Judges

No. 84 Judges 1:22-26
Judges opens with the tribes trying to take the land they were allotted, mostly failing, and settling in among the peoples they were meant to displace. This passage is a short account of taking Bethel, and it...
No. 192 Judges 14:1-11
Samson was born to childless parents after an angel announced he would be a Nazirite from the womb, set apart to God, and begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. This passage is the first thing he does...
No. 256 Judges 10:6-10
The book of Judges runs on a cycle that repeats until it wears grooves into the page. Israel abandons God, an enemy oppresses them, they cry out, God raises up a rescuer, and then they abandon him again. This...
No. 313 Judges 8:1-5
Gideon has just won a stunning victory over the Midianite army, and this passage is what happens right after. Instead of celebration, he is met with a fight from his own side. The tribe of Ephraim comes to him...
No. 329 Judges 9:39-45
Abimelech is one of the darkest figures in Judges. A son of Gideon by a concubine, he seized power by murdering his seventy brothers on a single stone, and the city of Shechem crowned him king. This passage...
No. 354 Judges 15:1-5
Samson has a real grievance. He had married a Philistine woman, and after a disastrous wedding feast he had stormed off, and in his absence her father, assuming Samson hated her, gave her to another man. Now...
No. 453 Judges 8:6-17
Gideon is in the middle of a grueling pursuit. He and his three hundred men have routed the main Midianite army and are now chasing the two fleeing kings, and they are, the text keeps emphasizing, exhausted,...
No. 506 Judges 10:11-18
Israel has fallen back into idolatry yet again, and when they cry out to God under their latest oppressor, God's answer is unusually raw, almost the response of a wounded party who has finally had enough. Did...
No. 572 Judges 20:19-23
Israel has gone to war against the tribe of Benjamin over a genuine atrocity, a horrifying crime that had to be answered, and they have done it the right way, inquiring of God before they march. God tells them...
No. 604 Judges 8:29-35
Gideon has led Israel through one of its great deliverances, rescuing the nation from years of Midianite oppression. He dies at last in a good old age, honored, buried in his father's tomb. And then the text...
No. 609 Judges 7:1-7
Gideon has mustered an army of thirty-two thousand men to face the vast Midianite host, and by any military logic he is already badly outnumbered. And then God says something that must have sounded insane: the...
No. 661 Judges 18:6-10
Judges covers the disordered years between Joshua and the kings, and it keeps repeating its own verdict: there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. The tribe of Dan has...
No. 794 Judges 11:1-6
Jephthah starts life with two strikes against him. He is a capable man, a warrior, but he is the son of Gilead by a prostitute, and when his father's legitimate sons grow up, they drive him out of the house....
No. 938 Judges 16:16-20
Delilah has been pressing Samson day after day to tell her the secret of his strength, and finally, worn down to death by her nagging, he tells her everything: he is a Nazirite, no razor has ever touched his...
No. 985 Judges 7:8-12
Gideon has just watched God whittle his army down from thirty-two thousand to three hundred, deliberately making Israel too small to claim the victory as their own. Now, with the vast camp of Midian spread out...
No. 1108 Judges 13:1-5
Israel has again done evil, and God has handed them to the Philistines for forty years. In the town of Zorah lives a Danite named Manoah whose wife is barren and childless. The angel of the LORD appears to...
No. 1171 Judges 16:21-31
Samson has told his secret, lost his strength, and been captured. The Philistines gouge out his eyes, bind him in bronze, and set him grinding grain in prison like an animal. But then a quiet, easy-to-miss...
No. 1219 Judges 3:26-31
Ehud, the left-handed judge, has just assassinated the oppressive king of Moab and escaped. He rallies Israel with a trumpet blast, seizes the fords of the Jordan to cut off the enemy's retreat, and strikes...
No. 1233 Judges 7:19-25
Gideon's three hundred men surround the vast Midianite camp at night, each holding a trumpet and a torch hidden in a clay jar. At the signal they blow the trumpets, smash the jars to reveal the torches, and...
No. 1261 Judges 10:1-5
Between the more famous judges, the book pauses on two men who get only a few verses each. Tola of Issachar arose to save Israel, judged for twenty-three years, and died. After him Jair the Gileadite judged...
No. 1341 Judges 4:14-18
Deborah the prophetess gives Barak his signal: Up, for this is the day the LORD has given Sisera into your hand. Has not the LORD gone out before you? So Barak charges down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand...
