Mary Evans on Judges and Ruth

Mary J. Evans, Judges and Ruth: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (London: IVP, 2017).

I was recently asked to attend a book launch at London School of Theology of, among others, Mary Evans’ recent addition to the Tyndale Series, and to offer a commendation of it – which I was very happy to do.

For thirty years or thereabouts, Mary taught at London Bible College, now London School of Theology, where she was Senior Lecturer in Old Testament and also served as Vice Principal.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that Mary is a long-standing friend. I sat under her teaching as a young, slightly cheeky, wet-behind-the-ears undergraduate student, and then I became her slightly less young but still slightly cheeky and still wet-behind-the-ears colleague for 16 years. Mary had a reputation among students for down-to-earth Bible teaching, and a reputation among her colleagues for being an innovator in ways of doing theological education at a time when everything had become a tad stale and samey. Mary has been a visiting lecturer at colleges for different lengths of time in a number of countries around the world, has served on the boards of several Christian organisations, and written and contributed to many books.

The following is a lightly-edited version of what I said at the launch:

This is going to be less a book review and more a personal testimony. I really enjoyed reading through Mary’s commentary on Judges and Ruth. And as I did so, I found myself feeling grateful for three things.

First of all, I found myself feeling grateful to God for his word, the Scriptures.

It would be easy to become cynical at what might feel like a never-ending stream of commentaries on the Bible, each with their own distinctive slant. That, I think, would be a shame. Commentary writing has an ancient pedigree. It reminds us of our place as the most recent in a long line of those who have gone before us, who themselves have sought to understand the Bible for the benefit of others. But most of all, commentary writing keeps us close to Scripture. I see our ongoing writing and reading of commentaries as a mark of a commitment which says that this collection of texts matters.

A good commentary – like this one – reminds us that God always has yet more light to shed from his word. And that’s something to be grateful for.

Then second, I found myself feeling grateful to God for London School of Theology.

Not only did Mary write this commentary, as a former long-standing member of LST faculty, but the general editor for the series is David Firth, a former LST student, and the theological editor at IVP (named by Mary in the Preface) is Phil Duce, also a former LST student! Plus, Mary’s contribution to this series puts her in the company of Dick France and Donald Guthrie, also significant figures in the history of LST and of evangelical biblical scholarship more generally.

I say this not as a line for the next marketing campaign, but as a grateful reminder of the work LST has been directly or indirectly responsible for over the years, and the significance of good scholarship done for the church.

I know that Mary didn’t write the commentary whilst being employed at LST, but those of us who have worked at the School know that our experience becomes part of our iceberg when we move on. It takes a certain type of person nurtured in a certain type of community to produce a book like this. It’s a certain type of institution which says this type of work matters and that we will not only allow, but actively encourage our people to give good time to it.

So, third, I’m grateful to God for Mary.

For those of you who don’t know Mary as well as I do, this commentary is just a single slice of a highly productive life serving God by serving others.

And it reminds me of the things Mary does really well – like its down-to-earthness, like the way I’m drawn into the story so that I have to imagine the force it would take for a woman to crush a man’s skull with a pointed-but-not-necessarily-sharp tent peg, like the quirky asides such as telling us that Judges has one tenth of all the references to donkeys in the Old Testament!

There were new things for me, too. Like many, I’ve seen the references in the final few chapters of Judges that ‘there was no king’ as an apologetic for the monarchy that would follow this period. But Mary reminds us that the kings didn’t do that much better! And I think Mary is distinctive in suggesting that the writers of Judges are asking about the possibility of good government, and that while kingship could be blamed for many things, it couldn’t be blamed for the situation described in these times.

I think also I’ve tended to see the opening reference in Ruth, ‘In the days when the judged ruled’, to provide a contrast with what’s gone before. But as Mary points out, even in the book of Ruth not all is as it should be in Israel.

But the thing that really sticks out is Mary’s commitment to the text. Many commentaries are actually meta-commentaries – commentaries on commentaries. What we get is: ‘So-and-so says X, but such-and-such says Y.’ And there’s due acknowledgement of scholarship in this commentary, but it never gets in the way of Mary’s own running reflections on the text.

