20 august 2006

the second section of the jewish torah (or the christian old testament) is called the prophets. it is made up of two sections, the former prophets (we tend to call it historical books) and the latter prophets.

the second book in the historical books is the book of judges. the english translation of sophetim is 'judges' but our modern understanding of the word has clouded the hebrew idea. sophetim here are not the judges we see today in the court, wearing wigs and donning black robes. a sophet would be more of a guy brandishing a sword in his hand and leading an army to war!in other words, a 'judge' in the book of judges was a charismatic leader, endowed with the spirit of God. the book records 12 judges altogether, divided into major and minor judges. this division is not because some of the judges were 'inferior' to others but more in terms of the amount of material recorded of them. out of the mostly male judges stands out deborah, the only female judge.

There are 21 chapters in all in the book. The book starts with an introduction which is quite long (almost 3 chapters) before the first judge, othniel, is introduced in 3:9. The long introduction summarizes the story so far, beginning with the story of joshua again. But chapter 1 gives hints that the so-called conquest of the land of Canaan was anything but complete - there were pockets of resistance left behind by the people of israel. after joshua's death in 2:8, the people are left without a leader. 2:10 records the observations that there arose a new generation who did not know the Lord. these are the children of those who conquered the land, that is, they had no intimate knowledge of this wonderful aspect of God's leading. they were like the 'second-generation'.

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