Judges

A Commentary

J. Alberto Soggin

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1981
• ISBN:
  9781611645163
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

This Old Testament Library volume provides a commentary on the book of Judges.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

PART ONE

TRADITIONS ON THE CONQUEST 1.1–2.5

PART ONE

TRADITIONS ON THE CONQUEST 1.1–2.5

Bibliography: (a) On the whole section: G. E. Wright. ‘The Literary and Historical Problem of Joshua 10 and Judges 1’, JNES 6, 1946, 105–14; H. H. Rowley, From Joseph to Joshua, London and New York 1950, 100ff.; E. O’Doherty, ‘The Literary Problem of judges 1,1–3,6’, CBQ 18. 1956, 1–7; S. B. Gurewicz, ‘The Bearing of judges i–ii 5 on the Authorship of the Book of judges’, ABR 7, 1959, 37–40; C. H. J. de Geus, ‘Richteren 1,1–2,5’, Vox Theologica 36, Assen 1966, 32–53; A. G. Auld, ‘Judges 1 and History: A Reconsideration’, VT 25, 1975, 261–85.

(b) On individual passages: on 1.1–3: G. von Rad***, 1951, 16, 24; on 1.1–20: H. Haag, ‘Von Jahwe geführt. Auslegung von Ri. 1,1–20’, BuL 4, 1963, 103–5; on 1.3: G. R. Driver**, 1964, 6; on 1.4: H.-W. Hertzberg, ‘Adonibeseq’, JPOS 6, 1926, 213–21 = Beiträge zur Traditionsgeschichte und Theologie des Alten Testaments, Göttingen 1962, 28–35; P. Welten, ‘Bezeq’, ZDPV 81, 1965, 138–65; on 1.5–8: K.-D. Schunck, ‘Juda und Jerusalem in vor- und frühisraelitischer Zeit’, in Schalom. Studien … A. Jepsen zum 70. Geburtstag dargebracht, Berlin and Stuttgart 1971, 50–57; M. Noth, ‘Jerusalem und die israelitische Tradition’, OTS 8, 1950, 28–46 = GesSt I, Munich ³1966, 172–87: 28=172f.; ET, ‘Jerusalem and the Israelite Tradition’, The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Studies, Edinburgh and Philadelphia 1966, 132–44: 132f.; on 1.14: E. W. Nicholson, ‘The Problem of ṣnḥ’, ZAW 89, 1977, 259–66; G. R. Driver, ‘Problems of Interpretation in the Heptateuch’, in Melanges bibliques … A. Robert, Paris 1957, 66–76; on 1.16: B. Mazar, ‘The Sanctuary of Arad and the Family of Hobab the Kenite’, JNES 24, 1965, 297–303; S. Mittmann, ‘Ri. 1,16f. und das Siedlungsgebiet der Kenitischen Sippe Hobab’, ZDPV 93, 1977, 212–35; S. Abramsky, ‘On the Kenite-Midianite Background of Moses’ Leadership’, Eretz Israel 12, 1975, 35–39 (in Hebrew, with English summary); on 1.2226: O. Eissfeldt, ‘Der geschichtliche Hintergrund der Erzählung von Gibeas Schandtat’ (1935), KISchr II, 1963, 64–80: 73ff.; on 1.22–2.5: H. Haag, ‘Jahwe, Der Erzieher seines Volkes. Eine Auslegung von Ri. 1,21 – 2,5’, BuL 4, 1963, 174–84; on 2.1–5: G. Schmitt, Du sollst keinen Frieden schliessen mit den Bewohnern des Landes, BWANT V. 11, 1970, 39–41; on Dtr in 2.1–5: R. Smend, ‘Das Gesetz und die Völker’, in Probleme biblischer Theologie, G. von Rad zum 70. Geburtstag, Munich 1971, 494–509.

Preamble (1.1–3)

1 ¹After the death of Joshua, the Israelites inquired of Yahweh, ‘Which of us shall go up first to fight against the Canaanites?’ ²Yahweh responded, ‘Judah shall go up; behold I have given the region into his hand.’ ³And Judah invited Simeon, his brother, ‘Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites. Then I will go with you into your territory.’ And Simeon accompanied him.

Judah (1.4–9)

4 So Judah went up and Yahweh gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hands; and they smote ten thousand of them at Bezek. ⁵Then they discovered at Bezek ‘the Lord of Bezek’ and fought against him; and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. ⁶The Lord of Bezek tried to escape after the battle, but they pursued him, caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. ⁷Then the Lord of Bezek exclaimed, ‘Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, behold I have been done to!’ They took him to Jerusalem, where he died.