This commitment to go where the text goes shows up in Mary’s treatment of gender-sensitive passages, of which there are many in Judges and Ruth. Helpfully, in my opinion, Mary writes from a stance of trust in Scripture rather than suspicion of Scripture. Mary writes from a perspective that listens for the critiques of patriarchy where they occur – and they are there – but which recognises that the questions and issues of the original audience aren’t necessarily ours, and it does no-one any favours to turn Judges and Ruth into protofeminist texts!

The constraints of the Tyndale series means that there isn’t a lot of space to reflect on implications for Christians today of this period in the life of God’s people, but Mary makes the most of what there is. The commentary certainly drew me in to reflect on my own way of life as a member of God’s covenant people, and left me thankful for the one, the only one, who truly can save us.

So, with all that in mind, I give thanks to God for his word, for LST, and – on this day – for this book and for Mary too. Thank you.

Currents in Biblical Research 15, 2 (February 2017)

The latest Currents in Biblical Research recently arrived, with titles and abstracts of the main articles as below.

Andrew M. Mbuvi

African Biblical Studies: An Introduction to an Emerging Discipline

African Biblical Studies (ABS) can be characterized both as innovative and reactionary: Innovative, because it refuses to be confined by the methodologies, ancient concerns, and principles that govern biblical studies in the ‘west’ (used throughout this article to refer to the majority Euro-American scholars while recognizing the presence of other groups), and instead charts a course that is more interested in making biblical interpretation relevant to present realities. Reactionary, because its driving force is partly a critique of the inadequacy of western biblical studies in providing meaningful responses to concerns that are pertinent to African communities. A genuine ABS is therefore an amalgamation of multiple interpretive methods, approaches and foci that reflect a creative engagement of the African cosmological reality and the Bible.

Kelly J. Murphy

Judges in Recent Research

The book of Judges continues to inspire research and interpretation, from an ongoing focus on traditional research methods such as historical criticism and redaction criticism, to newer approaches like cultural criticism and postcolonial readings. This article surveys recent research on the book of Judges since 2003 by separating the discussion into two sections: the first section traces current research on the overall book of Judges as well as specific characters and/or passages, while the second section notes two growing areas of research; namely, reception history and gender studies.

Nicholas G. Piotrowski

The Concept of Exile in Late Second Temple Judaism: A Review of Recent Scholarship

Before Wright published the first two volumes of his Christian Origins and the Question of God series (1992; 1996) the discussion concerning late Second Temple Jewish concepts of exile was a quiet one. Since then, however, more and more scholars have begun to weigh in. Champions of the theory contend that Second Temple texts convey a matrix of concerns that together demonstrate a Jewish consciousness of being in a state of ongoing exile, notwithstanding the residency in the land of a significant population and a functioning temple. Dissenters argue that these scholars are illegitimately privileging one motif within a highly complex ancient religion, and assigning it a metanarrative role it never truly had. Others contend that ‘ongoing’ exile is too narrow of a description to account for the diversity of attitudes across several sects. Only recently, though, have major works been produced that thoroughly examine the primary texts in question. In the process, a growing chorus of voices is supporting, with various levels of enthusiasm, the thesis that a significant number of late Second Temple Jewish groups indeed understood themselves to be languishing in some form of exile: ongoing exile since the sixth century bce, in the throes of recurring cycles of exile, or a set of historic realities characterized with exilic metaphors.

Joshua Coutts

‘My Father’s Name’: A Survey of Research on the Use of Onoma with Respect to the Father in the Fourth Gospel

This essay provides a survey of research for one distinctive feature of the Fourth Gospel, namely, the striking emphasis on ‘name’ (onoma) language used with reference to the Father. The small existing body of research on John’s divine name concept may be situated in the context of a resurgent interest in the question of ‘God’ in the Fourth Gospel, and alongside broader New Testament research focused on the application of ‘kyrios’ to Jesus or on the divine functions attributed to Jesus’ own name. The research that has focused on John’s use of the divine name may be divided into two groups: there are attempts to identify the background to John’s name concept, including proposals for a Jewish hypostatic name concept, targumic tradition or the text of Isaiah; and studies which analyse John’s name language have sought to locate its meaning within the context of the Gospel itself.

