Chapters 1-11: The cycle starts, Ehud and king Eglon, Deborah and Sisera
After Joshua’s death, YHWH nominates the tribe of Judah to continue the conquest of territory. YHWH helps Judah and they capture Jerusalem but together they cannot overcome the inhabitants of the plains since they have iron chariots. YHWH is angry that the Israelites have disobeyed his commands (to tear down Canaanite altars and make no covenant with them) and says because of this the Canaanites will eventually rule over them.
Joshua’s generation dies off and the book’s cycle is described. It is as follows: the Israelites engage in idolatry. YHWH is angry and hands them over to various Canaanite nations. The Israelites repent. YHWH sends a judge to deliver them. When the judge dies, the people are idolatrous again and so forth. Many judges only get a single line, the book only describes a few notable ones in detail.
After a few cycles, the Israelites are ruled by Eglon, a Moabite king. The judge raised up by YHWH is Ehud. He puts a dagger in his cloak and presents at Eglon’s court to give a tribute. When it’s given, he tells Eglon he has a secret message [from YHWH]. Eglon orders his servants to clear the room and Ehud stabs him in the belly with the dagger. Eglon is so fat that his belly closes in over the dagger. Ehud slips out. Eglon’s servants only realise Eglon is dead hours later. Eglon leads the Israelites against Moab.
Ehud dies, Israel strays and is turned over to the Canaanites. The next judge is Deborah who sits under a palm tree to hear cases the Israelites bring her. She calls on Barak to lead her campaign. Barak rejects her initial plan for them to lead separate campaigns and wants her to be with his one. She says YHWH will shame Barak as a result by delivering Sisera (the Canaanite commander) into the hands of a woman. The campaign is successful; Sisera flees on foot as sole survivor to the tent of his friend Heber. Heber is not home. Heber’s wife Jael shows Sisera in, gives him milk and puts him to sleep. When he’s asleep, she drives a tent peg through his head with a mallet and gibes the body to Barak. Deborah and Barak sing a song of praise to YHWH — which includes gloating about how Sisera’s mother is worried about her son not having returned home yet.
Chapters 6-12: Gideon, Avimelech, Jephthah
Israel strays, YHWH delivers them to the Midianites. YHWH chooses Gideon (a young man) as judge and sends him an angel. Gideon is skeptical since YHWH seems to have betrayed his promises to the Israelites. He asks for a sign. The angel tells him to prepare a sacrifice: it’s then consumed by YHWH’s fire. YHWH tells Gideon to destroy his father’s altar to Baal. The townspeople find out and want Gideon killed, but his father says this would only imply that Baal is too puny to fight his own battles. Gideon gives YHWH a test to show YHWH means business: he leaves a fleece of wool on the threshing floor, telling YHWH to make dew fall on the fleece but not the ground around it. YHWH does this and Gideon (apologetically) asks for a third test of the reverse: the ground should be wet but the fleece is dry. YHWH fulfils this test too.
Gideon assembles an army but YHWH tells him to use just 300 men (to show that Israel’s victories are only from YHWH’s help) and he shows Gideon that the Midianite camp is fearful. Gideon has the men surround the camp and blow horns and smash jars at the same time, putting the Midianites to flight. During the campaign, Gideon asks two towns for bread for the soldiers but they refuse. He vows to seek revenge on them later and does, including torturing the inhabitants with desert thorns. When Gideon captures two Midianite generals it’s found that they killed his brothers so he orders his son to kill them. The son is too timid, being a boy. The generals tell Gideon HE should kill them instead for he’s got enough strength from his manhood. Yep.
The Israelites ask Gideon to rule over them but he says YHWH will rule. However, he gets people to put in gold to make an idolatrous implement, setting the scene for the next round of straying. Israel is ruled by Gideon’s 70 sons.
One of his sons, Avimelech, siezes power in Shechem and kills his 69 brothers. To pay him back for the murders, YHWH eventually causes Shechem to reject him. In retaliation, Avimelech destroys the city and sows it with salt, setting fire to the Tower of Shechem and killing everyone in both places. He besieges another tower but a woman drops a millstone on his head and cracks his skull. Avimelech orders his attendant to finish him off with a dagger: so people wouldn’t say he was killed by a woman.
A few more judges later, the Ammonites rule over the Israelites. They cry to YHWH but he tells them to go cry to the idols they are praying to. They stop idolatry and look for a new judge. The challenge is taken up by Jephthah, the son of a prostitute whose half-brothers drive him away so he’d have no share in inheritance. Jephthah sends messengers asking the Ammonites why they are attacking. They say it’s to take back the land that the Israelites have stolen from them. He replies that just as they can keep the land Chemosh (their god) gave to them so the Israelites should keep the land YHWH gave them.
Jepthah makes a vow to YHWH: if he’s victorious, he’ll offer as a burnt offering whatever comes out of the door of his house first to greet him. He wins the campaign and is then greeted by his only daughter. Jephthah exclaims that she has brought him low by making him fulfil his vow which he can’t retract. She accepts but to be let go to the hills with her friends for 2 months to lament her virginity. She then returns to be sacrificed.
