The Book of Judges

In Judg 14–15, the source of Samson’s strength is not his uncut hair, but the רוח־יהוה. A Leitmotif of the biblical warrior tradition, the רוח־יהוה is a corporealized metaphor of fiery anger that envelops Samson and grants him great power. This motif was adapted from early biblical poetry, in which Yhwh’s wrath erupted as a fiery breath (רוח) against his cosmic foes. This study explores how the historical context of Judg 14–15 informs the use of this motif, comparing the רוח־יהוה with similar concepts of martial anger in Near Eastern and Greek warrior traditions. Like Mesopotamian melammu and Greek μηνις, the  רוח־יהוהwas part of a corporeal code that enabled ancient minds to think about the relations between mortals and divine beings in the context of battle.

Un des livres les plus fascinants de la Bible, le livre des Juges, comporte parmi des histoires de guerre, d’amour, de tragédie ou de famille, deux récits d’assassinats perpétrés au moyen d’une ruse. Ainsi, les récits d’Éhud et de Débora et Baraq qui se suivent dans le livre se présentent comme une sorte de diptyque, dans la mesure où, à première vue, plusieurs points communs les rapprochent immanquablement. En effet, tous les deux se fondent et reprennent fidèlement le schéma-cadre de Jg 2, 10-19, présentent une ruse destinée à faciliter le meurtre d’un ennemi d’Israël, comportent une structure de l’intrigue similaire et en miroir, et font appel aux mêmes artifices narratifs.

Meurtre, ruse, actions de guerre, stratagème et héros inattendus sont au cœur de ces récits où Dieu, discrètement ou ouvertement, intervient pour sauver Israël. Et pour faire en sorte que les faits racontés ne soient pas l’objet d’un jugement éthique négatif, le narrateur oriente son lecteur en faisant amplement appel aux trois dynamismes narratifs (suspense, curiosité et surprise) en vue de mettre au point une stratégie narrative capable d’attirer le lecteur dans le camp de ses héros.

The essay delves into the question of how the book of Judges represents God, in particular, His character.  It deals with some of the hard topics that appear to be attributed to Yahweh either directly or indirectly.  It starts of discussing the command to totally destroy all men, women and children of the Canaanite cities that Israel conquer.  The essay explains how the apparent genocide is in fact God’s divine judgement upon a people who were abhorrent in all their practices and their constant violation of others.  It then tackles a similar question by questioning God’s role in the story of Gideon and Abimelek.  The story of Jepthah is raised to particularly question the notion of whether God delights or responds to human sacrifice.  The essay responds to all these charges by highlighting that many of these stories merely highlight, not Yahweh as a tyrannical God, but rather the outcome of abandoning Yahweh in exchange for foreign gods.  The essay does attribute Yahweh’s hand in the judgement that comes upon Israel and also the surrounding nations, however, in every case this is a just judgement.  The conclusion of the essay attempts to highlight God’s grace and faithfulness to His covenant with Israel despite their unfaithfulness and idolatry.

By analyzing Judges 4 in its historical and literary setting, this article presents a biblical reconstruction of the prophetic identity and message of the prophetess Deborah. The study concludes that 1) Deborah, as a prophetess, seems to show great similarity to the āpiltum observed in early Mari, 2) Deborah is not portrayed as a primitive necromancer, and 3) in the narrative she opposes Barak’s desire for personal honor and presents Yahweh as Israel’s sole deliverer from oppression.

Wesleyan theology of gender equality based on Hebrew scriptures (originally published as "Heather Ann Clements"): “Old Testament Women in Public Leadership: Deborah” (Unit 2, Session 2) in Wynkoop Center for Women in Ministry Bible Commentary (Kansas City MO: Nazarene Theological Seminary, 2007): 1-9.

These five biblical heroines have many commonalities. This article seeks to examine in detail those commonalities considering these women as variations of a character type: “the woman who fights for YHWH”. The following research is predominantly to clarify the nature and aim of their struggle. Thus we discover that their struggle is directed against the male authorities who have the military power. They bring down the enemy hitting the head. They act with courage and great intelligence. During their fight, they gain ascendancy over male authorities of their own people. At the end of their action, they are celebrated by their people. Finally, through the resistance of these women, the will of YHWH is done. Gradually, striking portraits of five resistance fighters come into view.

