No King in Israel (2)

The word šāpāṭ, frequently translated “judge”, appears 21 times in the Hebrew version of the book of Judges, beginning with the second chapter. It’s far from the first time the word occurs in scripture, also being present at least 30 times in the first six books of the Bible. The vast majority of this content almost surely dates earlier than Judges, establishing the meaning of the word for us as its initial readers understood it.

The Role of Judge

At least twice the writer of Genesis uses šāpāṭ in the sense of “to render a verdict”, something we still expect from judges. When two people cannot agree about what is fair, they are compelled to call upon someone who is both disinterested in the outcome of their dispute and sufficiently wise and authoritative to decide between them. In Genesis 19, the men of Sodom attacked Lot for “playing judge”, meaning that he presumed to lecture them on how they ought to behave. In Exodus 2, we find that šāpāṭ involves more than merely offering an opinion about right and wrong. An Israelite inquires of Moses, “Who made you a judge over us?” Then he adds, “Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” So then, packaged into the Hebrew concept of judging is the idea of executing justice as well as defining it.

In Exodus 18, it becomes evident the judge is also a teacher of God’s law. That law is where he gets his authority. Moses “judged” Israel, making known to them the statutes of God and his laws. So then, a judge would hear a matter, apply the law of God to it, decide upon a verdict, explain his reasoning to the people, then enforce justice. All these functions are packaged into the idea of the šāpāṭ.

In the book of Judges, we have for the first time an additional role in the judge’s portfolio. He is a deliverer, the means by which God makes his power and identification with his people known among the nations. So then, the modern picture of a black robe and a gavel is not entirely wrong in this context, but it is an insufficient description. The judges were more than legal experts or respected authority figures; they were military leaders and sometimes even insurrectionists.

I. Introduction

a. The Limits of the Canaanite Conquest (1:1-36)

Harmonizing Joshua and Judges

The book of Joshua never gives us the idea that the conquest of Canaan was complete during his lifetime. Despite all Israel’s successes, the Lord plainly states to Joshua in chapter 13, “there remains yet very much land to possess”. The writer then goes on to spell out precisely where those remaining territories are located: the coastal Philistine cities, Geshur, the territory of the Avvim, the land of the Canaanites in the south, Lebanon, and so on. Later chapters reinforce this theme of incomplete conquest. Ephraim and Manasseh, for example, failed to drive out the Canaanites in Gezer, and put them to forced labor instead. Judah failed to drive out the Jebusites, who remained among them. All this is right there in Joshua, according with statements in Judges 1. So then, the writers of Judges and Joshua agree that taking the land of promise was a work in progress at the time of Joshua’s death. The supposed incongruities between the two books that secular scholars obsess about are simply not there on closer examination.

Judges even repeats material from Joshua. The vignette from Judges 1:11-15, for example, is a retelling of Joshua 15:13-19. Reading it in isolation, some take it to imply that Caleb outlived Joshua, who died at the ripe old age of 110, in that the older Caleb seems to still be alive “after the death of Joshua”, a feat unlikely given their relative ages. But if we compare the language of Joshua and Judges on the subject of Caleb’s conquest of Hebron, it becomes apparent that the version of the story in Judges 1 simply restates something that happened earlier on, explaining how Kiriath-sepher was renamed Debir. There is no evidence Joshua died before Caleb did.

The Philistine Territories

The Philistine territories, a major player in the story of Judges, comprised five major cities and their surrounding towns, which went back and forth during this and subsequent periods. Verse 18 tells us Judah successfully captured three of the five cities during the initial conquest: Gaza, Ashkelon and Ekron. These were subsequently lost, reconquered during the time of David and partially settled by Israel, then lost again over time.

As pointed out in earlier studies of the prophets, “Philistine” was not strictly an ethnic designation, but rather a name the Hebrews used for whoever was living on the Mediterranean coast at the time, similar to the word “Babylonian”, which may have encompassed any of at least five ethnicities. The Philistines were also not a nation under centralized rule but an ethnically homogeneous group of city-states. When Canaan was originally conquered, the “Philistines” were probably Caphtorites from Crete relocated by the Egyptians. The later “Philistines” were migratory Sidonians.