The Israelite tribe of Ephraim makes war on Jephthah, angry that he did not invite them to his campaign against the Ammonites. Jephthah’s men are victorious but some Ephraimite refugees flee. The Israelites grab men in the countryside and ask them to say “shibboleth”. The Ephraimite pronunciation is “sibboleth” so by this mark they identify and kill 42,000 of their fellow Israelites.
Chapters 13-16: Samson
A few judges later, Israel is ruled by the Philistines. An angel appears to a childless woman saying she’ll bear a son who will deliver the Israelites. He tells her not to drink alcohol or eat unclean food because her son will be a nazirite (see Numbers). She tells her husband and he asks for further instructions and then offers the angel a meal, thinking the angel is a man. The angel tells them to offer the meal as a sacrific and ascends to heaven. The man, realising who he has seen, is scared they’ll die. His wife tells they’d have died by now if that’s the case. They name the son Samson. YHWH blesses him with supernatural strength.
One day Samson sees a Philistine girl he likes and asks his parents to arrange the marriage. They ask if there aren’t enough Israelite girls that he should seek a wife among “the uncircumcised”, but he insists. Samson encounters a lion in the wilderness and kills it despite being unarmed. A year later, he’s on his way to the wedding and passes the same spot. He sees honey in the same lion’s skeleton and eats it.
At the wedding, Samson gives the Philistine guests a riddle: “out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong something sweet”, referring to the honey. He wages 60 sets of clothing on the riddle. The guests tell Samson’s wife to get the answer from him. She starts crying that he mustn’t love her since he didn’t tell her the answer. He tells her and she tells the guests who then reveal it to him: “what is sweeter than honey? what is stronger than a lion?” He retorts “if you hadn’t plowed with my heifer, you wouldn’t have guessed the riddle”.
This makes him angry at the Philistines (this all being YHWH’s plan). He kills 30 Philistines, strips them of their clothes and gives those to the wedding guests. Samson’s father in law then “gives” Samson’s wife to one of the wedding guests instead. Samson finds out and sets fire to Philistine fields. When a Philistine mob realises this was all because of Samson’s ex-wife they burn her and her father.
Samson is now a fugitive and the Philistines seek his capture. The Israelites come to hand Samson over, fearing Philistine reprisals. Samson agrees to go willingly. When he’s delivered to the Philistines he kills 1000 with a donkey’s jaw. He leads Israel for 20 years. One day, he sleeps with a prostitute and the Philistines find out. They seek to ambush him but he escapes.
He falls in love with a woman called Delilah. The Philistines bribe her to find out the source of his strength. At first, he tells her his strength will fail if he’s tied with fresh tendons. She does this while he’s in his sleep but he breaks free. She’s angry that he lied to her. This happens 2 more times, with different methods. She persists and he tells her the truth: his strength comes from obeying the nazirite vow and not cutting his hair. She cuts his hair and this helps the Philistines to capture him, gouge out his eyes and put him into forced labour.
Eventually some hair grows back. At a festival honouring the Philistine god Dagon, they parade him at a temple. Samson cries out to YHWH to help him take revenge. YHWH grants him strength. Samson pushes the pillars over, making the temple crash down on him and on the lords of the Philistines. He dies, killing untold numbers of Philistines.
Chapters 17-21: Micah’s idol, the concubine of Gibeah
There is no king in Israel, everyone does as they please. A man called Micah makes idols to be worshipped alongside YHWH. He hires a travelling Levite priest to serve at this shrine. The tribe of Dan, still looking for an area to settle, come across Micah’s household while he’s away and take the idols. They say to the priest: would you rather serve for a single man or for all of us? The priest comes with them. When Micah finds out he’s angry and chases them but they point to their superior numbers. They keep the idols when they settle on their land for as long as the Ark of the Covenant stands at Shiloh, the priest’s descendants continuing to serve the cult.
A Levite’s concubine deserts him returning to her father’s house. He sets off to win her back and does. On the way back, they bypass the towns of the Jebusites so as not to stay with non-Israelites but instead continue to the Israelite town of Gibeah. An old man invites them to his house. The men of the town crowd the house demanding the Levite traveller so they can rape him. The old man offers his virgin daughter to them but they refuse. The man, seeking to placate them, pushes his concubine outside and locks the door. They gang-rape her all night. She returns and collapses on the porch.
When he’s is ready to leave, he finds his concubine has died. He takes her body home, cuts it into 12 pieces and sends one to each tribe of Israel, evidence of how depraved the people of Gibeah are. 400,000 Israelites assemble to hear his testimony. Gibeah belongs to the tribe of Benjamin who refuse to hand the town over. The result is a war where the other tribes fight Benjamin. After losing 30,000 soldiers, the Israelites are spurred by YHWH’s assurance of victory and win, destroing a great deal of Benjaminite towns.
This presents a problem: before the campaign, the Israelites took an oath not to marry their daughters to Benjaminites which combined with its decimated numbers means the tribe faces extinction. The Israelites realise the town of Jabesh-gilead did not join the campaign and hence didn’t take the oath. They attack it (evidently also to punish them for not taking part) and kill everyone except the virgins who they give to Benjamin. This is not enough. The Israelites instruct the Benjaminites to sieze girls from the town of Shiloh by force: this will let Benjamin continue as a tribe while circumventing the oath taken by Shiloh.
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