Ces cinq héroïnes bibliques présentent de nombreux points communs. Cet article cherche à examiner en détail ces points communs en considérant ces femmes comme autant de variantes d’un personnage type : « la femme qui combat pour YHWH ». Il s’agit avant tout de préciser la nature et la visée de leur combat. Nous découvrons ainsi que leur combat est tourné contre des autorités masculines qui disposent de la puissance guerrière. Elles terrassent l’ennemi en atteignant la tête. Elles agissent avec courage et une très grande intelligence. Au cours de leur combat, elles prennent l’ascendant sur les autorités masculines de leur propre peuple. Au terme de leur action, elles sont célébrées par ce même peuple. Enfin, à travers la résistance de ces femmes, c’est la volonté même de YHWH qui s’accomplit.  Progressivement, ce sont les portraits de cinq résistantes qui se dessinent sous nos yeux.

Resumen
Este artículo toma como base el drama migratorio colombiano llamado “desplazamiento forzado”, y más específicamente la situación de las mujeres y las niñas víctimas de violencia sexual en contextos de guerra. Más que constatar esta dura realidad y resaltar solamente el
papel de víctimas de las mujeres, este artículo se propone a partir del estudio de las mujeres del libro de los Jueces, indagar sobre sus estrategias de sobrevivencia en un contexto de guerra, violencia sexual y posterior desplazamiento forzado.

Summary:  Most commentaries on the book of Judges endeavour to assign at least rough dates to its episodes, though often on quite different grounds and with quite different results.  A necessary step in such endeavours—and one which is not always undertaken with sufficient attention to detail—is to analyse the book of Judges’ chronology on its own terms and in its own (canonical) context, which turns out to be instructive.  Since the relationship between the book of Judges’ episodes is at times unclear, the book does not determine a specific chronology.  (What look to be consecutive episodes may be separated by undisclosed periods of time or run in parallel.)  The book is, however, assigned a specific chronological window in the Biblical narrative, since Solomon is said to begin to build Israel’s temple in the 480th year of the exodus.  Two questions therefore arise, which are central to a proper analysis of the book’s inner logic and chronology.  First, can its narrative be accommodated within its allotted 480 years (which, for the purpose of the present note, I take to designate a literal 480-year period)?  And, second, can its narrative fill its allotted years in a plausible manner?  In response to these questions, I compile a ‘lowest plausible chronology’ of the book of Judges—i.e., a chronology which takes consecutive incidents to be separated by minimal gaps—, and, by means of it, I answer both questions in the affirmative.  The book of Judges’ narrative reflects the existence of a continuous line of pre-monarchic rulers in Israel, which extends from the rise of Israel’s first judge (Othniel) to the fall of her last judge (Abdon), whose final year is the year prior to the likely start-date of Samuel’s judgeship.  How these rulers’ reigns and actions relate to our archeological knowledge of Israel’s history is a further question, and is an important one to ask, but we cannot properly answer it until we have identified the chronology implicit in the book of Judges itself.

The Merenptah (or Israel) stele is a fundamental and problematic datum affecting the biblical account of Israel's origins. The stele contains the first and only accepted reference to Israel in ancient Egyptian records and may suggest the location of Israel before ca. 1209 BC.

David’s enthusiasm for killing “this uncircumcised Philistine” (1 Sam 17:26, 36) contrasts with Jether’s refusal to kill Zebah and Zalmunah (Judg 8:20). David’s victory over Goliath lives in cultural memory as a famous victory of youth over experience and weakness over strength. Jether’s reluctance to kill is almost entirely forgotten. The widespread celebration of the youthful David’s heroics overlooks aspects of the text that characterize David negatively. The present essay will contrast David and Jether and correlate their narratives with information about child soldiers in ancient Israel and the modern world.

