Judges. Abraham Kuruvilla

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4. Adapted from Tertullian, Apology 39.

5. After all, God’s ultimate design is to conform his children into the “image” (eivkw,n, eikōn) of his Son, Christ (Rom 8:29). See Kuruvilla, Privilege the Text! 238–68; and idem, “Christiconic Interpretation,” 131–46.

6. It is into the likeness of Christ’s perfect humanity that God’s people are being transformed, not his deity, of course. And, needless to say, such growth in Christlikeness can only be accomplished in the power of the Holy Spirit (see Kuruvilla, Privilege the Text! 204–7).

7. Bowman, “Narrative Criticism,” 17.

8. Best, “The Reading and Writing of Commentaries,” 358.

9. With the goal of maximizing size-to-benefit ratio, this commentary will not repeat matters discussed extensively in standard works on Judges—historical criticism, redaction criticism, and textual criticism—unless they are immediately relevant to the theological interpretation of the pericope at hand. Abundant information on all of this may be unearthed from standard commentaries on the book. See, for instance: Chisholm, Judges and Ruth; Block, Judges, Ruth; Webb, Judges; Butler, Judges; Younger, Judges, Ruth; Boling, Judges; and Schneider, Judges.

10. Butler, Judges, 82.

11. Such a non-military role is Deborah’s portfolio (Jdg 4:4), one of adjudication and arbitration. See Pericope 4 (Jdg 4:1–24).

12. “Judge” as a regular verb or as a participle shows up in 2:16, 17, 18, 19; 3:10; 4:4; 10:2, 3; 11:27; 12:7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14; 15:20; 16:31. For judges as deliverers ([vy, ysh‘, “to deliver”), see 2:16; 3:9, 15, 31; 6:14, 15; 8:22; 10:1; 13:5. They are always raised up by Yahweh (or his agent). Yahweh himself is also acknowledged as the one who “delivers” Israel in 2:18; 6:36, 37; 7:7; 10:12, 13.

13. Block, Judges, Ruth, 23–24. Less clear is how the “minor judges” perform their “judging”: 10:3; 12:8–9, 11, 13, 14. No military, or for that matter, forensic responsibility is explicitly assigned to these.

14. Pericope divisions assign Prologue I (Jdg 1:1—2:5) to Pericope 1; Prologue II (Jdg 2:6—3:6) to Pericope 2 that also includes the story of the first judge, Othniel (3:7–11); Body (Jdg 3:7—16:31) to Pericopes 3–11, though 3:7–11 is part of Pericope 2; Epilogue I (Jdg 17:1—18:31) to Pericope 12; and Epilogue II (Jdg 19:1—21:25) to Pericope 13 (Jdg 19:1–30) and Pericope 14 (Jdg 20:1—21:25).

15. The Barak-Abdon switch also confirms that Barak is the judge, i.e., military deliverer, of Judges 4, not Deborah. See Wong, Compositional Strategy, 244–46.

16. Ibid., 241 (also see 239–41).

17. Also see Neh 9:27–28 that recognizes this cyclical nature of the narrative.

18. Their longevity in service, ranging from seven to twenty-three years, makes them hardly minor in real-life importance; they are minor only in the narrator’s theological agenda.

19. Beem, “The Minor Judges,” 150–51.

20. Figure below from Williams, “The Structure of Judges 2:6—16:31,” 81.

21. Williams also notes that both Ehud and Jephthah deal with the offspring of Lot: Ehud with Moab, and Jephthah with Ammon. Both send messages or messengers to the oppressing enemy king (3:19–20; 11:12–14), and both are involved with Ephraimites (3:27; 12:1–6). Incidentally, the middle judge of each quadrant has some connection with Ephraim: besides Ehud who leads them and Jephthah who slaughters them, Gideon placates them, and Abdon represents them (ibid., 81–82). The Shamgar–Ibzan exception to the major-minor combination is not easily explained, other than that they appear to be the most obscure of the twelve.

22. See ibid., 82.

23. Younger, Judges, Ruth, 38. Each of the two at the center of the list of six major judges, Barak and Gideon, has a second protagonist—Deborah and Abimelech, respectively. And, incidentally, the stories of these two judges also have a named pair of enemy kings/leaders: Jabin and Sisera (in Barak’s account), and Zeeb and Oreb, and Zebah and Zalmunnah (in Gideon’s account). Abimelech’s story, essentially a continuation of Gideon’s, also has two named antagonists: Jotham and Gaal. After the third major judge comes the Song of Deborah taking up a whole chapter (Pericope 5: Jdg 5:1–31). This puts the hymn in the structural center of the book of Judges, with three major judges preceding (Othniel, Ehud, and Barak), and three major judges following (Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson). All this further confirms the careful structuring of the book.

24. Block, Judges, Ruth, 59–61; and Chisholm, “The Chronology of the Book of Judges,” 247–48. The table is modified from ibid., 251. Of course, the number 480, equivalent to twelve generations of forty years each, may be an artificial and theological construct, rather than chronological and historical. Likewise, the timespans in Judges: the years of judgeship and lengths of enemy oppression appear precise (3:8, 14; 6:1; 9:22; 10:2, 3, 8; 12:7, 9, 11, 14), whereas the periods of the land’s rest are noted as multiples of forty (3:11, 30; 5:31; 8:28), another generational index perhaps (Block, Judges, Ruth, 63).

25. Chisholm, “In Defense of Paneling,” 376. Notice also the progressive “rest-lessness” of the land and Israel’s increasing failure to subdue its enemies, as one proceeds through the book.

26. Chisholm, “The Chronology of the Book of Judges,” 251–52. This scheme would render Jephthah’s declaration that Israel had occupied trans-Jordan for 300 years (11:26) inaccurate: Chisholm calculates that Jephthah was operating only 185 years after the Israelite conquest of 1406 BCE. Seeing Jephthah’s address as “purely rhetorical,” Chisholm is conducive to viewing this as Jephthah’s error (in addition to this judge’s mislabeling of Chemosh as the god of the Ammonites: see Pericope 9 [Jdg 10:6—12:15]). See ibid., 254. More likely, Jephthah was being hyperbolic; rather than rounding the 185-year gap to 200 years, he tacked on another century for good effect.

27. For more on this notion, see Kuruvilla, Privilege the Text! 39–43.

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