8 Then the men of Judah mounted an attack on Jerusalem and took it; they put the inhabitants to the sword, and set the city on fire. ⁹They left there to fight against the Canaanites living in the highlands, in the southern desert, and in the lowland.

Judah and Caleb (1.10–15)

10 Then Judah went against the Canaanites who lived in Hebron (the name of Hebron was formerly Kiriath-arba), and they defeated Sheshak, Ahiman and Talmai. “From there they went against the inhabitants of Debir, the name of which was formerly Kiriath-sepher. ¹²And Caleb said, ‘To the one who attacks Kiriath-sepher and takes it, I will give Achsah my daughter as wife.’ ¹³And Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, took it; and he gave him Achsah his daughter as wife. “When he came to her, he prompted her to ask her father for a field.

and Caleb asked her, ‘What do you want?’ ¹⁵She replied, ‘Do me a favour: since the land that you have given me is dry, you should also give me springs of water.’ And Caleb gave her the ‘Upper springs’ and the ‘Lower springs’.

Judah and the Kenites (1.16)

16 The descendants of the Kenite, Hobab, a kinsman of Moses, went up with the people of Judah from the ‘City of Palms’ to the wilderness of Judah, to the descent of Arad; and they went and settled with the Amalekites.

Judah and Simeon (1.17–20)

17 Then Judah, accompanied by his brother Simeon, went to fight against the Canaanites who lived in Zephath; they utterly destroyed it, so that from then on they called the city Hormah. ¹⁸But Judah did not succeed in conquering Gaza with its territory, or Ashkelon with its territory, or Ekron with its territory. ¹⁹Yahweh was with Judah, so that he succeeded in conquering the highlands, but he did not succeed in prevailing against the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots of iron.²⁰And they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had said, and Caleb drove out from it the three Anakites.

Benjamin (1.21)

21 The people of Benjamin did not succeed in getting the better of the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and they have remained in the midst of the people of Benjamin to this day

Joseph (1.22–26)

22 The house of Joseph also went up against Bethel and Yahweh was with them. ²³Joseph went up to make a reconnaissance in the region of Bethel, the name of which had formerly been Luz. ²⁴The spies saw a man coming out of the city and made a proposal to him: ‘Show us the way into the city and we will spare you. ²⁵And he showed them the way into the city; and they put the inhabitants of the city to the sword, but they let the man and his family go. ²⁶And the man went to the land of the Hittites and built a city, and called its name Luz; that is its name to this day.

The tribes of the central northern region (1.27–35)

27 Manasseh did not succeed in subduing Beth-Shean and its territories, nor Taanach and its territories, nor the inhabitants of Dor and its territories, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and its territories, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and its territories, so that the Canaanites continued to live in that region. ²⁸Only when Israel grew stronger could they put the Canaanites under tribute, but they did not succeed in conquering them completely. ²⁹And Ephraim did not succeed in subjecting the Canaanites who dwelt at Gezer, so that they continued to dwell there; ³⁰nor did Zebulon succeed in subjecting the inhabitants of Kitron or those of Nahalol, so that the Canaanites continued to dwell there, and became subject to forced labour. ³¹ Asher did not succeed in subjecting the inhabitants of Acco, of Sidon, of Ahlab, of Achzib, of Helbah, of Aphik and of Rehob. ³²So Asher continued to dwell in the midst of the Canaanites who lived in that region, without succeeding in subjecting them. ³³Napthali, too, did not succeed in subjecting the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath, but dwelt among the Canaanites, who inhabited the region; however, the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath were subjected to tribute. ³⁴The Amorites drove back the Danites towards the highlands, and did not allow them to come down to the plain. ³⁵Thus the Amorites continued to dwell in Har-heres, in Aijalon and in Shaalbim, but as soon as Joseph became stronger, they were subjected to tribute.

Edom (1.36)

36 The frontier of the Edomites ran from the ‘Ascent of the Scorpions’ in the direction of ‘The Rock’ (Petra?), continuing to ascend.