In Days Like These

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

In the days when the judges ruled...

Ruth 1:1

For those who know what’s gone before, the first line of the book of Ruth – ‘In the days when the judges ruled’ – sounds ominous.

For this was an era of increasing religious apostasy, moral apathy, and unlawful violence. These were dark days of political, social, and spiritual chaos. As if to reinforce the point, the book of Judges ends with a downward spiral of breakdown in episodes of idolatry, lawlessness, and civil war. The horrific story of the gang rape and dismemberment of a nameless woman shocks us into realising how far the people of God have failed in their calling to be a holy nation, with everyone doing what is right in their own eyes (17:6; 21:25).

The opening of Ruth seems to take up where Judges leaves off – describing famine, death, widowhood, childlessness, and grief in quick succession – a world of anguish, every bit as dark and hopeless as what’s gone before.

And yet, a closer look reveals something different. Difficult to see at first, it becomes clearer as the story unfolds. In Judges, the major characters abandon their commitment to God and others. In Ruth, they gladly shoulder their covenant responsibilities. The shameful, violent treatment of a woman by men in Judges gives way to tender, honourable conduct towards women in Ruth, where men and women become partners in a common cause. In place of idolatry is integrity. In place of cruelty is compassion. In place of fear is faith.

And through it all, God works out his purpose with the inclusion of a Moabite ‘outsider’ into the fold of the covenant people – not only as one who is herself a sign of the fulfilment of his promise to bless the nations, but from whom King David – and Jesus himself – is eventually born.

For us too, the book emboldens us to see God at work in and through day-to-day events and relationships, new transitions and challenges, the common sorrows and joys we share with others – the grief that comes with death, the delight that comes with a new birth. The story told in Ruth encourages us to discern God’s ‘fingerprints’ in the routine of our own life. And to recognise that no act of kindness, no stand for what is right will go unnoticed as God gently nudges us towards his future redemption of all things.

Yes, even in days like these.

The Period of the Judges: Spiralling Out of Control

[I recently wrote a short piece on Judges and Ruth for something I’m currently working on, and thought I’d post it here.]

Towards the end of his life, Joshua gathers the people together and recites the story of all that God has done for them. Affirming that he and his household will serve the Lord, the people respond by saying that they too will stay faithful (Joshua 24:1-28). Knowing our own capacity for self-delusion, we’re perhaps not surprised to learn that, after Joshua’s death, they stray from the Lord. This leads into an era when there is no national leader or central government, with little unity between the tribes. Early military successes give way to failure, and moral apathy takes hold. Then, as now, neglect of the covenant relationship with God spills over into society.

Still, God doesn’t abandon his people. They are disobedient to him, and he allows them to be defeated by enemies, but he responds to their cries for help by raising up a a ‘judge’ through whom he brings deliverance – only for the people to turn away from him again. This pattern can be seen in the account of the first judge in 3:7-12, but the cycle is repeated throughout the book.

Except that, if anything, it becomes a downward spiral. The final chapters (Judges 17-21) portray the inevitable breakdown in episodes of idolatry, lawlessness, and civil war. The horrific story of the gang rape and dismemberment of a nameless woman (19:1-30) shocks us into realising how far the people of God have failed in their calling to be a holy nation, with everyone doing what is right in their own eyes (17:6; 21:25). Alas, no judge arises to meet this progressive anarchy, and a recurring refrain – ‘Israel had no king’ (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25) – strongly hints that something else is needed.

There is brutality, but there is also blessing. The first verse of the book of Ruth invites us to read the story that follows in the light of what we know of the period of judges. As we do so, the shameful, violent treatment of a woman gives way to tender, honourable conduct towards women. And through it all, the sovereign God works out his purpose with the inclusion of a Moabite ‘outsider’ into the fold of the covenant people – not only as one who is herself a sign of the fulfilment of his promise to bless the nations, but from whom King David (Ruth 4:17-22) – and Jesus himself (Matthew 1:5) – is eventually born.

John R. Franke on the Early Church Fathers

John R. Franke, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament Volume 4 (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005), xxxii + 458pp., ISBN 9780830814749.

