No King in Israel (8)

The gory doings in Judges continue this week (and probably the next two) with the story of Jael and Sisera. I will probably not dwell on Jael’s novel use for a tent peg at great length, but scripture devotes two chapters to the deliverance of Israel from the king of Hazor and its aftermath, so we should probably examine some of the historical background to the chapters that Sunday school teachers tend to leave out.

Of special interest (to me at least) is the song preserved in chapter 5, which gives us far more detail about the battle than the summary in chapter 4, which takes all of four words: “the Lord routed Sisera”.

So he did. No great credit to Barak, the leader of Israel’s armies.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

4. Deborah

Judges 4:1-3 — Hazor on the Rise

“And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord after Ehud died. And the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim. Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, for he had 900 chariots of iron and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years.”

The King of Canaan

Judges refers to the oppressor from whom Deborah and Barak delivered Israel as both the king of Canaan and the king of Hazor, and specifically identifies Hazor as the seat of his power. Hazor was in the north end of the country in what we might call “East Manasseh”, on the other side of the Jordan in what later became Upper Galilee. The location of Harosheth-hagoyim, where the commander of Jabin’s army lived, is hotly debated (see seven possibilities here), but appears to have been a fair bit further south than Hazor, though still in the north of Israel near Galilee. The distance between the two cities explains why Israel fought Sisera first, within the borders of Israel where they met him, then moved north to fight against Jabin in Hazor, eventually destroying him. So then, the title “king of Canaan” denotes Jabin’s area of conquest rather than his home base, as we will see shortly.

What’s interesting about this Jabin is that he had (or took) the same name as the king of Hazor Israel conquered in Joshua 11, though if you read that account, it’s unlikely he was a direct descendant. There’s no possibility of conflating two kings with similar names and dominions when we remember that this was “after Ehud died”, which was at least 146 years after Joshua’s time, probably more. Moreover, Joshua killed the original Jabin and burned Hazor with fire, unlike most of the cities Israel conquered. So then, this new and dominant Hazor had come to power during the comparatively brief period Israel had occupied Canaan. (The original walled city was built on a mound. It would have been a natural spot for a speedy rebuilding project.) Moreover, its king now styled himself the “king of Canaan”, more than a little presumptuous but understandable given that God had allowed him to subdue Israel.

It’s a reminder how quickly certain sorts of evil may reassert themselves even when we believe we have dealt with them once and for all. The believer always needs to be on his guard for the return of old enemies as well as new ones.

Three Contemporary Judges?

I mentioned in our introductory post to this series that it appears necessary to reconcile the total number of years mentioned in Judges with other “knowns” from scripture. If you haven’t worked that through, one online scholar has done so here. He squeezes the period of the judges into a manageable 336 years, from 1350 through 1014 BC, by making Shamgar, Deborah and Gideon to some extent contemporaries.

The idea that Shamgar and Deborah operated in different parts of Israel at the same time derives its authority from the first verse of chapter 4, which simply bypasses Shamgar’s judgeship period and deliverance of Israel from the Philistines. It’s not, “after Shamgar died” that Deborah became judge of Israel, but “after Ehud died”, taking us back to that eighty year period of rest mentioned in the second-last verse of chapter 3. Similarly, when we get to the beginning of Gideon’s story in chapter 6, there is no “after Deborah”, simply a reference to seven years of oppression under Midian.

The thought is, then, that all three judges may have delivered some portion of Israel from its localized troubles during roughly the same period.

A Plausible Suggestion

Shamgar’s area of influence goes unmentioned, but since he fought the Philistines in the west, a base in Judah or Simeon seems a reasonable inference. Under Deborah’s direction, Barak gathered Zebulun and Naphtali from Deborah’s base in Ephraim. All these suggest an incursion from the north, as does the aforementioned location of Hazor. Gideon, from Manasseh, fought Midian, a nation that likely harassed Israel from the south and east, geographic areas that are today part of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. All to say, there was plenty of room in Israel during this period for three more-or-less contemporary judges to operate, each in their own area, delivering Israel from different oppressors.

As with most timeline-related technicalities in scripture, a little close attention to the text tends to resolve the problem. Beyond the plain statements of the word of God, we cannot say with confidence exactly how events took place three and a half millennia ago, but faith assumes the word of God as written is the truth of the matter, and the text usually gives us room to make a reasonable supposition about what occurred.

900 Chariots

Chariots were not Israel’s strong point during this era. They just didn’t bother with them much until later on in the nation’s history. The majority of references to chariots in scripture to date come from Israel’s time in Egypt. Joseph’s supremacy over Egypt was evident in that he had his own personal chariot and, of course, Pharaoh’s army memorably chased Israel into the Red Sea in chariots and bogged down there, becoming a teaching moment for all the Canaanites who heard about it.

The fact that chariots had never defeated Israel before didn’t stop the original Jabin king of Hazor from using his and those of the kings allied with him against Israel in Joshua 11. It’s notable that even prior to victory God instructed Joshua to make the rather counterintuitive move of hamstringing the captured horses and burning the Canaanite chariots, weapons of war they could easily have appropriated and turned against the occupants of the land in their upcoming battles. But that was not God’s way, and Joshua did as instructed.

The only other chariots in the Old Testament prior to this are in Joshua 17, where the northern tribes feared the iron chariots of the remaining Canaanites in the plain and in the valley of Jezreel. Joshua assured them the Lord could give them the victory, chariots notwithstanding. Then in Judges 1, the tribe of Judah encountered a similar problem with chariots in the plains and failed to take all the territory allotted to them. (Chariots and plains go together like chocolate and peanut butter: for obvious reasons, you can’t do much with a chariot in the hills and forests.)

Weapons of Flesh and Spirit

So then, Israel fought armies with chariots on several occasions, but never used them until the days of the kings, despite which they maintained an unblemished record in such engagements notwithstanding being at a major disadvantage on foot. There is a lesson for Christians in this, and Paul brings it out in 2 Corinthians 10: the people of God do not make war with the same weapons our enemies use. There are weapons of the flesh and weapons of the Spirit, and the danger of getting accustomed to weapons of the flesh is not so much their association with evil as the concern that we may come to rely on them rather than on the Lord.

The “divine power to destroy strongholds” that Paul used in his preaching is the same divine power that gave Joshua victory in against Jabin. No chariots were required.