Bible Commentaries
Judges 3

Verse 6

ISRAEL UNDER THE JUDGES

Judges 2:6 to Judges 16:31

The New Generation — Apostasy and Judgment (2:6-3:6)

We have in these verses a picture of the state of affairs that followed the Conquest. Actually verse 6 seems to connect with Joshua 24:28, where we likewise read that Joshua dismissed every man to his inheritance. Thus Judges 1:1 to Judges 2:6 seems to be an insertion that breaks up the continuity. Joshua’s burial is described and the details of Joshua 24:29-31 are repeated; Timnath-heres is evidently another name for Timnath-serah (Joshua 24:30). After Joshua’s generation — that is, his contemporaries — died off, a new generation arose which became enamored of the agricultural gods of Canaan, the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and did not know the Lord, who had brought Israel from Egypt. The implication is that the new generation did not know God by firsthand encounter in historical events, and thus found it easier to fall into apostasy.

We have already discussed this situation in the Introduction and shall not repeat it here. The Canaanite deities Baal and Astarte are given in their plural form, a reminder that every locality had its own peculiar form of the deities. Since the process of settlement was one of absorbing rather than exterminating the inhabitants, and since the way of life was increasingly agricultural, we can understand that the Israelites in any locality would tend to fall into the religious practices of their neighbors and forget the God of their wilderness experience. At least a generation away from their great deliverance, and with pressing agricultural rather than pastoral needs, they turned to deities who were supposed to protect and extend fertility.

The editor of Judges proceeds to outline the scheme we have already discussed in the Introduction — apostasy, judgment, repentance, and deliverance in successive cycles. Native oppressors and foreign invaders plundered Israel. We note that the divine judgment of Israel is not in some catastrophic intervention but rather through the normal processes of history — oppression and invasion. This is characteristic of the prophetic view of history and judgment, whereas later apocalyptic thought (represented in the Old Testament fully by Daniel and also in anticipation by Joel, Ezekiel 38-39, Zechariah 9-14, Isaiah 24-27) emphasized catastrophic intervention of a supernatural variety and heightened the effects in the description of such judgment in order to underline its supernatural aspect. Israel’s repentance under the judgment is a reminder that in Old Testament thought the divine wrath has an evangelizing motif. Judgment is God’s work to make men realize their sin and moral bankruptcy and so turn back to him. God’s forgiveness was given historical expression in the appearance of the judges or deliverers, endowed with special gifts of prowess and military skill because the Spirit of the Lord rested on them. We note that these deliverers or saviors can be described as saving Israel. This is a reminder that, in the early days, salvation was thought of in physical and material terms. It was a part of the divine education of Israel that the nation had to be led through the outward to the inward, and to learn that salvation ultimately means deliverance from the inward bondage of sin and not merely deliverance from the outward tyranny of military oppressors.

Judges gives a picture of Israel’s repeated infidelity. The nation persists in transgressing the Covenant. Here the reference is to the relation which God established with his people on Sinai. We shall discuss the idea of "covenant" as a mutual bond between persons later, when we come to the story of David and Jonathan. It was a significant aspect of Israel’s faith that the relation among men could, under the guidance of revelation, be used as an image to express God’s relation to the nation. Such an image debarred any idea of a relation of natural descent whereby God was ancestor of Israel. He was under no natural necessity to care for them. The bond between him and his people was a moral bond. At the human level, two parties entered into a covenant by the mutual imposition and acceptance of obligations, but at the divine level, it is God who initiates the Covenant and who decides the terms by which it must be regulated. He chooses Israel and demands moral obedience, laying upon the nation the moral obligations of the Decalogue. On his part, he promises to be faithful to his Covenant, and Israel, in accepting, does likewise. Hence, to break the Covenant by failing to fulfill its obligations and obey God’s will is equivalent to treachery. It is transgression of the Covenant, and God will not allow such defection to go unpunished. Persistent defection must lead to a state of affairs in which Israel is continually reminded of its sin. Hence, the continuance of the Canaanites in the midst of Israel and of the foreign nations in its borders was held to be a test of Israel’s faith. In judgment and in mercy, God was confronting Israel with his Covenant demands.

The closing verses of this section (Judges 3:1-6) list the nations with whom Israel dwelt in contention. The five "lords" of the Philistines were the five "tyrants" who, in the Aegean style, ruled in the five city centers of the southern Philistine coastal area. The "Hivites" is a reference to the Humans who penetrated like the Hittites (also mentioned) down into this area and left behind pockets of settlers. The "Sidonians" were the Phoenicians in the northern coastal area. The "Jebusites" survived as a separate people into David’s time. The ultimate fate of these peoples is indicated in verse 6.

