revmarple

Symbolic of the twelve tribes there are twelve judges in the book of Judges.  Thus in order to reach the number 12 there are brief asides mentioning Shamgar (Judges 3:31), Tola and Jair (Judges 10:1-5), and Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon (Judges 12:8-15).  It is interesting that each time the aside includes one more judge.  The first time one judge, the second time two judges, and the third time three judges (for a total of six judges).  They all basically follow the same pattern, but the increasing number of judges mentioned as asides and not fitting the cycle pattern ideal shows that the nation is continuing to increasingly spiral out of control.  The other six judges are Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson.  Each of the judges mentioned as asides begin, "After him," except for Tola, which begins, "After Abimelech."  Abimelech does not count as one of the judges of Israel.  Except for quoting the asides of Tola, Jair, and Ibzan, Elon and Abdon, we will be examining the cycles of Jephthah and Samson. 

The nation of Israel continues its downward spiral with Gideon's cycle.  The cycle opens, "The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of YHWH, and YHWH gave them into the hand of Midian seven years" (Judges 6:1).  The Midianites, Amalekites and "the people of the East" that came up against Israel during this time are described in plague-like terms: "They would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in" (Judges 6:5).  The plagues are coming upon Israel just as Deuteronomy said they would if they did what was evil in the sight of YHWH.

The very first judge was also the best judge and the one with the least "exciting" cycle.  We saw in Joshua that the text was not written to be a movie script.  One of the main reasons for this is that the bloodshed, which is what makes the movies exciting to many viewers, is often left out of the story in Scripture.  In ideal situations there is only a single verse that notes Israel had a major victory, without getting into the blow-by-blow bloody and gory details.  What we find in Judges is that the need to spell out the details is actually an indictment of a judge's shortcomings.  We will begin seeing this with the second cyle.

The contrast of Joshua and Judges is obvious from the very beginning.  The latter prophetic book shows us the downward spiral of Israel.  It shows us the Canaanization of Israel.  The judges of Israel increasingly resemble Canaanite leaders and the people of Israel are increasingly indistinguishable from their cursed neighbors.  And by way of narrative analogy the text served as a political tract in favor of Davidic kingship over that of the Saulide house of Ishboseth.  Ishboseth was the king of Israel for a short time during the reign of David over Judah.  The way that this worked was that the judges were described in ways that would remind the reader of King Saul's flaws.  Often Saul would exceed the faults of the flawed judges.  Thus Saul was the climax of this downward spiral recounted in the prophetic book of Judges and therefore Israel should follow David as King rather than Saul's son Ishboseth, who is like his father.