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Grow With Me

Judges

Old Testament · translated from the Hebrew

After Joshua, Israel falls again and again into the same cycle: it turns away from YHWH, suffers oppression, cries out, and YHWH raises up a judge who saves it. Deborah, Gideon and Samson are some of them. It ends by showing how corrupt the people had become.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21

How it is laid out

  1. A half-finished conquestchapters 1–2
  2. The judgeschapters 3–16
  3. When there was no king in Israelchapters 17–21

Key verses

  • Judges 2:16 — YHWH raised up judges, and they saved them
  • Judges 21:25 — There was no king in Israel; each man did what was right in his own eyes
  • Judges 6:12 — YHWH is with you, valiant warrior

Who wrote it

The book does not say who wrote it. Jewish tradition attributes it to Samuel (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b). Authorship is debated.

When it was written

Debated. Probably when Israel already had a king, around the 11th or 10th century BC, since it repeats “in those days there was no king” (17:6; 21:25).

For whom, and in what situation

Israelites who already lived under a king and looked back to the times when each man did what was right in his own eyes.

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