Background to be Revisited Later

Verses 16 through 21 supply background details that are going to come in useful later. What happened with the Kenites, the in-laws of Moses who entered Canaan alongside Israel? In verse 16, we find they settled alongside Judah. This will become relevant in chapters 4 and 5, illustrating the low state into which Israel had fallen. In verse 17, we see Judah and Simeon pairing up and working together, a state of affairs that would continue right into the division of the kingdom in the time of Rehoboam and beyond. In verse 21, Jerusalem is initially conquered, but the Jebusites are not pushed out until David’s time, when we get scripture’s first of over 150 references to “Zion”.

Two Traitors

Verses 22 through 26 tell us scripture’s second story about a Canaanite traitor. (The first is the story of Rahab in Joshua, and this one provides quite the contrast.) This traitor actually showed the soldiers of Ephraim and Manasseh the way into the city of Luz, enabling the tribes of Joseph to destroy everyone but his own family members. (Man, that’s cold, but these were Canaanites after all.) In contrast, all Rahab did was hide two spies whose report was largely irrelevant to the conquest of Jericho and really served only to build up Israel’s morale.

Further, Rahab believed in Israel’s God, and became a genetic contributor to the line of David (and ultimately that of Messiah) as a result. The decision of this man of Luz appears to have been entirely pragmatic rather than evidence of saving faith. Perhaps Rahab experienced guilt for sheltering the spies, but we have no indication of that. This man went away and built a city in the land of the Hittites, which he called Luz, after the city his own actions had condemned to slaughter. Could he, like Rahab, have become a Gentile proselyte of Israel’s God? Of course, but he chose, like Lot’s wife, to look backward rather than forward, reminding us of the stark choice between flesh and spirit. You can’t serve both, and if you try, you end up with neither.

The former Luz became Bethel, one of scripture’s most famous cities.

The List of Failures

From verse 27 on, we have what amounts to a list of failures of each tribe to take the territory allotted to it. There is a little of this earlier in the chapter to hint at what’s coming. The writer lists Judah, Simeon and Benjamin’s failures alongside their successes. Then, in verses 27-36 we get a list of the failed conquests of the tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan. All nine tribes west of the Jordan, we are told, failed in some measure to take the territories assigned to them except Issachar. If Issachar failed to take the territory allotted to it, we are not informed. The Transjordan tribes would later return to territories conquered prior to the invasion of Canaan, so they had no such issues. (They would later have problems of their own trying to defend territory east of the Jordan, where they were more exposed to predatory nations.)

The remaining Canaanites were in most cases put to forced labor. Either these Canaanites “lived among them”, as in the case of Zebulun or Ephraim, or worse, the conquering tribe “lived among the Canaanites”, as in the case of Asher and Naphtali. I doubt the distinct wording of the latter phrase is unintentional, and may suggest Canaanite culture had a greater dominance in Asher and Naphtali than among the other tribes.

Enemies in the Land

When God is working, he is rarely only doing one thing at a time. Joshua and Judges give at least four distinct reasons in the provision and foreknowledge of God for the presence of the enemies that continued to dwell in the land of Canaan after Israel’s mostly-successful invasion. These are not mutually contradictory explanations conjured up by the writers to rationalize failure, but simply the Spirit of God pointing out that when things go wrong for God’s people, there is almost never a single, simple explanation.

Firstly, God never intended to make conquest too quick and easy for his people “lest the land become desolate and wild beasts multiply against you”. It was his purpose to allow them to conquer “little by little” rather than instantly in order to enjoy the full benefits of the “land of milk and honey” they were entering.

Secondly, the Lord left enemies in Canaan in order to teach war to a generation of Israelites that had not known it.

Thirdly, as Joshua put it, the presence of some Canaanites among the tribes would serve as a test of Israel’s obedience and resolve, a test they failed.

Fourthly, the continuing presence of the Canaanites among the tribes of Israel served as God’s punishment for Israel’s lassitude in pursuing the goal he had set before them and declining to root out and destroy the religious practices of the Canaanite nations.

In the end, however, we have to acknowledge Israel simply failed to execute. They settled for too little, and opted to take their rest too early when the battle should have continued to its conclusion. The reasons probably varied: iron chariots, lack of will to persist when peace was more desirable than perpetual unrest, the appeal of using the inhabitants of the land as slave labor, perhaps even the attraction of exotic foreign women and their Canaanite gods, which certainly became the temptation Moses and Joshua had envisioned and warned against.