THREAD: The Book of Judges and Anti-Feasts.

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 the book unfolds, its acts of deliverance become progressively more bloody and paradoxical,

as do the deliverers involved in them,

until, in the book’s horrific finale—in a passage which has been recently commented on by @DrPJWilliams—, deliverance doesn’t arrive at all.

Instead, a helpless woman is delivered *over* to her enemies. https://twitter.com/DrPJWilliams/status/1163595483195092993

Curiously, these acts of deliverance (or non-deliverance) tend to be framed as parodies of Israel’s three major feasts—

or, in my terms, ‘anti-feasts’.

Things start to go wrong pretty early on in the book.

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.

Gideon’s brutality is portrayed in distinctly feast-of-Tabernacles-like terms.

The feast of Tabernacles (aka ‘Sukkot’ = ‘booths’) is celebrated on the 15th of Tishri, towards the end of the grape harvest.

Under normal circumstances, the Israelites go up to the hills,

fetch fruits and branches,

construct booths for themselves (often on the roofs of their houses),

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.

In Gideon’s case, however, the feast is reinvented, and not in a good way.

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).

And, as the word ‘day’ is mentioned for the 15th time in the book of Judges (8.28), Gideon visits the town of ‘Sukkot’ (8.5).

Rather than fetch branches from the hillside, Gideon fetches briars from the wilderness and flays the elders of Succoth with them (8.16).

It is brutal and unnecessary behaviour.

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.

Indeed, in ch. 9, Gideon’s son Abimelech continues the very violence his father has begun,

again in Tabernacles-like fashion.

Just as seventy bulls are sacrificed at the feast of Tabernacles (13 + 12 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 8 + 7: cf. Num. 29.12–34), so Jephthah sacrifices Gideon’s seventy sons on a single stone/altar (9.5).

Next comes Jotham’s parable,

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,

so the men of Shechem enthrone a bramble-king instead (Abimelech).

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.).

Abimelech, who has spent the night in the open air (9.32–34), launches an attack on the men of Shechem.

The men of Shechem flee to the roof/upper-room of their tower (9.46).

And, in response, Abimelech and his men go up to the hills to fetch brushwood (Heb. soko), and assemble it next to the tower (9.48–49).

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,

which they do.

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.

Our next flawed deliverer is Jephthah.

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.

Jephthah accomplishes a distinctly Passover-like deliverance.

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).

Just as YHWH’s Passover is a defeat of the gods of Egypt (Exod. 12.12), so Jephthah’s war is a defeat of the god of Ammon (11.21–25).

And, just as, in the aftermath of Egypt’s defeat, Miriam comes forth to meet Moses with ‘tambourines and dances’ (Exod. 15.20), so, in the aftermath of Ammon’s, Jephthah’s daughter comes forth to meet him with ‘tambourines and dances’ (cf. 11.34).

All is well and good.

Or so it seems.

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.

And, while the fulfilment of *YHWH’s* vow at the time of the Passover results in the death of Egypt’s firstborn (Exod. 3.17, 6.8, etc.), the fulfilment of Jephthah’s results in the *loss* of his firstborn and the end of Jephthah’s legacy (11.35).

Further anti-Passover traits in Jephthah’s actions can be noted.

While YHWH brings Israel out of Egypt (להעלות), Jephthah offers (להעלות) his daughter as a sacrifice.

While the Passover becomes established as a statute (חֹק) in Israel, to be celebrated on a yearly basis, the fate of Jephthah’s daughter comes to be lamented as part of a yearly ‘custom’ (חֹק) (cp. 11.39 w. Exod. 12.24).

And while, two months after the Passover, Israel enters into a marriage covenant with YHWH on mount Sinai (Exod. 19, Jer. 2), Jephthah’s daughter returns from her two months in the mountains to die (one way or another) a virgin (cp. 11.37–39).

As such, the ‘deliverance’ effected by Jephthah comes at a high price, and is tragically selective.

Viewed in light of the Akedah (Gen. 22), its sadness becomes even more pronounced.

Whereas Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his only son (יחיד), who is delivered from death at the last moment, Jephthah sacrifices his only daughter (יחידה), not at YHWH’s command, but on his own initiative,

and deliverance never comes.

Heaven remains silent,

as it does in much of the book of Judges.

Israel’s next flawed deliverer is Samson,

who enacts an anti-Pentecost.

Let’s start our consideration of Samson’s actions with a consideration of the NT fulfilment of Pentecost.

In Acts 2, at the time of the wheat harvest, the Spirit rushes on the apostles like a mighty wind,

fire falls from the heavens,

and 3,000 men are miraculously saved, as the final 40 years of Israel’s biblically-attested history begin.

In Judges 14–16, similar events begin to unfold.

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.

In contrast to the aftermath of Acts 2’s events, an attempt to take a Gentile bride ends in disaster (15.2).

Samson sends fire against the Philistines, who promptly return the compliment (15.4–6).

Rather than save 3,000 Israelites, Samson slays 3,000 drunken Philistines (who are certainly not drunk with the Spirit).

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.

We hence come to the book’s final anti-feast: the Levite and the concubine’s night in Gibeah (chs. 19–21).

If the traditional date for ch. 21’s events is correct, then ch. 19’s would have taken place in about Nisan (cp. 20.47 w. b. Ta‘anit 30b).

Either way, they begin in distinctly Passover-like fashion.

A Levite and his concubine are sojourners in a foreign land (cp. 19.1 w. 16), where they have no shortage of straw (19.19).

The Levite and his concubine retire for the night.

Darkness descends.

And, while food and drink are consumed within their house, a nameless terror lurks outside.

As such, the text becomes unbearably tense.

Without the house, death walks abroad,

while, within the house, all is safe (or so it seems).

And, for now at least, the door is firmly shut.

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.

And, while YHWH leads the people out (הוציא) of Egypt and hence rescues them from danger (Exod. 12.42),

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).

The woman is hence left to face the terrors of the night alone,

where, like the men of Laish before her, she is left ‘without a deliver’ (אין מציל) (cp. 18.28).

The men of Shechem abuse her throughout the night.

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).

As such, the Levite arises to find blood(guilt) on his doorposts, and for all the wrong reasons,

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’.)

The book of Judge’s anti-feasts hence reach their climax in one of the most brutal and horrific scenes in all of Scripture,

which sums up the book’s portrayal of Israel—a people who lived precisely as they should not have lived.

God told the Israelites exactly what he wanted them to do when they entered Canaan (Exod. 34.11–26),

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. 11, they failed to drive out the Canaanites.

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.

Instead, the Israelites chose to worship foreign gods (v. 15), intermarry with the nations (v. 16), and make themselves cast metal idols (v. 17).

And, consequently, their feasts turned into anti-feasts (34.18–23), and their nation into a moral vacuum.

A FINAL REFLECTION

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.

Thankfully, however, Judges 21 does not signal the end of the Biblical narrative.

In the person of Jesus, God himself enters into human history.

Jesus is the antithesis of the male leaders who preside at the book of Judges’ anti-feasts,

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.

Unlike Samson, he responds to violence with love.

And, unlike Judges 19’s Levite, he steps out into the darkness and hands himself over to those who have come to harm him.

Instead, like Jephthah’s daughter, Jesus offers his life to YHWH as a sacrifice.

And, like the Levite’s concubine, he dies a victim’s death so others might be spared.

THE END.