The book of Judges is—among many other things—a book about acts of deliverance,
which may (at first blush) make it sound a fairly upbeat volume.
Sadly, it’s anything but.
as do the deliverers involved in them,
Instead, a helpless woman is delivered *over* to her enemies.
or, in my terms, ‘anti-feasts’.
Like Saul, Gideon begins his career with impressive humility (cp. Judg. 6.15 w. 1 Sam. 9.21).
But, also like Saul, he soon turns into a brutal leader.
Under normal circumstances, the Israelites go up to the hills,
fetch fruits and branches,
and sleep under the night sky (Lev. 23.40–43, Deut. 16.13, Neh. 8.14–18).
The land of Israel hence rests in peace.
As his judgeship begins to descend into a quest for vengeance, Gideon refers to his slaughter of the Midianites as ‘a grape harvest’ (8.2).
Rather than fetch branches from the hillside, Gideon fetches briars from the wilderness and flays the elders of Succoth with them (8.16).
While, therefore, Gideon delivers Israel, his act of deliverance is not without cost as far as the tenor and fabric of Israel’s society is concerned.
again in Tabernacles-like fashion.
where the men of Shechem elect a king.
The trees involved in the Tabernacles harvest—viz. the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine (Deut. 11.14, 15.12–14 w. 1–11, 16.13)—are not prepared to reign over them,
Predictably, things soon get bloody.
A couple of years later, it is the time of the grape harvest (9.27) and a festival is in progress, which soon turns sour (9.28ff.).
The men of Shechem flee to the roof/upper-room of their tower (9.46).
Suffice it to say, their intention is not to construct a booth,
but to burn the tower of Shechem down, with the men of Shechem inside it,
Chs. 8–9’s activities are hence portrayed as a kind of ‘anti-Tabernacles’.
Branches are turned to violent ends.
And blood flows rather than wine.
As the Ammonites close in on Gilead, the Gileadites decide they need a military leader to get them out of trouble.
Consequently, they hire Jephthah.
And, initially, their decision seems a good one.
Just as the angel of death passes through (עבר) the land of Egypt and smites Israel’s enemies (Exod. 12.12–13), so Jephthah ‘passes through Gilead’ (עבר) and into Ammon (עבר again) and does likewise (11.32).
All is well and good.
Yet, even as Jephthah’s daughter comes forth, Jephthah’s judgeship takes a familiar turn for the worse, and his act of deliverance morphs into an anti-Passover.
Jephthah has made a foolish vow.
While YHWH brings Israel out of Egypt (להעלות), Jephthah offers (להעלות) his daughter as a sacrifice.
Viewed in light of the Akedah (Gen. 22), its sadness becomes even more pronounced.
and deliverance never comes.
as it does in much of the book of Judges.
who enacts an anti-Pentecost.
Let’s start our consideration of Samson’s actions with a consideration of the NT fulfilment of Pentecost.
fire falls from the heavens,
and 3,000 men are miraculously saved, as the final 40 years of Israel’s biblically-attested history begin.
The Spirit rushes on Samson (14.6).
And, soon afterwards, the time of the wheat harvest comes (15.1).
But, true to Samson’s character, Samson’s Pentecost is a strange and brutal one.
Samson sends fire against the Philistines, who promptly return the compliment (15.4–6).
And, at the end of the last 40 years of the history of the Judges (13.1), a great temple falls (16.27–31),
just as it does in 70 AD.
Either way, they begin in distinctly Passover-like fashion.
The Levite and his concubine retire for the night.
Darkness descends.
As such, the text becomes unbearably tense.
Without the house, death walks abroad,
while, within the house, all is safe (or so it seems).
As the night progresses, however, the night in Gibeah morphs into an anti-Passover night.
The ‘terror’ outside the door is not the wrath of a holy God, but the violent intentions of godless men.
the Levite—in a horrific act of cowardice and betrayal—casts (הוציא) his concubine into the darkness outside in order to save his own skin (19.25).
where, like the men of Laish before her, she is left ‘without a deliver’ (אין מציל) (cp. 18.28).
And, in a cruel travesty of Exod. 12.10’s commandment (‘Let none of it be leftover the next day’), by daybreak, little if any of the woman’s life is left (19.25).
at which point, consistent with the text’s anti-Passover theme, the Levite cuts the woman up ‘into bones’ (לעצמים). (‘Not a bone of the lamb is to be broken’.)
which sums up the book’s portrayal of Israel—a people who lived precisely as they should not have lived.
and yet the text of Exod. 34.11–26 reads as if it was written retrospectively as a record of what the Israelites failed to do.
Contra v. 12, they failed to separate themselves from the nations.
Contra v. 13, they failed to tear down Canaan’s altars.
And, contra vv. 14–15, they failed to worship YHWH alone.
And, consequently, their feasts turned into anti-feasts (34.18–23), and their nation into a moral vacuum.
Suffice it to say, the book of Judges is not written to glamourise Israel’s history.
It is intended to shock and disturb its readers—to reflect the depths of man’s inhumanity, and the consequences of departure from the one true God.
In the person of Jesus, God himself enters into human history.
and he enters into similar experiences to the female victims caught up in them.
Unlike Gideon, Jesus does not seek retribution.
Unlike Abimelech, he does not power-grab.
And, unlike Judges 19’s Levite, he steps out into the darkness and hands himself over to those who have come to harm him.
And, like the Levite’s concubine, he dies a victim’s death so others might be spared.
THE END.