Authors always do things with what they say and the burden of the interpreter is to figure out what they are doing, even with all the slaughter and mayhem—the thrust of the text, the theology of the pericope. It is this entity alone that can guide the reader to valid application that is aligned to the intent of the author(s).
O’Connell notes the pervasive influence of Deuteronomic phraseology and ideology in Judges.35 Explicit condemnation of Israel for failing to uphold Yahweh’s covenant occurs in 2:1–3, 11–19; 2:20—3:6; 3:7; 6:7–10, 25–26; 8:27; 9:56–57; 10:6–16, 30–31, 39; 14:1, 7, 8–9; 15:1; 16:17; 17:1–13; 18:31; 19:22–27; 21:1–23. The assessment, when all is said and done, is abysmally negative, and Israel becomes her own enemy, led by her leaders into a spiraling catastrophe, each judge worse than the one preceding. So this is ultimately a book on leadership, or rather, the lack thereof.
The book of Judges is concerned with seeking an answer to a straightforward question, “Who is going to lead Israel?” The book begins with this question (Jdg 1:1) and a variation is repeated towards the end (Jdg 20:18). . . . The stories in the book are less about battles and the reasons for them than they are about such issues as how the various judges attained their office, what individuals did in order to express their leadership, what judges’ relationships were with the deity, their reasons for fighting, how much power they wielded before and after their major battle/s, and what other actions they carried out which impacted their relationship with the Israelite deity and set the stage for the next generation. The book begins with Othniel, the model judge, and ends with Samson, who is so negatively evaluated that he not only dies in battle with foreigners, but his death leads to anarchy in Israel. These poles, Othniel and Samson, highlight the steadily decreasing worth of the judges over time, and at the same time, the downward spiral of all Israel.36
Evildoing and the recurring cycles of ever worsening leadership take over the structure of the book.37 All this, despite the graciousness of God in intervening in each chaotic iteration to raise up a deliverer to defeat the oppressing enemy. Finally, Judges culminates in horrible idolatry and a horrific civil war, in an age of godlessness and leaderlessness, when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25).
Though the book is about the misdeeds of God’s leaders, it is also entirely applicable to the lives of God’s people, for the latter are only as good as the former are. God’s leaders draw God’s people to their level, explaining the higher standards for leadership throughout Scripture. But those criteria, whether they be in Judges or elsewhere, are appropriate for God’s people to adopt, for God desires that all his people be like his leaders, emulating their holiness, faith, and zeal for him. Besides, all of God’s people are leaders in some arena or another, to some degree, in some fashion. Therefore it behooves all believers to take the lessons of the book of Judges to heart.
Canaanization of Israel
Within the first three chapters of the book that make up the Prologues (I and II: Jdg 1:1—3:6), the seed of the Israelites’ Canaanization is sown and quickly takes root: they fail to drive out the native peoples—2:1–5 and 2:6—3:6 are clear in labeling this a spiritual failure and covenantal violation. From that point, the descent is spiral with a cyclical repetitiveness (2:11–19) that worsens with each iteration of the judge stories (2:17–19), and it is rapid, occurring within a generation or two (2:10). Yahweh is forgotten (2:6–10; 3:7), and exogamy with the Canaanites deals the final coup (3:6).38
From there on, in the Body of the book (3:7—16:31), it is one disaster after another, each judge progressively worse than the one preceding, and leading the nation deeper into the abyss. Until the judgeship of Gideon, the land finds rest at the end of each cycle; after him, this never happens again. By the time of Samson, even the standard practice of the Israelites crying out to Yahweh in despair when under oppression disappears: the Israelites seem to have become strangely content under a foreign thumb. This last judge shows no involvement with the rest of Israel and even gets himself killed—a first for the book. Towards the end, then, the judges themselves become the problem!
The scope of the Israelites’ idolatry also expands as time goes on, with 10:6 laying out God’s indictment of his people for having gone after Baals, Ashtaroth, and the gods of Aram, Sidon, Moab, Ammon, and the Philistines—seven species of false deities. They just kept on adding to their sacrilegious pantheon. In parallel, Yahweh’s rebuke testifies to his having delivered Israel from seven people groups/nations: Egyptians, Amorites, Ammonites, Philistines, Sidonians, Amalekites, and Maonites (10:11–12).39 And with this, the otherwise paradigmatic deliverance by Yahweh, a fixture of each cycle thus far, transforms into a stinging rebuke (10:14).
The final chapters composing the Epilogues (I and II: Jdg 17:1—21:25) show the depth to which Israel has fallen: gross idolatry, failure of the priesthood, utter immorality, and a bloody civil war attest to the almost total Canaanization of God’s people. No more was the enemy external; it was entirely within. Israel was collapsing from its own internal moral bankruptcy. “The spiritual condition of the people inhabiting the land of Canaan at the end of the settlement period is the same as it had been at the beginning. It had made no difference that a new group of people [Israel] now occupies the land.”40 The dangers of those godless and leaderless times are ever present in every age.
Thematic Parallels: Prologues and Epilogues
There are significant parallels and links between the different sections and narrative pericopes in Judges, reinforcing the charitable assumption of reading that “a single creative mind stood behind the present form of the book, and that each constituent narrative is to be read as an integral part of the larger whole.”41
Links between the Prologues and Epilogues include: the selection of Judah to lead military campaigns (foreign in 1:2; but domestic in 20:18)42; battles as ~r,xe (kherem, “holy war”; 1:17; and 21:1143); “inquiring” of Yahweh (1:1 and 20:18, 23, 2744); treatment of women (1:11–15; and 19:1–30; 21:1–25); idolatry (1:11—3:6; and 17:1—18:31); references to Jebusites (1:21 [×2]; 3:5; and 19:11) and to Jerusalem (1:7, 8, 21 [×2]; and 19:10) 45; “struck . . . with the edge of the sword” (of enemies: 1:8, 25; but of fellow-Israelites: 18:27; 20:37, 4846); corporate weeping at a cultic site before Yahweh (2:4; and 20:23, 26; 21:247); “covenant” (2:1, 2, 20; and 20:2748); links to Moses (1:16, 20; 3:4; and 18:30); and “giving” of “daughters” as “wives” (1:12, 13; 3:6; and 21:1, 7, 18).49 Interestingly, the cultic centers, Jerusalem, Bethel, and Shiloh are mentioned only in the Prologues and Epilogues (Jerusalem: 1:7, 8, 21; 19:10; Shiloh: 18:31; 21:12, 19, 21; and Bethel: 1:22, 23; 2:1 [possibly with a pseudonym, Bokim]; 20:18, 26, 31; 21:2, 19), with the exception of Bethel in Jdg 4:5. All of this indicates careful textual construction, subservient to the theological intent of the narrator/editor/redactor.
In sum, the events in the Prologues and in the Epilogues are “practically two sides of the same coin. While one records Israel’s failure to do what was right, the other records Israel’s success in doing what was wrong, and both resulted in a diminishing of national fortune”—things were going from bad to worse.