Judges 3
The first three judges appear: Othniel as paradigm, Ehud as the left-handed assassin who kills a Moabite king in his private chamber, and Shamgar briefly.
Summary
The chapter opens with a list of the nations left in the land to test Israel: the five lords of the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites. Israel intermarries with them, serves their gods, and does evil in the sight of the Lord. The first oppression is under Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia — eight years. The people cry out. The Lord raises up Othniel, son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, who had already taken Debir in chapter 1. The spirit of the Lord comes on him, he judges Israel, goes out to war, and the Lord gives Cushan-rishathaim into his hand. The land has rest forty years. Othniel dies. The people sin again. Eglon king of Moab, strengthened by the Ammonites and Amalekites, defeats Israel and occupies Jericho for eighteen years.
The people cry out and the Lord raises up Ehud son of Gera, a Benjaminite, left-handed. He makes himself a two-edged sword about eighteen inches long and fastens it under his cloak on his right thigh. He leads the delegation to present tribute to Eglon, then dismisses the bearers and returns, claiming to have a secret message from God. Eglon, who is a very fat man, rises from his seat. Ehud reaches with his left hand, draws the sword from his right thigh, and thrusts it into Eglon's belly. The fat closes over the blade; the handle goes in after the blade. Ehud does not draw the sword out, and the excrement comes out. He leaves, locking the doors behind him. The servants wait, find the doors locked, assume the king is relieving himself, wait until they are embarrassed, and finally open the doors to find him dead on the floor. Ehud rallies Israel, seizes the fords of the Jordan, and strikes down ten thousand Moabites. The land has rest eighty years. Shamgar then kills six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad.
- Judges 1Chapter 1 functions as a historiographical preface to the whole book, cataloguing the success or failure of each tribe to dispossess the Canaanites after Joshua's death.
- Judges 2Chapter 2 is the hermeneutical key to Judges.
- Judges 3Chapter 3 introduces the judge cycle in action for the first time.
- Judges 4Chapter 4 is the prose account of the same events that chapter 5 will sing.
- Judges 5The Song of Deborah in chapter 5 is widely considered one of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry in the entire Bible, possibly dating to the twelfth century BCE, nearly contemporaneous with the events it describes.
- Judges 6Chapter 6 is the opening of the Gideon narrative, which runs through chapter 8 and is the longest major-judge story in the book.
- Judges 7Chapter 7 is the central action of the Gideon narrative and one of the most memorable military scenes in the book.
- Judges 8Chapter 8 is the darkest portion of the Gideon narrative.
- Judges 9Chapter 9 is the longest chapter in Judges and the only episode in the book devoted to an anti-judge — a man who makes himself king by violence and holds it for exactly three years.
- Judges 10Chapter 10 performs two functions.
- Judges 11Chapter 11 is one of the most morally complex chapters in the Hebrew Bible.
- Judges 12Chapter 12 begins with a conflict that is structurally parallel to the Ephraimite quarrel after Gideon's battle in chapter 8, but this time Jephthah's response is not diplomacy — it is war.
- Judges 13Chapter 13 is the birth narrative of Samson, and it is the most elaborate annunciation scene in Judges.
- Judges 14Chapter 14 introduces the adult Samson and establishes the pattern that will govern the rest of his narrative: a desire for a Philistine woman, a display of supernatural strength, a riddle or trap, betrayal by intimacy.
- Judges 15Chapter 15 escalates the private vendetta between Samson and the Philistines into a series of increasingly spectacular acts of violence.
- Judges 16Chapter 16 is the climax and conclusion of the Samson narrative.
- Judges 17Chapter 17 begins the two-part appendix with which Judges closes, and the shift in tone is immediate.
- Judges 18Chapter 18 is the first of the book's two closing appendices.
- Judges 19Chapter 19 is one of the most disturbing chapters in the Hebrew Bible, and the text makes no attempt to soften it.
- Judges 20Chapter 20 is the longest military account in Judges and is remarkable for what it shows about what has gone wrong with Israel as a political and moral community.
- Judges 21Chapter 21 closes the book and extends the moral horror of chapter 19-20 in a different register: the horror of improvised solutions to self-inflicted catastrophe.