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Old Testament

Judges

21 chapters

Start reading: Judges 1

About this book

Judges covers the roughly two centuries between Joshua and the first kings, when Israel held the land but kept forgetting the God who gave it. The pattern repeats: the people turn to the gods of their neighbors, foreign oppressors overrun them, they cry out, and God raises up a deliverer, called a judge, to rescue them. Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah and Samson are flawed leaders, and the book does not hide their failures. Deborah's leadership and Gideon's small army show God working through unlikely people. As the book goes on, the cycles grow darker, ending in violence, idolatry and civil war. Its closing refrain, that there was no king and everyone did what seemed right to them, sets up the need for a better leader. Christians read the book as a sober picture of human drift and of God's patient mercy, and they differ on how to read its hardest episodes.

Author
Unknown; Jewish tradition names Samuel, and many scholars see a later editor shaping older stories.
Date
The events span roughly 1350–1050 BC, with scholars placing the writing during or after the early monarchy.
Audience
Israel, reflecting on its history and on why it needed faithful leadership under God.

Themes

The cycle of sin and rescueGod's mercy toward a failing peopleFlawed leaders, faithful GodThe cost of everyone doing what seems rightThe need for a true king

Outline

  1. 1:1–3:6Incomplete conquest and the pattern set
  2. 3:7–5:31Othniel, Ehud and Deborah
  3. 6:1–8:35Gideon and the small army
  4. 9:1–12:15Abimelech, Jephthah and the lesser judges
  5. 13:1–16:31Samson
  6. 17:1–21:25Idolatry and civil war

Key verses

Judges 2:16Judges 6:14Judges 21:25

Chapters of Judges

  1. 1Judges 1After Joshua's death, Judah and Simeon go up against the Canaanites, and Judah captures cities including Jerusalem, Hebron and Debir, with the Lord's help.
  2. 2Judges 2The angel of the Lord goes to Bochim to say that Israel broke the covenant by making peace with the peoples and ignoring God's commands, and the people weep.
  3. 3Judges 3God leaves some nations in the land to test Israel and to train a generation in warfare.
  4. 4Judges 4Israel is oppressed for twenty years by Jabin, king of Canaan, whose commander Sisera has nine hundred iron chariots.
  5. 5Judges 5Deborah and Barak sing a victory song that recasts the events of the previous chapter as poetry.
  6. 6Judges 6Israel does evil again, and Midianite raiders reduce the people to hiding in caves and starving.
  7. 7Judges 7God tells Gideon that his army of thirty-two thousand is too large, lest Israel claim the credit.
  8. 8Judges 8Gideon calms the Ephraimites, who complain they were left out, by praising their part in the victory.
  9. 9Judges 9Abimelech, Gideon's son by a concubine, persuades the leaders of Shechem to back him and hires reckless men to kill his seventy brothers; only Jotham escapes.
  10. 10Judges 10After Abimelech, two minor judges, Tola and Jair, lead Israel for a time.
  11. 11Judges 11Jephthah, a mighty warrior driven out by his half-brothers because of his birth, is asked by the elders of Gilead to lead them against Ammon.
  12. 12Judges 12The Ephraimites, upset again at being left out, threaten Jephthah, and civil war breaks out between Gilead and Ephraim.
  13. 13Judges 13Israel is under the Philistines for forty years when the angel of the Lord appears to the barren wife of Manoah, telling her she will bear a son who will be a Nazirite from birth and begin to deliver Israel.
  14. 14Judges 14Samson sees a Philistine woman at Timnah and insists his parents arrange the marriage, though they object.
  15. 15Judges 15Samson returns to visit his wife but finds she has been given to another.
  16. 16Judges 16Samson goes to Gaza and, after visiting a prostitute, carries off the city gates.
  17. 17Judges 17The final chapters of Judges describe a time when Israel had no king and everyone did as he saw fit.
  18. 18Judges 18The tribe of Dan, unable to take its own land, sends five spies who lodge at Micah's house and recognize the Levite.
  19. 19Judges 19A Levite from Ephraim's hill country goes to Bethlehem to bring back his concubine, and after several days lingering with her father, they leave late and reach Gibeah, in Benjamin, at nightfall.
  20. 20Judges 20All Israel gathers at Mizpah, and the Levite tells his story.
  21. 21Judges 21Israel grieves that a tribe is almost gone, having sworn not to give their daughters to Benjamin.
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