The land of Israel appeared after the conquest of Canaan and according to the Bible, which states that 480 years elapsed between the Exodus and Solomon’s 4th year (1Kings 6:1) when he began to build the temple (around 1000 BCE), this conquest had to occur around 1500 BCE. As the very name "Israel" appears for the first time in the Israel Stele (dated ca. 1200 BCE), archaeologists claim that from 1500 to 1200 BCE, called the "period of the Judges", Canaan was in fact a set of small Canaanite kingdoms vassals of Egypt and, consequently, Israel did not exist at that time! So there is a major contradiction between the biblical account, which would be a myth according to archaeologists, and historical interpretation derived from few archaeological remains.
The chronological examination of that period shows that archaeological interpretations are baseless and are just a modern version of story-telling for adults. There are five datable synchronisms between Egypt and Canaan over the period 1500-1200 BCE: 1) sudden collapse of the Hyksos Dynasties when Pharaoh Seqenre Taa died in c. 1533 BCE after his last meeting with Moses, 2) Jericho and Hazor are burnt by Joshua in c. 1493 BCE then sudden emergence of Shasu "Bedouins" in Canaan, 3) King of Hazor Jabin II and the ruler Sisera died in c. 1347 BCE when the ‘Apiru's war occurred (‘Apiru means "factious"), 4) War of Seti I against Amurru (defeated by Gideon) in c. 1294 BCE, 5) Askelon is taken and "Israel is laid waste" according to the Merenptah stele dated c. 1211 BCE (after Judge Jair's death).

In the present note, I consider the general picture painted by the Bible’s chronological data-points, and then zoom in on a few key dates and details.  In all, I make three distinct claims.  First, that the ‘year-stamps’ inherent in the text of Scripture form a plausible pattern.  Second, that the text of Scripture contains traces/memories of a consistently-reckoned Jubilee cycle.  And, third, that the vast majority of the ‘day-stamps’ recorded in Scripture are closely connected with the priesthood.

Keywords:  Biblical chronology, Jubilee cycles, Sabbatical years, priestly texts, Ezekiel, time-stamps, Judges.  Date:  May 2020.

La concubine du Lévite effacée ou montrée.

Les techniques narratives dans le chapitre 19 du Livre des Juges et dans les illustrations de la Bible de Maciejowski (environ 1245) : essai d’étude comparative.
le chapitre 19 selon trois types d’effacement de la concubine du Lévite :
- Elle est rendue anonyme
- Elle est rendue invisible
- Elle est instrumentalisée

Judges 14:4 presents an often overlooked hermeneutical key to the Samson story. It declares that Yahweh intended Samson's mission to provoke conflict between Israelites and Philistines. The context is potential Israelite assimilation to impressive, attractive Philistine society. The verse is set in context and analyzed in detail, including the hapax noun, .

Summary:  The book of Judges uses numbers in order to shed light on particular features of its narrative.  Over 250 of its words designate numerical quantities, and our treatment of Judges’ narrative will be poorer if we gloss over them.  Key words:  numerology, Judges, narratives, literary analysis, exegesis.  Date:  July 2020.

The notices about the so-called " minor judges " (Judg 3:31; 10:1–5; 12:8–15) are strategically arranged in the literary structure of the book of Judges. They are " minor " only in the sense that they are shorter than the other stories, but their selective thematic emphases (especially on foreign deliverers, royal aspirations, outside marriages, " canaanization, " the number twelve, etc.) indicate that they are included with editorial purpose. The minor judges therefore have major importance for understanding the theological message of the book.

Summary:  The book of Judges is built around a series of inversions/travesties of Israel’s three main feasts.  These ‘feasts’ are not memorials of God’s goodness;  rather, they are a liturgy of violence.  Israel forget what they should have remembered and unintentionally memorialise what they should never have done in the first place.  Key words:  feasts, Judges, narratives, literary analysis, exegesis.  Date:  May 2021.

This article points out the parallels between the Ugaritic story of Aqhat and the story of Deborah in Judges 4. Although many scholars have noted parallels between Ugaritie literature and stories in Judges, this parallel is especially striking because the characters in both stories are ＜||＞violent females.＜||＞ At the same time, this article also notes the various contrasts between the characters in the story and the Canaanite characters as well as those between YHWH and the Canaanite gods. The author of Deborah's story used Ugaritic-like rhetoric of violent females to accomplish his theological purpose of praising the women and YHWH in the Deborah story. More importantly, such rhetoric points to a tactic for Sino-Christian theology where the modern theologian actively seeks to engage Chinese culture.