No. 1342 Judges 15:6-10
Samson's conflict with the Philistines has become a spiral of revenge. In retaliation for something Samson had done, the Philistines burn his wife and her father to death. Samson answers, if this is how you...
No. 1368 Judges 9:9-13
This is part of Jotham's parable, an ancient fable of the trees, which he cried out against the men who had made his brother Abimelech king. The trees, he says, went out to anoint a king over themselves. They...
No. 1537 Judges 3:1-11
The book of Judges explains why certain nations were left in the land rather than driven out: they were left to test Israel, to know whether the new generations, who had not known the earlier wars, would obey...
No. 1571 Judges 14:12-20
At his wedding feast, Samson poses a riddle to the thirty Philistine companions, wagering thirty garments on whether they can solve it in seven days. Unable to guess it, they threaten his new wife: coax the...
No. 1621 Judges 2:17-23
The book of Judges describes a recurring cycle. Israel forsakes God and worships idols; God gives them into the hand of oppressors; then, moved by their groaning, he raises up a judge who delivers them, and...
No. 1710 Judges 6:13-18
The angel of the LORD has greeted Gideon as a man of valor, but Gideon answers with a lament: if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened, and where are the wonders our fathers told us of? God does not...
No. 1765 Judges 16:6-10
Delilah, in the pay of the Philistines, presses Samson to reveal the secret of his strength and how he might be bound. Samson toys with her: bind me with seven fresh cords, he says, and I will be weak. The...
No. 1813 Judges 6:36-40
Gideon, called to save Israel but full of fear, asks God for a sign to be sure. He lays a fleece of wool on the threshing floor: if there is dew on the fleece but the ground is dry, he will know God will save...
No. 1854 Judges 11:12-27
Before Jephthah goes to war with Ammon, he sends messengers to their king, seeking to resolve the conflict by reason. What quarrel is there between us, he asks, that you come against my land? When the king...
No. 1864 Judges 13:6-10
The wife of Manoah is visited by a man of God with an awesome appearance, who tells her she will bear a son who is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from the womb. She tells her husband. And Manoah, rather...
No. 1979 Judges 19:1-8
In the days when there was no king in Israel, a Levite's concubine leaves him and returns to her father's house. Rather than let the breach stand, the man rises and goes after her, to speak kindly to her and...
No. 1983 Judges 6:7-12
When Israel cries out under the oppression of Midian, God first sends a prophet to remind them of their deliverance from Egypt and their disobedience. Then the angel of the LORD comes and sits under an oak,...
No. 2011 Judges 15:11-20
After Samson strikes down a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey, a great victory, he is left utterly spent. He was very thirsty, the account says, and he called on the LORD: you have given this...
No. 2042 Judges 17:1-13
In an age when there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes, a man named Micah fashions his own religion. He returns silver he had stolen from his mother, who then dedicates it...
No. 2142 Judges 20:1-7
A horrific crime has been committed at Gibeah, a wickedness so grave that word of it spreads through the whole nation. And Israel responds: all the children of Israel came out, and the congregation was...
No. 2185 Judges 16:11-15
Delilah, bribed by the Philistines to discover the secret of Samson's strength, presses him again and again. Three times he gives her false answers, and three times she tests them, with the Philistines waiting...
No. 2308 Judges 4:1-7
When Israel is oppressed by Jabin king of Canaan, whose commander Sisera has nine hundred iron chariots, God raises up Deborah, a prophetess who judges Israel. She summons Barak and delivers God's command: has...
No. 2337 Judges 18:11-17
As the tribe of Dan migrates in search of land, six hundred armed men come to the house of Micah, who had made himself a shrine with carved and molten images and a household priest. The Danites simply take...
No. 2382 Judges 12:1-6
Judges shows the ugliness that can follow even a victory. Jephthah has just defeated Ammon, and the tribe of Ephraim comes not to celebrate but to pick a fight: why didn't you call us? They threaten to burn...
No. 2385 Judges 21:1-12
The book of Judges ends in a moral tangle of Israel's own making. Having nearly wiped out the tribe of Benjamin in a civil war, and having sworn an oath never to give their daughters to Benjamin, the people...
No. 2388 Judges 8:18-22
After defeating Midian, Gideon settles a personal score, executing the captured kings Zebah and Zalmunna for killing his brothers. Then the men of Israel make him an offer: rule over us, you and your son and...