Verses 7-11

Othniel (3:7-11)

Israel followed after the Baals and the Asheroth. The last term is the plural of "Asherah," the name of the female consort of "Baal," the chief Canaanite god. It is also used in the singular of the wooden pillar which symbolized the goddess at the local shrines. Thus we have here an indication of the lapse of the Hebrew peoples into the loose and licentious paganism of the Canaanite inhabitants. The change from the pastoral ways of the wilderness wandering to the agricultural practices of settled life in Palestine tended to turn their eyes from the God of Sinai to the fertility gods and goddesses whom their Canaanite neighbors regarded as guardians of the soil. Such defection from the religion given to Moses brought down the judgment of God. The Deuteronomic editor sees this in the invasion of an Aramean group led by a king, Cushan-rishathaim, who has not been identified with any leader mentioned in archaeological sources. The reference defies more accurate definition. Israel repented, however, and God raised up a "judge." The better rendering of this word is "deliverer" or "savior," one who has the power to deliver the people from their oppression. The man raised up, Othniel, was a nephew of Caleb and thus a member of the Kenizzite clan in the tribe of Judah. Evidently the issue was more local than national, and the invading force may have been a Midianite tribe, for the Midianites were on the fringe of Judah.

Othniel is described as a charismatic person, one upon whom the Spirit of the Lord had come. The word for "spirit" in Hebrew can also mean "wind." In the early days the Spirit of the Lord was regarded as a windlike force that could invade a man’s personality and be responsible for extraordinary activity on his part. This activity might vary from brute strength, as in the case of Samson, through skill in war and leadership, as in the case of Gideon, through craftsman’s wisdom, as in the case of Bezalel (Exodus 31:2-5), to moral and spiritual insight, as in the case of the prophets. All were alike gifts of God, and often the windlike nature of the Spirit was manifested in the early days in the abnormal and ecstatic behavior of those who were possessed by the Spirit, as in the case of Saul.

Using his customary formula for the first time, the Deuteronomic editor now declares that the land enjoyed security for forty years.

Verses 12-14

Ehud and the Moabites (3:12-30)

The Oppression by Eglon (3:12-14)

Once more (vs. 12a) Israel did evil in the Lord’s sight, and the judgment descended. As we have noted, there is no indication that the judgeships recounted in this book were either over or on behalf of all Israel or that they were chronologically successive. The editor has gathered a series of detached and often local incidents into a history of the whole people. The locale of this new oppression was not Judah but Ephraim. The invaders penetrated as far as Jericho, the city of palms. The oppressors were Moabites, allied with Ammonites and Amalekites, who were desert Bedouins, and led by Eglon, the Moabite king.

Verses 15-25

Ehud and Eglon (3:15-25)

The cycle of penitence was repeated. Israel cried to the Lord and he raised up another deliverer. This time it was a Benjaminite, Ehud. Benjamin bordered on Ephraim, and was probably invaded too, so that one of its tribesmen became the champion of the hill country of Ephraim. Ehud undertook to take the tribute money to Eglon, and secretly prepared a short double-edged sword which he concealed under his clothes and girded to his right thigh. He secured admission to the king and presented the tribute. Then, on the pretext of having a secret message for Eglon, he managed to secure a private audience from which all the royal attendants were excluded. This audience took place in the king’s roof chamber, a cool single room erected on the roof of the palace. As the king rose to receive the message, Ehud smote him in the belly with the hidden dagger. The Hebrew realism appears in the description of Eglon as a fat man into whose fat the dagger sank beyond the hilt. The assassin withdrew with calm restraint, closing and locking the double doors of the roof chamber. The attendants assumed conditions to be normal, but at last they discovered the murdered Eglon. Meanwhile Ehud had been given sufficient time to escape.

The story is not an edifying one, but it is paralleled by other stories from this period. That Ehud should be described as a "savior" sent by the Lord may raise questions in our minds, but we need to remember the rough times in which this happened and must judge Ehud’s treachery in this light. Still further, it would appear to be the divine strategy with Israel to educate men by enabling them to move from the physical to the spiritual levels. "Savior" here refers to salvation from oppression and thus to an outward thing; yet the people could learn through it, in the process of the centuries, the deeper lesson that the outward conditions result from the inward state of sin, a truth that the Deuteronomist editor is seeking to elaborate. Then true salvation must be from that inward state and not just from the outward conditions. In this sense the use of the word "savior" or "deliverer" can point beyond itself to God’s final act in Jesus, while the association with God of even a crude act like that of Ehud at least emphasizes the truth that salvation is of God alone.

Verses 26-30

The Discomfiture of Moab (3:26-30)

Ehud, aided by the polite attitude of Eglon’s attendants when they discovered the closed doors of the roof chamber, had made good his escape beyond "the sculptured stones" to Se-irah, an unknown location. He summoned Israel to his aid, and the people descended from the hill country of Ephraim. They secured the fords of Jordan so that the Moabite army of occupation, struck into a panic by the news of Eglon’s death, was cut off and completely annihilated. Once more Israel had peace, and this is stated in the customary Deuteronomic formula with its repetitive time pattern.

Verse 31

Shamgar and the Oxgoad (3:31)

Shamgar is mentioned as one who delivered or judged Israel, but the customary formula is absent, and the foes are the Philistines, who do not appear until much later chronologically. Shamgar is probably a Human name. The oxgoad was a long wooden pole provided with a metal tip at one end and a metal blade at the other, used to clean the plowshare. With this unusual but formidable weapon, he is said to have slain six hundred Philistines. There is something reminiscent of Samson about Shamgar. The two heroes are described as fighting the same foe, although the mention of Shamgar in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:6) would imply that the foes were Canaanites rather than Philistines in Shamgar’s case.