Nabi'im: The Prophets



Nabi'im: The Prophets

The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings

The second major part of the Old Testament canon is called the Prophets. The books that contain the historical narratives from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian Exile are called the historical prophets or the former prophets. This narrative is often called the Deuteronomic History because the editors who give us its final form seem to be guided by the ideology and theology of the book of Deuteronomy. Scholars who developed the theory of the Deuteronomic history argue that it accounts for the destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian exile as divine judgment for the idolatry of the kings and people, but it also offers hope for those in exile through the stories of the covenant with the house of David. Some see this history as a call to repentance and point to the pattern in the book of Deuteronomy of covenant violation and renewal. (Three Deuteronomic themes: divine judgment, hope, and repentance)

Joshua contains an account of the conquest of Canaan. Part one (chapters 1-12) begins with the Hebrew people gathered on the east bank of the Jordan on the plains of Moab after wandering forty years in the wilderness. Once they cross the Jordan, Joshua leads the people through a series of violent conflicts with the indigenous people. This book, perhaps more than any other in the Bible, troubles modern readers, particularly Anabaptist readers. We find the rationalization of the violence as justified by divine sanction insufficient. The following observation does not eliminate the need to confront the violence in the text, yet it may be worth making in this context. God does not enjoin the Israelite people to fight on conventional terms. The glory and honor that military men seek through war is not to be found by fighting the battles described in Joshua. Read chapters 1-2 and 6 to see the surprising way that things work out. What commandment is repeated frequently in Joshua 1? How do the action of the spies and the soldiers at Jericho compare to how we expect soldiers who fulfill this commandment to act? Part two (chapters 13-22) describes the allocation of the Promised Land. It sets up a tribal league. Perhaps the point worth noting here is that the occupation of the land begins with a sort of idealized equality. Joshua also describes a land of set limits that prohibits territorial expansion and further conquest. Read chapter 24 for the story of covenant affirmation that contains a summary of the story of Genesis and Exodus and Joshua. What choice does Joshua give the people? What choice does Joshua make? Write does his words from Joshua 24:15b. What does Joshua set up at Shechem and to what does it witness?

Judges contains a collection of stories about mighty warrior leaders (called Judges) strung together in a chronological order:

1. Death of Joshua (2:6-10)

2. Othniel defeats the king of Aram (3:7-11)

3. Ehud (a left handed man) pays tribute to the obese king of Moab, Eglon, but then returns to assassinate him. The story describes in detail how Ehud conceals his sword and then drives it into Eglon’s flesh and how dirt comes out of Eglon. Ehud then leads the Israelite army in a war that subdues the Moabites. (3:12-30)

4. Shamgar kills 600 Philistines with an oxgoad. (3:31)

5. Deborah accompanies Barak and the Israelite army in the defeat of the Canaanites. The narrator focuses upon the death of Sisera who is murdered by the wife of an ally, Jael, who drives a tent peg through his head. (4:1-5:31)

6. Gideon suppresses the Midianites. The narrator focuses upon Gideon’s reluctance to trust his ears and the need for visible proof that God is present. He tests God by laying out a fleece on two nights and requesting first that God let there be dew on the fleece but not the ground and then that there be dew on the ground but not the fleece and Gideon’s trust in a dream about barley bread causing a Midianite tent to collapse and Gideon’s final lapse into idolatry. (6:11-8:35)

7. Abimelech makes himself king and leads the army against Shechem and dies when a woman throws a millstone from a tower in the city of Thebez on his head. Not wanting the story to circulate that he was killed by a woman, Abimelech asks a young soldier to kill him with a sword. You will enjoy reading the story of David and Bathsheba, because Abimelech does not get his wish. (9:1-9:57)

8. Tola judges Israel 23 years (10:1-2)

9. Jair judges 22 years and has 30 sons who ride on 30 donkeys. (10:3-5)

10. Jephthah, the son of a prostitute, makes a deal with God that if he defeats the Ammonites, he will offer to God as a sacrifice what ever comes to greet him when he returns home. His only daughter comes out and he follows through on his vow. At the end of his command, the Israelite men of Ephraim and Gilead fight against each other. The Ephraim are defeated and any fugitives are detected by making them say the word Shibboleth because people from Ephraim could not pronounce it correctly. The word Shiboleth may have meant “ear of wheat” but its meaning is not important to the story, but the word has now come to mean words that distinguish insiders from outsiders, words that give you away. For example, the word washroom, as opposed to bathroom, to refer to a public facility and the pronunciation of z as zed rather than zee are shibboleths that give away my Canadian roots. (11:1-12:7)

