READ IT! - Introduction to Judges 18-21

Readings for this week

Monday: Judges 18

Tuesday: Judges 19

Wednesday: Judges 20

Thursday: Judges 21

Friday: Ruth 1

Saturday: Ruth 2

Sunday: Ruth 3

Introduction to Judges 18-21

Chapter 18

Micah is from Ephraim, but his association with the Danites may be implying that Micah was Samson’s illegitimate son. The Danites move north and take Micah’s priest and idol with them. Later, Moses’ own grandson becomes the idolatrous priest of the Danites.

Chapters 19-21

Later, a second Levite arrives on the scene in order to retrieve his wife who has fled from him to the house of her father in Bethlehem. On their way back, they spend the night in the town of Gibeah in the territory of Benjamin. The men of Gibeah come out to commit “sodomy” with the Levite, but instead the Levite offers them his wife/concubine and they brutally rape her all night.

In the morning, the Levite sees her lying on the doorstep and cuts her body up into twelve pieces. He sends a piece of her to each of the twelve tribes. A civil war then erupts against Benjamin, with Judah leading the way in battle, and all but 600 men of Benjamin are killed.

The end of the book deals with the eleven tribes attempting to avoid the complete extinction of Benjamin by providing the remaining 600 men with wives. They do so by staging a giant kidnapping of several hundred girls from the towns that refused to participate in the civil war.

The book closes by echoing the words of Samson, saying, “At that time, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”

It would seem that in the book of Judges the tribe of Judah is the favored one. In chapter one, the model judge, Othniel, is from Judah. The victories ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Caleb elsewhere in the Bible are given to Judah in the book of Judges. It would also seem that book of Judges is indicating that the North is bad. According to Judges, it was the northern tribes who failed to drive out the Canaanites in the land. Othniel is the good judge and hails from Judah, but other judges are from the North and are portrayed as being not as good. This helps to set up the Saul/David conflict that comes later in the Deuteronomistic History.

As Judges progresses it begins to show the tribes besides Judah to be growing worse and worse, especially the tribe of Benjamin from where Saul later comes. More specifically, Saul comes from Gibeah of Benjamin, the location of the attempted sodomy, gang-rape and murder of the Levite’s wife/concubine, and the scene of the great civil war at the end of the book. The Deuteronomistic History intentionally portrays Saul negatively by showing his association with Benjamin among other things, while at the same time portraying David positively by showing his association with the more faithful tribe of Judah. The narrative is asking, “Which is the legitimate leadership? David of Judah? – Or Saul of Benjamin?”