No. 2509 Judges 6:24-29
The night after God calls him, Gideon is told to tear down his own father's altar to Baal and the Asherah pole beside it, and to build an altar to the LORD in their place. Gideon obeys, but the text is honest...
No. 2555 Judges 11:7-11
Jephthah had been driven out of his own family, disowned as the son of another woman, and had made a life among outcasts. Now Ammon threatens Gilead, and the same elders who expelled him come begging: lead us....
No. 2645 Judges 3:20-25
Israel, oppressed for years under Moab, had cried out to the LORD, and God raised up a deliverer: Ehud, a left-handed man from Benjamin. The account of how he frees them is stark, a hidden dagger, a private...
No. 2656 Judges 7:13-18
God has whittled Gideon's army down to three hundred, and Gideon is understandably afraid. So God tells him to sneak down to the edge of the enemy camp, where he overhears a Midianite recounting a dream, a...
No. 2663 Judges 9:46-57
Abimelech, who had murdered his seventy brothers to seize power, is besieging the town of Thebez. The people take refuge in a strong tower, and as Abimelech comes close to set its door on fire, a woman on the...
No. 2782 Judges 9:14-20
Abimelech has murdered his seventy brothers on one stone to make himself king of Shechem, and Jotham, the one survivor, stands on the mountain and shouts down a fable. The trees went looking for a king. The...
No. 2859 Judges 13:16-25
Manoah and his wife are visited by a stranger who is, though they do not yet know it, the angel of the LORD. Manoah asks his name, and the answer is that it is beyond understanding. When he offers a sacrifice,...
No. 2884 Judges 20:24-28
In the terrible civil war against the tribe of Benjamin, Israel is defeated twice with staggering losses, even though they had asked God before going out. After the second defeat they go up to Bethel, weep,...
No. 2889 Judges 20:29-48
On the third day Israel sets an ambush, lures Benjamin out of Gibeah, and takes the city. Benjamin is routed; tens of thousands fall, and only six hundred men escape to a rock in the wilderness. Then Israel...
No. 2906 Judges 6:1-6
Israel does evil, and God gives them into the hand of Midian for seven years. The oppression is so severe that Israel hides in mountain dens and caves. Each harvest the Midianites and their allies sweep in...
No. 2945 Judges 4:19-24
Sisera, the Canaanite commander, flees the lost battle and takes refuge in the tent of Jael, who gives him milk and covers him. Exhausted, he falls into a deep sleep, and Jael takes a tent peg and a hammer and...
No. 2979 Judges 18:1-5
In the lawless days when there was no king in Israel, the tribe of Dan, still without a settled inheritance, sends five men to scout out land. They lodge at the house of a man named Micah, recognize the voice...
No. 3078 Judges 5:1-16
After the victory over Sisera, Deborah and Barak sing. They bless the LORD that the leaders led and the people offered themselves willingly. The song remembers God marching out from Seir, the earth trembling;...
No. 3083 Judges 9:1-8
Abimelech, a son of Gideon, persuades the men of Shechem to make him king, arguing it is better to be ruled by one kinsman than by all seventy sons of Gideon. Funded with silver from the temple of Baal, he...
No. 3126 Judges 19:9-15
A Levite and his concubine are traveling home. Rather than lodge in the foreign city of Jebus, they press on to Gibeah, a town of their own people, Benjamin. But they arrive at dusk and sit down in the open...
No. 3154 Judges 1:9-13
As Judah presses into the hill country, old Caleb, still active in claiming the inheritance, sets a challenge: whoever attacks and takes the town of Kiriath-sepher will have his daughter Achsah in marriage....
No. 3175 Judges 1:14-21
Achsah, given in marriage, asks her father Caleb for a blessing: you have given me the dry land of the Negev; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gives her the upper springs and the lower. Then the...
No. 3202 Judges 5:17-31
The song of Deborah and Barak weaves many threads. It honors the tribes who risked their lives, Zebulun and Naphtali, and gently shames those who stayed by their ships and sheepfolds. It credits the victory to...
No. 3220 Judges 4:8-13
Deborah calls Barak to battle against Sisera, but Barak answers with a condition: if you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go. Deborah agrees to go, but tells him the road...
No. 3288 Judges 19:16-22
This is the beginning of one of the dark and grievous episodes in Scripture, and it must be read soberly. A traveler and his companions find no one in Gibeah willing to take them in, until an old man, himself...
