Proponents of this idea also tend to see Judges as having been put together much later than the events themselves, but having been written in the post-exilic period. There are several things that can be said. One is that the final editing of the book of Judges may have been done at a later date, but that does not mean that it is not based on much more contemporaneous accounts. That the “deuteronomic history” books fit together, and fit together with the rest of the Bible is not surprising, for the whole of the Bible is God-breathed. More can be read on this in Got Questions.

The book itself is generally split into three parts:

Introduction (1:1-3:6)

The Judges (3:7-16:31)

Individual stories (17:1-21:25)

There is no direct indication of the date or authorship of the book. There is frequent reference to the fact that “in those days Israel had no king”. This would seem to imply that the book was put together some time during the period when Israel did indeed have a king. However, as noted above, this does not mean that it was not based on written sources of or around the time of the events recorded. We should also remember that oral history was much stronger in those days.

A key message of the book is the inherent sinfulness of man. God constantly intervenes by sending a judge, but as soon as the judge dies the nation returns to her sinful ways. Amidst all this gloom, an interesting feature of the book is that the Spirit is mentioned eight times. This isn’t much for a New Testament book, but is a lot for an Old Testament book. It is the Spirit coming upon people who enables them to do great exploits.

While working through this book, I am using the following commentary, and would like to note my indebtedness to it, along with various other study Bibles etc.

Judges and Ruth: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC) - Mary Evans, IVP (2017)