11. Ibzan has 30 sons and 30 daughters. He marries the daughters outside the clan and brings in 30 daughters for his sons. He judges 7 years. (12:8-10)

12. Elon judges 10 years. (12:11-12)

13. Abdon has 40 sons and 30 grandsons who ride on 70 donkeys. (12:13-15)

14. Samson is born to Manoah and his barren wife who vows that Samson will be a Nazirite. Samson grows to be a very strong man who repeatedly follows his own inclinations. He feeds his parents honey from the carcass of a lion that he has killed. He marries a Philistine woman of his own choosing and then abandons her. When she marries another, he seeks revenge on her town by setting fire to the tails of 300 foxes and letting them run through the wheat fields. He then kills 1,000 Philistine men with the jawbone of a donkey. He sleeps with a prostitute. He falls in love with Delilah with whom he cohabitates. She tries to learn the secret of his strength, and he tells her a series of lies to which she responds by trying unsuccessfully to bind him. He eventually tells her that his strength comes from the fact that he has fulfilled the Nazirite vow and has never shaved his head. She then shaves his locks, and the Philistines shackle him and gouge out his eyes. When his hair grows back, he pulls down the pillars to which he is bound killing himself and everyone else in the house. Samson is the last judge in the Book of Judges. (13:1-16:31)

Micah, an Ephraimite, makes an ephod and teraphim (objects used in the temple) and appoints one of his sons to be his priest. He also hires a Levite to serve as his priest.

The tribe of Dan migrates into Ephraimite territory. They steal Micah’s idol and Levite.

A Levite in the hill country of Ephraim takes a concubine from Bethlehem who runs away to her father's home. The Levite goes to get her and spends several days having a drinking party with the father. On the way home, he spends a night in the home of a Ephraimite living in Gibeah. The men of Gibeah (Benjaminites) come and demand that the Levite be sent out so that they can have intercourse with him. The Ephraimite pushes the concubine out the door. The Gibeanites rape her. The Levite takes her home and cuts up her body and distributes the parts throughout Israel. This incites the rest of Israel to go to war against Benjamin. When the war ends, all the Benjaminite women are dead. The other 11 tribes do not want the tribe to die out, but they have taken an oath that they will not give their daughters in marriage to Benjamin, so they come up with two solutions. They allow the Benjaminites to steal the women of Jabesh-gilead and the women who go to worship at Shiloh. (17:1-21:25)

Deborah, the one female judge, seems to be the only judge who hears and adjudicates disputes. The remaining judges all seem to be military leaders. Read in isolation, many of these stories seem to glorify violence. Our habit of telling segments of the biblical narrative as though they were stories of heroes for children, perhaps, leads us to make errors in how we read the genre. When we read hero tales, the violent acts of the protagonist are treated as justified while those of the antagonist are manifestations of evil. If we keep the book of Deuteronomy before our eyes, we find that the judges are also subject to condemnation. However they came to be a literary unit -- that is whatever the history of composition -- from a canonical perspective, the stories set back to back point to a very different view of the violence. The book seems to follow a cyclical pattern of covenant violation, followed by violence at the hands of the Israelite enemies, followed by the cry of the people to God for assistance, followed by the rise of a military leader who musters an army to defeat the enemy, followed by covenant infidelity. A refrain runs throughout the book: "The people did what was evil in God's eyes" (2:11; 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6; 13:1); each person did what was right in his or her eyes (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). The narrator twice notes that there was no king in the land. The direction of the narrative seems to be toward escalating violence culminating in violence in which Israelites are both the perpetrator and the victim. The resolution of the violence leads to the establishment of a unified kingdom with a human monarch as its ruler. Read the story of Deborah (chapters 4-5), the episodes of Gideon's fleece (6:36-40), idolatry (8:22-28) and death (8:29-35) and the story of his son Abimelech (chapters 9-10), the story of Jephthah's daughter 11:29-40; and chapters 19-21. What cues does the narrator give you that prompt you to be critical of the violence in these stories?

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