No. 3300 Judges 12:7-15
This is a list of minor judges, each given only a verse or two: how long they led Israel, how many children they had, and where they were buried. Jephthah, then Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, names most of us never...
No. 3303 Judges 18:24-31
This is a grim little story of idolatry compounding idolatry. Micah had made himself household gods and hired a wandering Levite as his private priest; now the migrating Danites simply take both by force....
No. 3431 Judges 13:11-15
Manoah, told by an angel that his barren wife will bear a son, does a wise thing: he asks God for more guidance. When the child comes, he prays, what is to be his manner of life, and what is his mission? He...
No. 3461 Judges 6:30-35
After Gideon tears down the altar of Baal, the townsmen demand his death, but his father Joash answers with unexpected wisdom: will you contend for Baal? Will you save him? If he is really a god, let him...
No. 3608 Judges 11:28-33
As Jephthah goes out to battle, the Spirit of the LORD comes upon him, and he makes a vow, a rash and terrible one: if God gives him victory, he will offer as a burnt offering whatever comes out of his house...
No. 3688 Judges 9:26-33
This is a story of intrigue and coming violence, part of the unraveling of Abimelech, who had murdered his seventy brothers to seize power. Now the men of Shechem, who had backed him, turn against him,...
No. 3694 Judges 20:8-13
After the terrible crime at Gibeah, all Israel unites as one to demand justice: hand over the wicked men who did this evil, that we may put them to death and purge the evil from Israel. There is something...
No. 3727 Judges 8:23-28
Gideon does something admirable and something tragic. When Israel offers to make him king, he refuses with a fine confession: I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the LORD will rule...
No. 3782 Judges 18:18-23
This strange episode shows religion put entirely in the service of self-interest. The tribe of Dan, on the move, seizes the idols and the priest from Micah's house, and when the priest protests, they simply...
No. 3783 Judges 3:12-19
When Israel again does evil and falls under the oppression of Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years, they cry out to the LORD, and he raises up a deliverer for them, Ehud. The pattern that runs through Judges...
No. 3784 Judges 20:14-18
This passage sits within one of the darker episodes in Judges, a civil war among the tribes of Israel, brother against brother. The tribe of Benjamin arms for battle against the rest of Israel, and both sides...
No. 3835 Judges 9:21-25
Abimelech had murdered seventy of his brothers to seize power, and for a time he seemed to have gotten away with it, ruling over Israel. But the passage records how justice began to catch up with him. God sent...
No. 3844 Judges 21:13-25
The book of Judges ends in a tangle of tragedy and desperate improvisation, as Israel scrambles to provide wives for the survivors of Benjamin so that a whole tribe will not die out, resorting to means we read...
No. 3949 Judges 9:34-38
Gaal, a newcomer to Shechem, had boldly boasted against Abimelech: who is Abimelech, that we should serve him? But now, as Abimelech's forces advance on the city from their ambush, Gaal's confidence falters....
No. 3959 Judges 16:1-5
This passage shows Samson's great strength and his fatal weakness side by side. In one scene he displays astonishing strength, tearing up the gates of Gaza, posts and bar, and carrying them off on his...
No. 3988 Judges 19:23-30
This is one of the dark and horrifying passages in all of Scripture, an account of a woman brutalized and killed by a mob in a night of unspeakable evil. We do not retell its horrors; we grieve them. Scripture...
No. 4040 Judges 1:1-8
As Israel begins to take the land after Joshua's death, they capture a Canaanite king named Adoni-Bezek. And this king makes a striking confession about his own downfall. He had, by his own account, cruelly...
No. 4093 Judges 2:1-16
This passage marks a tragic turning point in Israel's history. The generation that had served the LORD under Joshua, having seen the great works God did for them, passes away. And then comes a sobering line:...
No. 4202 Judges 6:19-23
Gideon prepares an offering for the mysterious visitor at the oak, and when the angel touches it with his staff, fire springs from the rock and consumes it, and the angel vanishes. Suddenly Gideon realizes he...
No. 4220 Judges 11:34-40
This is a deeply sorrowful account. Jephthah, before battle, had made a rash vow to God, promising to offer whatever first came out of his door to meet him if he returned victorious. And what comes out to meet...
No. 4302 Judges 1:27-36
This passage records a repeated, sobering refrain about the tribes of Israel entering the promised land: Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants; Ephraim did not drive them out; Zebulun did not; Asher did...