The artistic production of several contemporary authors in the context of
Hebrew literature manifests a privileged interest in the body and its expressive capacities. These literary works can be approached by two complementary perspectives: on the one hand as relationship with the body inhabited and perceived as a necessary condition for the creative act, on the other hand, as words becoming flesh. These two poles, body represented and body of the word, allow to outline a research path of a poetic discourse that tries to return to the body as a way to tell a story.
Among the many forms that this discourse takes in the contemporary Hebrew literature and Israeli art, the body as an inevitable subject around and through which to define one’s role as an artist is at the center of Hila Lahav’s poetic production. Her writing of the body as expressed particularly in the poetic collection ‘Ad ha-boqer (Until Morning), 2014, will be the occasion for a reflection on the relationship between ars poetica and practices of resistance to violence.


La produzione artistica di diverse autrici contemporanee di lingua ebraica manifesta un interesse privilegiato per il corpo e le sue capacità espressive. Il rapporto tra corpo e creazione artistica si sviluppa secondo due prospettive complementari: da un lato come relazione con il corpo abitato e percepito quale condizione necessaria per l’atto creativo, dall’altro come parola che si fa carne. Questi due poli, corpo rappresentato e corpo della parola, permettono di delineare un percorso di ricerca di un discorso poetico che tenta di fare ritorno al corpo come unico mezzo per raccontare una storia.
Tra le molteplici forme che questo discorso assume nella creazione artistica contemporanea, il corpo quale soggetto inevitabile attorno e attraverso il quale definire il proprio ruolo di autrice è al centro della produzione poetica di Hila Lahav. La sua scrittura del corpo come espressa in particolare nella raccolta poetica ‘Ad ha-boqer (Fino al mattino), 2014, sarà l’occasione per una riflessione sul rapporto tra ars poetica e pratiche di resistenza alla violenza.

This article examines the story of Gideon, the Angel of the Lord, animistic thinking and practices, Gideon's fleece and the altar of Baal, etc, in light of ancient Canaanite cultures and make application to modern Asia today. Written with a high view of Scripture, the article is intended to enrich our study of the Scripture through Asian cultures. This article has been published as a chapter in the book, "The Old Testament in Theology and Teaching: Essays in Honor of Kay Fountain, (APTS Press, 2018) and is available online at https://www.amazon.com/Old-Testament-Theology-Teaching-Fountain/dp/9718942378/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1521682640&sr=8-1, at other ebook retailers or www.wipfandstock.com.

Not only these five heroines confront some warriors who attack their people, but they also resist the male and androcentric strengths which specifically affect women, either to eliminate or to submit them. This aspect of their resistance is implicitly and indirectly presented in the stories in question. This is particularly true for the book of Judith. This paper shows how the narrative suggests that women are negligible in the people of Israel, that only men count, while providing a scathing refutation in the eyes of an informed reader. Against the empire of “men confident in their strength”, the book first pits all the people who beg the Lord, men and women together, and at the very end, Judith and all the women after her. Indeed, in the glory of the victory, the women precede the men.

Non seulement ces cinq héroïnes s’opposent aux guerriers qui s’en prennent à leur peuple, mais elles résistent également aux forces masculines et androcentriques qui portent atteinte plus spécifiquement aux femmes, que ce soit pour les éliminer ou pour les soumettre. Cet aspect de leur résistance est présenté de manière très implicite et indirecte dans les récits en question. C’est particulièrement vrai dans le cas du livre de Judith. Cet article montre comment le récit laisse entendre que les femmes sont négligeables dans le peuple d’Israël, que seuls les hommes comptent, tout en offrant un cinglant démenti aux yeux d’un lecteur averti. À l’empire des « hommes sûrs de leur force », le livre oppose d’abord le peuple de ceux qui supplient le Seigneur, hommes et femmes réunis, et enfin, Judith et toutes les femmes à sa suite. En effet, dans la gloire de la victoire, les femmes précèdent les hommes.

Samson as God’s Adulterous Wife reveals striking parallels between the depiction of Samson in the Book of Judges and the prophetic literature’s metaphorical representations of Israel as an adulterous woman. This book endeavors to understand why Judges dwells on Samson’s sexual and romantic relationships while the personal lives of the other six judges are not afforded the same narrative attention. M. Alroy Mascrenghe compares adulterous Samson with idolatrous Israel and argues that Samson’s life is marked by the same cycles of adultery, bondage, crying out, and deliverance that structure the Book of Judges as a whole. Mascrenghe continues to pursue the theme of God’s adulterous wife through a comparison of the Levite-concubine story of Judges 19 to that of Hosea and Gomer.

