LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

“Baal” is often in the plural and with the article (“the Baals,” 2:11) or with a localizing suffix (Baal-gad, Josh 11:17; Baal-hazor, 2 Sam 13:23; etc.; also see Baal-berith, Jdg 8:33; 9:4). Therefore, “Baal” is essentially a common noun, even when singular where it is likely a shorthand for Baal-X (where X = a particular place). On the other hand, “Yahweh” is always used as a personal name, and never with the article, or with a place-suffix. “In other words, according to the biblical writers the Canaanites, in contrast to Israel, worshiped many different ‘Baals’”—a pluralism of deities (Webb, Judges, 142). The “Astharoths” (singular “Ashtoreth,” a distortion of Astarte) were consorts and female counterparts of the Baals, often associated with sacred prostitution (2 Kgs 23:7). The gendering of these deities indicated their importance to fertility, particularly of land and livestock (though Baal was primarily a storm god).

141. Ibid., 143.

142. Also see 2:19 for the Israelites’ “going after,” “serving,” and “worshiping.”

143. Gillmayr-Bucher, “Framework and Discourse,” 691.

144. This was not a surprise for the Israelites, for the text makes it clear that this return of evil for evil (tit for tat) was “as Yahweh had spoken and as Yahweh had sworn to them”—they had been warned (2:15; see Deut 6:14–15; 7:4; 28:15–37; 31:16–21).

145. The mention of “Philistines” in 3:3, a puzzling addition, for these were one of several of Sea Peoples who came from Anatolia and the Mediterranean in the twelfth to eleventh centuries. and, according to 1:17–18, 34–36, in the days of Judges, Canaanites were occupying those cities that would only later be part of Philistine territory; perhaps the scene of 3:1–6 is set at a time later than 1:1–36.

146. Exum, “The Centre Cannot Hold,” 412.

147. See Lam 2:18 and Isa 19:20 (repentance is seen only in 19:22). “Crying” is often paralleled with “wailing” (Isa 14:31; 65:14; Jer 25:34; etc.), and it also used in connection with the Israelites’ murmuring and complaining in Exod 15:25; 17:4; Num 11:2.

148. Greenspahn, “The Theology of the Framework of Judges,” 392 (citing Hasel, “q[;z", zā‘aq,” 4:115).

149. The metaphor of harlotry, is appropriate here: the relationship between Yahweh and Israel is frequently described in terms relating to marriage (Exod 34:15–16; Lev 17:7; 20:5–6; Deut 31:16; Pss 73:27; 106:39; Ezek 6:9). Unlike adultery, harlotry implied “habitual illicit behavior,” for ill-gotten gains, and with a multiplicity of partners. One must also consider the fact that the Canaanite deities were “lusty young fertility gods,” and that their cultic system often had erotic rituals and cultic prostitution. In a book whose narrative characters themselves frequently consort with prostitutes (Jdg 11:1; 16:1; 19:2) this metaphor is even more apt. See Younger, Judges, Ruth, 91n20; also Block, Judges, Ruth, 129; Butler, Judges, 47.

150. The phrase “turning aside quickly” occurs elsewhere in the OT only in Exod 32:8 and Deut 9:12, 16, in the context of apostasy. There is also a subtle change in the particles following the verb “to serve,” from Jdg 2:11b (B, above) to 2:13a (B'): ta db[ (‘bd ’t, “service of”) becomes l db[ (‘bd l, “service to). Sasson observes that, judging from 1 Sam 4:9, the latter may suggest that the Israelites had become victims of their idolatry, in bondage to false deities—a worsening of their already sorry state (Judges 1–12, 190). The very posture they adopt, “bowing themselves down [or ‘giving service’] to them” (Jdg 2:12) indicated the depth of their enslavement and perversion.

151. Thus we come up with an inexplicable relationship between cause and effect: the Israelites’ role in not removing the nations (1:1–36) was itself the cause of God not removing the nations (2:6–23). How divine sovereignty is linked to human responsibility is a question far beyond the capacity of any human’s portfolio. Nevertheless, considering a cyclical sequence might help give this some sense: God in his foreknowledge keeps enemies in the land in Joshua’s time (2:23); Israelites fail to drive them out (1:1—2:5); they cohabit with them and fall into apostasy (2:6–19); God refuses to drive out the nations any further (2:20—3:6), etc.

152. This business of serving false gods gets progressively worse as one proceeds through Judges: there is suspicion about idols in Ehud’s day (3:19, 26); Gideon’s father had an altar to Baal and an installation to Asherah that he sponsored (6:25); Gideon himself created an ephod, causing Israel to succumb to the lures of false gods (8:27); the situation was horrible in the time of Jephthah with a pantheon of gods in Israel’s cupboard (10:6–8). And of the nefarious affairs of Micah, his mother, his Levite, and the Danites (in Judges 17–18), the less said, the better!

153. Chisholm, Judges and Ruth, 162.

154. Webb, Judges, 150.

155. Ibid., 154.

156. Othniel is simply labeled the son of Caleb’s “brother” in Josh 15:17.

157. Butler, Judges, 56–57.

158. Or perhaps Othniel’s “deficiency” is that he was the son of a “younger brother” (1:13; 3:9). “In a society strongly influenced by primogeniture, the likelihood that the offspring of a younger (literally ‘smaller’ with implications of ‘unimportant’) brother will become the leader of the elder’s descendants warrants attention” (Klein, The Triumph of Irony, 34).

159. Younger, Judges, Ruth, 100.

160. Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist, 156.

161. Chisholm, Judges and Ruth, 168–69.

162. “Cushan-rishathaim” is likely to have been a pseudonym, for it could mean “Cushan-the-Twice-Wicked” (~yIt'['v.rI, rish‘atayim, being the dual form of [vr, rsh‘, “wickedness”).

163. However, this does not necessarily reflect on the particular judge’s uprightness or the moral probity of his subsequent actions, Samson being a case in point.

164. Butler, Judges, 66.

165.

Скачать книгу