The angel at Bochim (2.1–5)

2 ¹The ‘messenger of Yahweh’ went up from Gilgal to Bochim and said: ‘… I delivered you from Egypt and led you into the land which I had promised with an oath to give to your forefathers. I said, “I will never break my covenant with them.” ²Therefore you shall make no alliance with the inhabitants of this region; you shall break down their altars. But you have not obeyed my command. What is this that you have done? ³So I said to them, “I will not drive them out before you, and they will turn into a snare, and their gods will become a trap!” ’ ⁴When the ‘messenger of Yahweh’ had said all these words to the Israelites, the people lamented in a loud voice. ⁵Therefore they called the place Bochim (‘the weepers’) and they sacrificed there to Yahweh.

[1.1] ‘After the death …’ is probably a late addition, serving to make this passage the sequel to Josh. 24.28–33; however, these last verses are taken up in Judg. 2.6ff., which thus prove to be the real continuation of the end of Joshua. So this passage appears to be an interpolation. ‘Joshua’: there is no reason at all to amend this to ‘Moses’, like some less recent commentators (BHK³ and BHS express their doubts). ‘Inquired’: root šā’al, which in contexts like this always has the sense of ‘inquire by means of the oracle’, though the manner of the inquiry is not stated. We have no mention of a central sanctuary, nor any implication that there was one, against J. Gray*, 1967, who thinks of something analogous to 20.18 (cf. the comments on that passage). ‘Shall go’: literally, ‘ascend’, root ‘ālāh, an obvious reference to the central highlands, to which one ‘ascends’ from Gilgal; however, in contexts with a military flavour the verb often has the sense of ‘go on an expedition’, with the enemy named after ‘al. This meaning seems very appropriate here, because the use of the verb does not necessarily presuppose that the people are at Gilgal (cf. also A. Penna*, 1963), though the stay at Gilgal is at least possible, at any rate in the mind of the redactors (cf. 2.1). ‘Of us’: literally ‘for us’, ‘on our account’; however, the text is not concerned with a group which might go ‘in place of the others; it is concerned only with the order of precedence in the attack, cf. below, 20.18. We must therefore postulate a partitive significance for the prefixed lamed, not provided for by traditional grammars. ‘The Canaanites’: here and in Chronicles always in the singular. In the Pentateuch the term indicates the J tradition, so that we could attribute the earliest elements in the passage to the ‘collector’ mentioned in Joshua. [3] The ‘territory allotted to me’ is probably a late reference which tries to harmonize this text with Josh. 14.2.

[4] In the Hebrew there is an alternation between verbs in the singular and verbs in the plural, depending on whether Judah is understood as an individual or a group. It is not possible to imitate this usage in any of the Western languages, which keep exclusively to either singular or plural. ‘Smote’: in Hebrew military terminology the root nākāh indicates the victory of the subject of the verb, leading to heavy human losses on the part of the enemy; the figure given shows this. ‘Ten thousand’ is a conventional figure and is a generic term for ‘innumerable’; cf. I Sam. 18.7 par.: it is not a real figure. ‘Bezek’: for the place, see the commentary. [5] ‘The lord of Bezek’, Hebrew ’^adōnī bezeq, confirmed by Vg and Targ, is a form with the yod compaginis, and therefore not with the pronominal first person suffix.¹ I have translated it literally, without concealing the difficulty presented by a designation of this kind. In fact, in the Old Testament we never find an anonymous sovereign denoted as ‘Lord of X’; it cannot be a theophoric name, given that there is as yet no evidence for a deity with this name in the region (Hertzberg*, 1959). Vincent*, 1958, and Penna*, 1963, have proposed an emendation to ‘^adōnī ṣedeq, on the basis of the reading in Josh. 10.1–3,² but in this text the LXX read ’^adōnī bezeq, a reading which Hertzberg*, 1959, and Noth*, ²1953, consider the authentic one. The LXX reading in Josh. 10. Iff. simply shows that even in ancient times there was a tendency to confuse the two people, whose names were phonetically similar and who were located in the same region. Of course, those who want to correct the reading to ṣedeq seek to connect this text not only with Josh. 10 but also with the biblical traditions associated with Jerusalem, which attribute to one of its kings a name composed of the element ṣedeq; these are biblical traditions, because the non-biblical onomastica do not know any king with this name: Gen. 14; Ps. 110. And that is the case even if Adoni-Bezek was not the king of Jerusalem, but of Bezek! According to the story, he was brought to Jerusalem only to die. I have therefore kept MT, with Hertzberg* and Kaufmann*, 1962. The root bzq does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, but is attested in Aramaic, where bizqā means ‘pebble’. It is perhaps a play on words, producing a taunt-name. [7] ‘They took him’: who is the subject? O...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• General bibliography
• Introduction
• Commentary