Samson as God’s Adulterous Wife demonstrates the author’s own method for recognizing intertextual narrative allusions. Drawing from a wide variety of disciplines―including narratology, sociology, and theological hermeneutics―Samson as God’s Adulterous Wife offers a fresh perspective on the role of the Samson story within the broader intertextual thematic space of the Hebrew Bible.

Author: Craig Keener
Publisher: CBE International

Although the circles of young people where I minister rarely have a problem with women’s ministry, many young men and women are looking for more models of what it means to be a “real” man. Although some hold traditional and others hold egalitarian ideals of marriage, many of the young women who would like to someday marry lament the fact that there are not enough respectful Christian young men to go around in society as a whole.

This is the second volume, in two parts, of a six-volume set of the complete Vulgate Bible.

Compiled and translated in large part by Saint Jerome at the turn of the fifth century CE, the Vulgate Bible was used from the early medieval period through the twentieth century in the Western Christian (and later specifically Catholic) tradition. It influenced literature, visual arts, music, and education during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and its contents lay at the heart of Western theological, intellectual, artistic, and even political history during that period. At the end of the sixteenth century, as Protestant vernacular Bibles became available, professors at a Catholic college first at Douay, then at Rheims, translated the Vulgate Bible into English, primarily to combat the influence of rival theologies.

Volume II presents the Historical Books of the Bible, which tell of Joshua’s leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, the judges and kings, Israel’s steady departure from God’s precepts, the Babylonian Captivity, and the return from exile. The focus then shifts to shorter, intimate narratives: the pious Tobit, whose son’s quest leads him to a cure for his father’s blindness; Judith, whose courage and righteousness deliver the Israelites from the Assyrians; and Esther and Mordecai, who saved all the Jews living under Ahasuerus from execution. These three tales come from books that were canonical in the Middle Ages but now are often called “apocryphal,” with the partial exception of the Book of Esther.

This monograph demonstrates that the book of Deuteronomy is a result of highly creative, hypertextual reworking of the book of Ezekiel. Likewise, it shows that the books of Joshua–Judges, taken together, are a result of one, highly creative, hypertextual reworking of the book of Deuteronomy. In both cases, the detailed reworking consists of almost 700 strictly sequentially organized conceptual, and at times also linguistic correspondences. The strictly sequential, hypertextual dependence on the earlier works explains numerous surprising features of Deuteronomy and Joshua–Judges. This critical analysis of Deuteronomy and Joshua–Judges sheds entirely new light on the question of the origin of the Pentateuch and the whole Israelite Heptateuch Genesis–Judges.

Steeped in the Darwinian imagination, the exponents of fin-de-siècle literary artistry painted the New Woman of the era a lascivious man-eating beast. She was a purveyor of gender confusion whose emasculating initiatives would check Western European ascent to civilization's apogee. Unfettered by tradition, her flighty intemperate spirit, her vaunted sexuality blind to the fine(r) things of a "higher" cultural order, would return humankind to the primordial muck of hoary antiquity. Literature and science, it seems, conspire along these lines to curb Late Victorian sexual-social anxiety. In this essay I situate Josephine Butler's reading (through four publications) of the story of the Levite and his woman (Judges 19) in the stream of a broader challenge to the literary sensibilities of the time. Butler's voluminous writings from the latter half of the nineteenth century, in essays and speeches, brought a Christian acumen to bear upon a sustained critique of the androcentric and misogynistic suasion at the heart of a cultural consensus on women's character and women's sexuality, especially (though not exclusively) as it pertained to the regulation of prostitution. Her contention through an astute consideration of the Judges story is that a pervasive masculine animus of lust and rapine is the root of a crippling decline that is moral and religious, not strictly devolutionary in the senses espoused by Darwin and his acolytes. Yet, Butler's favor for the tropes of the time-a sex-specific salaciousness and victimhood, mangled bodies, diseased members, and national degeneration-is resonant of verbiage in the service of a broader consternation respecting the revisionary social-sexual movements afoot. Butler's co-option of the cultural cadences in currency, I contend, is not only a calculated rhetorical twist on the norm, but also a symptom of a shared ethos-that European dominance and splendor (specifically, Anglo-imperialism) is the high-water mark of human