Philip Satterthwaite and Gordon McConville on Themes in Judges

Philip Satterthwaite and Gordon McConville, Exploring the Old Testament Volume 2: The Histories (London: SPCK, 2007), 94-96.

Satterthwaite and McConville highlight the following key themes in Judges:

• Covenant violation – while generally faithful in Joshua, the people are generally unfaithful in Judges, with the problem of ‘the nations that remain’ unresolved at the end of the book.

• Canaanization – where Israel comes to terms with the inhabitants of Canaan, intermarries with them, worships their gods, and changes their behaviour to suit the switch in commitment.

• Fragmentation – with Israel being less united than in Joshua, with instances of rivalry, disloyalty, apathy, and civil war.

• Yhwh and Israel – where there is a decline in relations between them.

• Grace – shown by the Lord in sending deliverers, who finds ways of saving his people even when they give up seeking him, where even the very judgments that fall on Israel can be seen as moments of grace as the Lord speaks to his people through the consequences of their disobedience.

• Leadership – where, although the Lord is the true leader (8:23), the book focuses on human leaders raised up by the Lord – and different dimensions of their leadership – in such a way to show the inability of non-dynastic and localised leadership to maintain the people’s covenant loyalty. The debates, apparent and at least implicit in Judges, about appropriate forms of leadership – and kingship – continue into Samuel and Kings.

• Yhwh’s spirit – which acts in different ways on different judges, but where it is also clear that the subsequent character and behaviour of the judge is not necessarily marked by purity and devotion to the Lord, suggesting ‘a complex view of divine-human interactions lying behind these simple-seeming texts’ (96).