John Franke edited the volume on Joshua to 2 Samuel in the Ancient Christian Commentary Series. Links to the general introduction, the introduction to the volume on Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1-2 Samuel, as well as selected commentary from 1 Samuel are available on the publisher’s website.

The early church fathers saw links and parallels between Joshua and Jesus, such that Joshua is understood as a type of Christ; likewise with Samuel and David, with Ruth being seen as a type of the church. Running commentaries on Old Testament historical books are rare in writings of the early fathers, so most of the excerpts in the volume are taken from theological and pastoral treatises, sermons and letters.

Franke’s Introduction is helpful in providing an orientation to the interpretive rationale of early Christian readers as well as an introduction to some of the most significant interpreters. The most significant of these was Origen (xviii-xxiii), but Franke offers thumbnail sketches of eight others: Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great (xxiii-xxvii).

Michael S. Moore on Ruth

Michael S. Moore, ‘To King or Not to King: A Canonical-Historical Approach to Ruth’, Bulletin for Biblical Research 11. 1 (2001), 27-41.

Here’s the abstract of an interesting essay on Ruth:

Contemporary approaches to Ruth tend to focus on the book’s internal structure and contents. Only rarely is sufficient attention given to the book’s external context, particularly its canonical-historical context. In Judges 17-21 all of the major characters balk in the face of challenge. Priests, landowners, husbands, wives, and warriors all abandon their responsibilities. In Ruth, however, the main characters valiantly shoulder their responsibilities, however burdensome. In Judges, men treat women insensitively, shamefully, even violently. In Ruth, women are treated like partners on a common mission. Why? Having been led by the book of Judges (particularly the self-contained anthology incorporating chaps. 17-21) to wonder whether the one-and-only source of Israel’s agony is kinglessness, Ruth is a canonical-historical surprise. Both Ruth 1-4 and Judges 17-21 come from the premonarchical period of the ‘judges’, yet each offers a radically different response to this fluid situation. To read Ruth against its canonical-historical context not only reconnects us with some of the book’s earliest interpreters, it also generates newer literary and sociological insights into the theological message of this beloved short story.

Roger Ryan on the Book of Judges

Roger Ryan, Judges, Readings: A New Biblical Commentary (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), x + 226pp., ISBN 1906055246.

I attended a day conference yesterday at which Roger Ryan presented a paper on Judges arguing against the consensus that the judge-deliverers are negative role models who contribute to Israel’s moral and spiritual decline. Instead, he insists, their role is militaristic, and they are successful when they deliver Israel from enemies; they are God’s gifts to Israel through whom he brings peace to the land.

He argues this thesis across the narrative as a whole in this commentary in which he invites us to ‘the dangerous world of biblical Israel inhabited by heroes, heroines, hissable villains, a chorus of naughty Israelites, countless silent victims and Yahweh the God of Israel who does whatever it takes to win his people back from the gods of Canaan to covenant loyalty’ (xi).

The commentary includes a lengthy ‘Afterword’ (169-221) in which Ryan engages more closely with scholarly literature on Judges. He sees the stories as ‘literature of hope’ written for Israelite refugees in Mesopotamia and Egypt in the sixth century bc, and highlights three aims of the storyteller: (1) reasons to be ashamed of their moral and religious behaviour; (2) cause for hope because of Yahweh’s repeated responses to the peoples’ cries for help; (3) a warning not to assimilate or fall away from the loyalty to the covenant (172).

Paul Miller on Moral Formation and the Book of Judges

Paul Miller, ‘Moral Formation and the Book of Judges’, Evangelical Quarterly 75:2 (2003), 99-115.

Paul Miller notes that although Judges is not prescriptively ethical in presenting explicit rules for moral conduct, it does deal with ‘the community of faith as the context for moral formation’ (99).

He thus aligns his concerns with those who have sought to move beyond a ‘quandary ethics’, and who see moral living as ‘the cultivation of practices and virtues that can only be formed within the context of a coherent life story’ (102). Scripture informs the church’s ethical task not merely as an historical artefact, but as a living and authoritative story received in the context of the community of faith.

