Resumo de The Book Of Judges

The episodic structure of the book of
Judges is one of its primary features and takes the place of a strong
overarching narrative. In simplified form, that structure is: Israel turns away
from God and does not obey him, God sends other people to oppress Israel,
Israel cries out to God, God sends a strong leader who rallies Israel and
delivers them from the oppressor. This general format is repeated several
times with minor variations throughout the book. It thus stands in opposition
to other books in the Tanach, whose narratives are more conventional and
center around strong leaders, such as Joshua. As a result of their subject
matter and the structure of their narratives, these books leave us with a sense
of completion, of cohesiveness.
In contrast, the major characteristics of Judges are the opposite. It is
fractured, divided. It leaves us with a sense of disintegration, of things
coming apart at the seams. We may be familiar with individual leaders in
Judges, such as Samson or Gideon, but the way in which we are familiar with
these stories is as isolated narratives with little or no connection to each
other. As mentioned in the description of the episodic format above these
mini-narratives all have happy endings: Israel is delivered from her
oppressors. But then the book moves right into the next episode, which
begins with a return to the conditions of the previous one. There seems to be
no thread running through it all, uniting the disparate elements, causing
them all to hang together.
In the last episode, a man?s concubine is raped and murdered by a crowd
who was angry about not being able to have sex with him. He then proceeds
to cut up her body into several pieces, which he sends as messages to the
different parts of the country. This unites all the Israelites against the tribe of
Benjamin, who choose to defend the sodomizing rapists and go to war rather
than give them up. In the process Benjamin is nearly wiped out as a tribe, but
peace is restored while a tiny remnant of them still remains. A handy
arrangement is worked out whereby the Benjamites can permissibly steal
wives for themselves, since all the rest of Israel had sworn not to give their
daughters to them ? and that?s the end. There is no sense of finality, of
resolution.
This lack of unity from a storytelling perspective, though, is the very thing
that drives home the unity of the book from a thematic perspective. The
narrative?s characteristics of brokenness, of chaos, of dysfunction, are the
very things that the author wants to portray in Israelite society. Because they
had forsaken God and turned to follow idols, everything broke down, nothing
was working the way it was supposed to. The message of Judges is that
structure comes from consistent obedience to God?s commands. That is the
missing thread that should be running through it all, the element of the story
we instinctively look for and don?t find.

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