Judges
The chastening of God’s people for incomplete obedience: sin, servitude, supplication, and salvation, over and over.
Judges covers the long, dark period between Joshua’s death and the rise of the monarchy. Israel had entered the land but had not driven out all its inhabitants. The Canaanites who remained became a snare, their gods a temptation, and their daughters wives for Israel’s sons. The result was a repeated cycle: the people sinned, God sold them into the hand of an enemy, they cried to Him, He raised up a judge to deliver them, and the land had rest—until the cycle began again.
The judges themselves were a mixed company. Othniel and Deborah stand out for their faithfulness; Gideon began well and ended badly; Jephthah made a rash vow; Samson, the strongest man in the Bible, could not rule his own passions. God used flawed people to deliver a flawed nation, and each deliverance was an act of mercy.
The last five chapters are an appendix that shows how low the nation had sunk: idolatry in Micah’s house and among the Danites, and a moral atrocity at Gibeah that ended in civil war. Twice the book gives the diagnosis: “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (17:6; 21:25).
Writer: Samuel
Written: Probably by Samuel early in the monarchy, about 1050–1043 BC, while the Jebusites still held Jerusalem.
Name: Deliverers, rulers, and arbiters
Title and authorship
The Hebrew title, Shophetim, means judges or rulers. The office included settling disputes, but in this book a judge is chiefly a God-raised deliverer and military leader.
The author is not named, but Jewish tradition assigns the book to Samuel, the last of the judges. The refrain “there was no king in Israel” implies a writer living after the monarchy began. Judges 1:21 says the Jebusites still held Jerusalem, which was true until David took it (2 Samuel 5:6–9). Both details fit Samuel’s day.
Historical background
The tribal territories of Canaan from about 1425 to 1120 BC, when Israel was a loose confederation without central government, harassed by Mesopotamians, Moabites, Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites, and Philistines.
Israel under the early monarchy, shown why it needed a godly king and what happened when every man did what was right in his own eyes.
Overlapping judgeships
Adding every period in the book gives about 410 years, more than the time available. Many oppressions and judgeships were regional and overlapped: Jephthah fought the Ammonites in the east while the Philistines pressed the west in Samson’s day. The chronology must be read with that in mind.
The judges
Twelve judges appear in the book—Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah (with Barak), Gideon, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, and Samson—with the usurper Abimelech reigning three years in between. Eli and Samuel carry the office into 1 Samuel.
The Philistines
The Philistines were Sea Peoples who settled the southern coastal plain in five cities—Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron—and held a monopoly on iron working (1 Samuel 13:19–22). They became Israel’s chief enemy from Samson’s time to David’s.
Key passages
Judges 2:16–19
The pattern of the book: God raises up judges, the people turn back as soon as the judge dies.
Judges 17:6
“Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” No final authority means moral chaos.
Judges 21:25
The book closes on the same verdict: the need for a king who rules in righteousness.
Outline
1–2 · The roots of decline
Incomplete conquest and failure to teach the next generation prepare the way for apostasy.
3–16 · Cycles of sin and deliverance
God raises judges amid repeated rebellion, servitude, supplication, rescue, and rest.
17–21 · The depth of disorder
Idolatry, abuse, civil conflict, and desperate remedies display a society without stable obedience.
Original language
שֹׁפֵט (shophet, H8199) — “judge”
From shaphat, to judge, govern, or vindicate. In Judges the word stresses deliverance and rule more than courtroom decisions; the judges “saved” Israel (2:16).
הוֹשִׁיעַ (hoshia (yasha), H3467) — “delivered, saved”
The verb of salvation, used repeatedly of the judges (3:9, 31; 6:14). It is the root of the names Joshua, Isaiah, Hosea, and Jesus.
רוּחַ יְהוָה (ruach YHWH, H7307) — “the Spirit of the LORD”
The Spirit “came upon” or “clothed himself with” the judges for particular tasks (6:34, literally “clothed Gideon”). Old Testament enduement for service differs from the permanent indwelling given to believers in this age (John 14:16–17).
Doctrinal study
The cost of incomplete obedience
Chapter 1 lists tribe after tribe that “did not drive out” the inhabitants. The angel at Bochim announced that the Canaanites would be thorns in Israel’s sides (2:1–3). Partial obedience is disobedience, and what the believer tolerates will eventually trouble him.
God’s chastening and grace
Each oppression was chastening, not abandonment. When Israel cried, “the LORD was grieved for the misery of Israel” (10:16) and raised up a deliverer. The pattern shows that God deals with His people as a father with his children; Judges strongly illustrates the security of those who belong to Him.
The need for a righteous King
The refrain “no king in Israel” points forward to the monarchy and beyond it to the King who will rule in righteousness. The failures of Judges prepare the way for David and, ultimately, the Son of David.
Commentary notes
Weak instruments
God delivered with a left-handed man (Ehud), an ox goad (Shamgar), a woman and a tent peg (Deborah and Jael), three hundred men with pitchers and trumpets (Gideon), and the jawbone of an ass (Samson). God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27).
Joshua and Judges compared
Joshua records victory, faith, progress, and blessing; Judges records defeat, unbelief, decline, and bondage. Israel in Joshua did not tolerate sin; Israel in Judges condoned it. The difference was not the enemy but the people’s relationship to God and His word.
Samson’s tragedy
Samson was a Nazarite from the womb, empowered by the Spirit, and yet ruled by his appetites. He lost his strength, his sight, and his liberty, and gained his greatest victory in his death. The pattern of the book is summed up in its most famous man.
Christ in the book
- The deliverer God raises up (2:16; 3:9)
- The angel of the LORD — appearing to Gideon and to Manoah, whose name is “Secret” or Wonderful (13:18; Isaiah 9:6)
- Samson — in his death slaying more than in his life (16:30)
Applications
Historical
- Judges demonstrates the consequences of incomplete obedience as Israel rationalized God’s truth with her own ideas. It records seven cycles of apostasy, servitude, and deliverance.
- The main judge narratives belong to Israel’s life among unconquered peoples. The final five chapters function as an appendix rather than a simple continuation in time.
- The recurring sequence is rebellion, judgment, supplication, deliverance, and rest; the pattern is broken only by wholehearted submission to God’s authority.
Doctrinal
- Judges foreshadows the apostasy of the last days, when professing Christendom does what is right in its own eyes, and the period of the Tribulation, when Israel will again be oppressed by enemies before the true Judge and King delivers her.
- The deliverers anticipate the need for a complete and faithful Deliverer. Their personal weaknesses prevent the reader from resting ultimate hope in human strength.
- The book’s apostasy also supplies a pattern for studying later religious decline and the need for divine intervention and restoration.
Devotional
- Cycles of sin are inescapable when there is no final authority. God’s chastening is the result of not dealing completely with sin, and His repeated deliverances display a love that does not give up on His people.
- Israel’s incomplete obedience allows idolatrous influences to remain among the tribes and eventually dominate their lives.
- The failure to teach the next generation the works of the Lord demonstrates the responsibility of parents and leaders to pass on the knowledge of God.
Answering the critics
Judges is generally accepted by critics as containing old and historically accurate material, so it has drawn relatively little attack.
It is striking that the strangest book in the Bible is the least attacked. The book’s own evidence—Jebusites still in Jerusalem and the repeated notice of no king—supports a date in Samuel’s time and a writer who knew the events well.