As Scripture, Judges has ‘a community-forming and community-regulating function’, which ‘continues to shape those who read it with the eyes of faith’ (102).

He describes the main ethical thrust of Judges as follows:

‘The very capacity to make moral judgments itself arises from the desire to obey God. The community of faith is the context in which this capacity of obedience is learned and practiced. Conversely, when the covenant relationship between God and God’s people is neglected, the faculty of moral judgment atrophies. It not only becomes impossible to do right, it becomes impossible to know what is right. Judgment is not a function of autonomous practical reason but of a living relationship with God’ (103).

Following Lillian R. Klein (The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988]), Miller maintains that irony is the main device propelling the narrative of Judges… showing the horror of life without God.

He draws attention to the three resonances of the book of Judges with our contemporary situation in the west

(1) ‘morality in our time has become largely a private matter’ (111);
(2) ‘the dominating influence of alien ideologies that claim hegemony over the authority of Scripture’ (112, he instances Naziism, the cult of self, certain streams of feminist theology, and enlightenment rationalism as examples);
(3) ‘our tendency to make impersonal, institutional responses to deeply personal moral and spiritual issues’ (113).

In the face of these…

‘Community is the context in which attentiveness to God is taught, learned, nurtured and internalized. The Christian community’s role, now as much as ever, is to strengthen the commitments which reinforce openness to the activity of God in history. That role is carried out by teaching and celebrating the narratives of God’s dealings with God’s people and by being counterculturally attentive to the practices of worship, prayer, fellowship and charity which, while appearing to be socially trivial, are the foundation of Christian character and virtue’ (114).

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).

Victor H. Matthews on Judges

Victor H. Matthews, Judges and Ruth, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

The Introduction to this commentary is available as a sample from Cambridge University Press.

After some opening comments dealing mostly with the historical setting of the book of Judges (‘the settlement period prior to the establishment of the Israelite monarchy’, 4) and its date of final composition (‘the latter portion of the sixth century bce’, 5), Matthews’ introduction focuses on three areas:

• Literary analysis
• Cultural analysis
• Archaeological analysis

Literary analysis
Matthews holds that unrelated stories have been ‘compiled and systematically arranged and edited into a coherent whole’ (6), with a three-part division:

(1) Introductory and explanatory narrative (1:1-3:6)
(2) A collection of tales about the judges (3:7-16:31)
(3) Four episodes that accentuate the anarchic character of the period (17:1-21:25)

The introduction provides a transition from Joshua’s leadership to the period of the judges, explaining why the Israelites were unable to complete the conquest of the land.

The stories of the judges themselves ‘are progressively chaotic’ and told in a way which enhances the importance of the ‘later stability of the Davidic dynasty’ (8). The cycle of events highlighted in 2:11-19 provides a literary and theological unity, showing that the Israelites ‘always resume the pattern of disobedience that caused God’s displeasure in the first place’ (8) – although this structure begins to break down in Judges 9.

The final section contains episodes of lawlessness, civil war, and idolatry which characterise the rest of the book, except that no judge arises to meet the problems, the progressive anarchy providing ‘a crowning argument for the establishment of the monarchy’ (10).

Cultural analysis
Matthews described this as a ‘wild’ period in the history of Israel, which was at this stage a loose confederation of tribes with an agriculturally-based village culture. There was some cooperation between tribes, though with some feuding, making a case ‘for law and order and the establishment of a government to ensure stability’ (12). Matthews also holds that during this period there would be no discernible ethnic difference between the Canaanites and the people who would eventually become the Israelites (12).

Archaeological analysis
Patterns of settlements suggests a migration of population into the hill country during the period between 1200 and 1000 bce. There is some evidence of new housing styles – four-room houses with a central courtyard. Philistine cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gaza, and Canaanite and Phoenician cities of Meggido, Acco, Sidon, Beth-shemesh, Jebus, and Hazor have all been located and it has been ascertained that they were inhabited in the early Iron Age. It is more difficult, however, to authenticate social and religious practices of the period.

Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart on Judges

Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 77.

‘The tragic pattern in Judges points to the next phase of God’s great story of redemption, which will begin to move forward considerably through the stories of Ruth and of her great-grandson David.’