Judges 16-21, Book of Ruth 1-4, First Book of Samuel 1-10

Judges picks up again with the familiar conclusion of the Samson affair, the challenges of Delilah, the lost hair and strength, and the two pillars he still manages to bring down on top of a vast assembly of Philistines.

Wouldn't it be nice if that were the last of the Philistines, or the last heroic judge the Hebrews needed?  Except Samson seemed to spend all his time doing very much his own thing.  His story is a little bit about hubris and personal redemption more than anything directly concerned with Jewish history or faith.

The next judge is Micah, who leads all of Israel, basically, into idolatry, so he's not a very good one at all.  Bethlehem is mentioned.  The Hebrews fall into some of their worst habits.  There's a terrible story about a concubine who's raped all night and then chopped into bits.

However, it's fun on a purely Jewish cultural note when the phrase "such a thing" at the start of a sentence appears.  Apparently it has long roots!

And then they all further degenerate into inter-tribal warfare, and thus ends Judges.

The first incredibly short book of the Bible, the Book of Ruth, comes next, and it's set during the time of the judges.  It's very much a story about the Jewish faith being kept alive despite the troubled times, by a widow and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who is rewarded by winning a husband, which results in the birth of Obid, who becomes the father of Jesse, who becomes the father of David.  At this point in the beginnings of the Bible, we have what previously could very easily have been included in a larger book, but clearly the books have already begun to be codified.  Ruth's story is intended to fill in a gap that would otherwise have existed, and explain that not all Jews were behaving badly in those times.

The phrase, "the Lord be with you," appears, which later generations of the faithful will certainly recognize.

The First Book of Samuel begins and we find ourselves in familiar echoing material.  Hannah's journey to motherhood would certainly have sounded familiar to those familiar with Genesis and how Rebekah and Isaac ended up conceiving their children Jacob and Esau. It also evokes Abraham and Sarah, Jacob himself with Rachel, and the New Testament's Mary and Elizabeth.  Hannah is the mother of Samuel, by the way.

Hannah's prayer reads a lot like a revised statement of faith in God, now that the relationship between Israel and the Lord has altered since the time of Moses and other such generations.  It's a lot more relaxed, and familiar to our own times, another touchstone in the development of everything we know and believe now.  It includes the phrase, "the pillars of the earth," as well as "not by might shall a man prevail," which is rank contradiction to the time of Moses and Joshua, when I saw all that blatant conquering going on.  It represents another clear theological shift.  One might say that the Jews had begun to distance themselves from the idea that it was God telling them to fight so much.

Eli, who previously appears as Hannah's religious confessor, becomes Samuel's mentor, including the famous moment where Samuel is confused when God begins speaking with him, confusing the Lord for his mentor.  Hey, at this point it was increasingly rare to be granted an audience with the Almighty.

It's stated that "the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men," which the gospels later evoke with Jesus.  There's a clear connection between the New Testament and the emerging story of David, and that should come as no surprise.

There's a little summary and a little prophecy, by now standard biblical material.  Samuel is the first person in the Bible since Abraham to speak with God so freely.

The Philistines!  The Hebrew tribes, in their compromised state, do battle with their perennial foes, and make a curious decision on the battlefield.  They elect to use the ark of the covenant as a means of intimidation.  The ark has taken on perhaps a different kind of meaning at this point in history, not so much a symbol of faith and the accord with God, but a totem of power.  The Philistines are suitably impressed (though they seem to believe it represents not God but many Hebrew gods, which wouldn't be far from the mark, and shows just how far the chosen people had fallen).  They end up stealing it!

Eli dies from the shock of learning this.  He lasted as a judge for 40 years.  The ark causes the Philistines a lot of trouble.  They decide it would be a better idea to negotiate it back into the hands of Israel, and so that actually happens, which also has the effect of proving the Philistines aren't always so bad.

Like the later Egyptian pyramids and those who sought to loot them, the returned ark proves a cursed curiosity to some of the happy Hebrews.  They open it.  God smites them.  Raiders of the lost ark.

Twenty years pass.  God tells Samuel about the future Hebrew king, and he accurately describes the coming reign of Saul.  Saul is then introduced.  He's described as the most handsome man in all the land, which funny enough evokes his successor David (and Snow White).  All in all, Saul comes off well in his younger years.  He's even a prophet.  Samuel anoints him, he becomes king.  He might even be described as a sort of John the Baptist figure, or maybe he fights for that role with Samuel.  Either way, David is coming...

Book of Joshua 16-24, Judges 1-15

The Book of Joshua picks back up with the splitting of territories.  Riveting stuff.

I meant to make this reference before, but there's a strong feeling that Book of Joshua inspired a lot of Revelation's imagery, with its emphasis on the number seven and the appearance of Megiddo, which is the source of the word "Armageddon."  Megiddo was a real place, where the apocalyptic battle was supposed to take place.  And as I've stated before, there is plenty of fighting in the chronicles of Moses and Joshua..

Shiloh appears.  I found this remarkable mostly as an extremely amateur American Civil War buff.

"Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land he swore to give their fathers."  This line kind of makes the original Abrahamic covenant sound complete, but of course the whole relationship between God and the Hebrews became very much ongoing, as long as those Hebrews quit being so rebellious...Which doesn't happen very soon.  Just as I was making a note that they were behaving themselves, they stopped that right away.  God gets pretty hot under the collar when they build an altar intended for a purpose other than worshiping him, although Phinehas appears again to explain that it is a communal phenomenon that will help unite them in their common devotion to their Lord.  This appeases him.  No smiting.  Phinehas is the go-to guy when you don't need to know too much about the guy saving the Hebrews' butt.

Joshua in his farewell address summarizes the line of Abraham, skipping just like Exodus to Moses at that point in the history.  Apparently there was just no one worth talking about, or their names were completely forgotten.  Balaam is described as intending to curse rather than bless Israel, and I still hate reading this kind of stuff.  He seems to have come from a separate tradition that was folded into the Moses narrative without anyone realizing it, and only the orthodox view based on his final fate survived full tradition.  In the address Joshua utters the phrase, "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," which you will surely find familiar.

I know I've tried to guess how many generations passed from the time of Joshua to when his story was codified in this chronicle, possibly the first record completed, and I conclude by suggesting that perhaps it was as few as two, as the concluding passages in the book might be interpreted to say.

Judges is very similar to Joshua and may stem from an equally early recording tradition.  More summary can be found here, of the conquests the Hebrews were so fond of performing.  Caleb is mentioned here.  Everything sounds perfectly fine, and then they start making concessions, and that seems to be where things fall apart.  As living memory of the founding fathers fades away, the people stray from God.  So he gives them a series of periodic champions, or judges, to try and put them back in order.

The first judge is named Othniel, and he is the son of Caleb's brother.  The second is Ehud, who has the first of the extended episodes, in which he personally slays the king of an enemy nation.  The king is extremely fat, and Ehud has to plunge his sword deep into the king's belly.  Shamgar operates against the Philistines, who are quickly approaching their most famous biblical hours.  Then there's Deborah, who is described as a prophetess but is clearly a judge.  The highlight of her episode is a a pretty good poem.

The first truly big name among the judges appears next, and it's Gideon.  He frequently has God, or the angel representing him, prove they are who they say they are, which makes him far more brazen than past figures (any of them).  He has to contend with worship of that nasty pagan god Baal, whose followers fully expect him to act in their defense as Gideon threatens smiting.  In opposite of Abraham, who had to talk God into accepting smaller numbers of worthy individuals to save, Gideon argues that he needs fewer men to lead in battle.  Prophetic dreams return to scripture, but not in the guise of Gideon.  He engages in spectacular trumpet warfare, probably something you may remember.

The enemy leaders flee from him much as Darius does from Alexander the Great.  Unlike Darius, however, these guys are eventually slain by Gideon himself.  As soon as Gideon himself dies, the people return to their wicked ways.

One bit of cultural connections is camels wearing the crescent, which remains an Arabic emblem to this day.

Remember the name Abimelech from earlier?  Someone else gives it as spin, as king.  He is the son of Gideon. He faces the same kind of turmoil as the successors of Alexander, everyone spoiling for control and no one capable of filling Great shoes.  Abimelech is no slouch, but he's no Gideon, either.  Even with two of them now, I doubt you remember the name at all.  But he does leave an echo behind.  Like Samson who is to appear shortly, the most famous of the judges, Abimelech finds himself in the position to wipe out a whole mess of his enemies in the midst of one major structural collapse.  He ends up dying in battle, although since he's fatally struck by a woman, the chauvinist asks a male colleague to do him in first, because he doesn't want to go out that way.

Maybe that's why no one knows his (or his predecessor's) name...

Then there was Tola who judged for 23 years, then Jair who judged for 22.  Syria is mentioned.  Philistines come round again.  Another interesting lost figure is Jephthah, who was initially rejected as meaningless in the grand scheme, and so he gathers around him other "worthless fellows," only for the lot of them to be recuited, via begging, to help the Hebrews catch a break.  He consents.  He later goes so far as to massage their ego by explaining in extremely favorable terms the history of their conquests.  Jephthah has a tragic ending, however, when he strikes a bargain with God and the payment he comes to regret is sacrificing the first person he sees when he returns home.  That person ends up being his own daughter, which begins a tradition when she's allowed to bemoan never having made a life for herself, and then becomes a burnt offering.  Which kind of beggars the question of why earlier God had to make such a point of saying this was an abomination pagans practiced.

Anyway, Jephthah in all judged for 6 years.  Elom followed for 10, Abdon for 8.  The Philistines come round again!  And then a man named Manoah receives a visit from the angel of the Lord, who like Abraham before him and later for two lucky ladies in the New Testament, learns that his barren wife will give birth after all.  The resulting child's name is Samson.  Samson grows up and is a clever guy, wanting a Philistine bride so he can have something to complain about later.  His whole career as a judge is recorded at 20 years.  David Maine has one of his several exceptions works of fiction based on biblical episodes I've now reached in my readings centered around Samson, called appropriately enough The Book of Samson.  Maine also has The Preservationist (concerning Noah) and Fallen (the best of them; featuring Adam, Eve, Abel, and Cain, told in reverse).  He doesn't paint Samson in the best of lights, you should know...