The Book of Judges
A Study in Prophetic History
by
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“Othniel succeeded in taking Debir, and received Caleb’s daughter, his niece, as his wife. And it came to pass, when she came unto him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field; and she alighted from off her ass; and Caleb said unto her: What wouldest thou? This text is as unclear in the Hebrew as it is in translation. It has been suggested that what the narrator seems to be saying is that when Achsah, accompanied by her father, was being escorted by her husband to her new home, she persuaded her husband to allow her to request of her father, presumably as a dowry, that he give her a field in close proximity to her new home. With Othniel’s permission, she alighted from off her ass, that is, she assumed the position of a supplicant before her father, who inquired as to what was troubling her. The Hebrew term vatsitehu, translated as that she moved him, is usually used in the sense of enticing someone to do something they would not normally do. Why would Othniel need to be enticed to grant Achsah’s request? Surely he was well aware that, with the exception of Joshua’s direct grant of the city-state of Hebron to Caleb, the remaining territory allocated to the tribe of Judah was to be divided equitably among the tribal clans and households according to their population. Therefore, the critical question is whether the homestead allocated to Othniel was within or external to the borders of the city-state of Hebron. If Othniel’s homestead was outside the borders of Hebron, considering that Othniel most likely had already received his equitable allocation of tribal land, a request that Caleb, as the apparently de facto leader of the tribe, allocate an additional field to his allotment seemed inappropriate. If Othniel’s homestead was inside the borders of Hebron, it might also have seemed inappropriate for him to appear to have conspired with his new bride to extract such a concession from Caleb. In either case, it would seem that Othniel might have been cajoled into allowing his bride to make such a request of her father, possibly because he did not think that Caleb would respond favorably to her request.”
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About the Book
The subject of this book is the prophetic history of the political-military leaders, called judges, that succeeded Joshua and led the tribes of Israel during the tumultuous anarchic period between the death of Joshua and the transformation of the Israelite confederation of tribes into a nation-state (as subsequently described in the biblical book of Samuel, presented in the Masoretic text of the biblical book of Judges.) The term prophetic history is employed to describe the subject because prophecy in biblical thought is not fatalistic and does not predict future events. What it does do is assert that the moral course that a society chooses to follow in the present can determine its probable but not inevitable future. The purpose of the biblical book is to inform the reader of the historical consequences of the failure to observe the terms of the divine covenant entered into between God and the children of Israel at Mount Sinai following the exodus from Egypt. Although the biblical narrative is based on events that were believed to have taken place, the primary focus of prophetic history is on the moral implications of the decisions taken by men rather than the factual accuracy of the details of the events described, which have been studied exhaustively by archaeologists and historians of the ancient world.
About the Author
Dr. Martin Sicker is a writer and lecturer on the Middle East and Jewish history and religion. His is the author of forty-seven previous books including Reading Genesis Politically, The Trials of Abraham, The Ordeals of Isaac and Jacob, The Exodus and the Reluctant Prophet, The Convocation at Sinai, The Theopolitical Discourses of Moses, The Book of Daniel, The First Book of Samuel, The Second Book of Samuel, and The Book of Joshua.