Judges and Saviors, Deborah and Samson: Reflections of a World in Chaos

Description

This is a book about a book: it is an in-depth yet reader friendly analysis of the Book of Judges, one of the most dramatic books of the Bible. Against the commonly-held view that this remarkable work is no more than a collection of hero tales stemming from Israel’s earliest days in its land—its “Heroic Age,” so to speak—this study makes the case that the Book of Judges is a unified composition with a single focused message: that it is the values held by a people and not its politics that determine its fate. Further, Judges contends that there is a direct connection between the kind of values people internalize and the level of violence that racks their society, both inflicted from without and generated from within. And not least, that the presence of violence is a symptom that a society has abandoned the moral values of monotheism for the Machiavellian politics of a pagan worldview that worships power as the ultimate reality. The larger-than-life heroes and heroines—Ehud and Jael, Deborah and Gideon, Jephthah and Samson—who people the pages of Judges serve by their example to illustrate the way this thesis works out in the world. Judges And Saviors, Deborah And Samson Contents List of Maps Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Abbreviations Prologue: Setting the Stage PREFACE: A Flawed Follow-Up 1 Foreword I: Getting Our Bearings 2 Foreword II: The View from Olympus THE MAIN BODY I: First Saviors: Solo Beginnings 3 A New Age Dawns 4 The Left Hand of God 7 A Minor Interlude: Shamgar II: The Deborah Duet 5 Canaan’s Last Gasp 6 Sing Muse, How the Enemies of the Lord are Fallen III: The Gideon Quartet: The Tipping Point 7 The Hewer of Idols 8 The Day of Midian 9 Nemesis Excursus 1: Could They Read? Excursus 2: The Redeemer of the Blood 10 The Man Who Would Be King A Second Minor Interlude: Tola and Jair IV: The Jephthah Quintet: A Tragedy in Five Installments 11 Introduction: A Dialogue Twixt Heaven and Earth 12 The Man from Tob 13 Giving Peace a Chance 14 Triumph and Tragedy 15 Into the Valley of Death Final Minor Interlude: Ibzan, Elon & Abdon V: The Loose Cannon: The Samson Sextet 16 Introduction: The Tragedy of Samson 17 Prologue: In the Beginning 18 Timnah 19 Vengeance Is Mine 20 The Way to Dusty Death 21 Unresolved Dissonances EPILOGUE: Has It Come To This? 22 Epilogue Part I: A Tale of Stolen Silver 23 Epilogue Part II (A): Atrocity! 24 Epilogue Part II (B): Outrage! 25 Epilogue Part II (C): Restoration Conclusion 26 Olympus Revisited Appendices Appendix 1: Israel in Canaan: How Did They Get There? Appendix 2: What Have the Hittites Got to Do with Sinai and Shechem? Appendix 3: Inflated Numbers in the Biblical Age Appendix 4: Do Judges 4 and Judges 5 Contradict Each Other? Appendix 5: Gideon or Jerubbaal: What’s in a Name? Appendix 6: The Question of the Elusive Mizpah Appendix 7: Did Jephthah Really Kill His Daughter? Appendix 8: A Pride of Nazirites Appendix 9: It Ain’t Necessarily So Appendix 10: On Idealism and Atrocity Appendix 11: A Zealous Exemplar Glossary of Terms and Place Names Who’s Who in Judges Selected Bibliography Index About the Author