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Judges 2
[Bible]Judges 2 records the Angel of the LORD rebuking Israel's disobedience at Bochim and describes the apostasy of the generation that arose after Joshua's death. It then summarizes the recurring pattern of the period of the judges: sin, oppression, crying out, and deliverance through judges.
Judges 1
[Bible]Judges 1 records, tribe by tribe, Israel's battles to take possession of the land of Canaan after the death of Joshua. The tribe of Judah gained a number of places, while several tribes failed to drive out the Canaanites completely.
Judges 12
[Bible]Judges 12 records the conflict between Jephthah and the Ephraimites, the episode in which Ephraimites were identified by their pronunciation of "Shibboleth," the death of Jephthah, and the accounts of the judges who succeeded him: Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon.
Judges 18
[Bible]Judges 18 tells how the tribe of Dan, still seeking territory, seized the idols and the Levite priest from Micah's house, conquered the northern city of Laish, renamed it Dan, and set up the graven image there.
Judges 21:25
[Bible Verses]Judges 21:25 is the final verse of the Book of Judges. It sums up the disorder of the period of the judges by stating that there was no king in Israel and that every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The verse is frequently cited in discussions of the monarchy, the rule of God, and moral relativism.
Judges 10
[Bible]Judges 10 gives brief accounts of the judges Tola and Jair, then describes how Israel again served idols, was oppressed by the Philistines and the Ammonites, and repented. The chapter provides the background for the story of Jephthah.
Shamgar
[People]Shamgar is a figure from the period of the judges recorded in the Book of Judges. Coming after Ehud, he is said to have delivered Israel by killing six hundred Philistines with an ox goad.
Judges 9
[Bible]Judges 9 recounts how Abimelech, son of Gideon, killed his seventy brothers and became king at Shechem, then fell into conflict with Shechem after three years and died at Thebez.
Joash (Father of Gideon)
[People]Joash was a member of the Abiezrite clan of the tribe of Manasseh who appears in the Book of Judges as the father of the judge Gideon. He kept an altar of Baal at Ophrah, yet when Gideon tore that altar down, he protected his son from the men of the town.
Jael
[People]Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, appears in Judges 4–5. She killed Sisera, the Canaanite commander who was fighting against Israel, in her tent, and the Song of Deborah praises her as one who shall be "blessed above women."
Ibzan
[People]Ibzan was a judge of Israel in the book of Judges who succeeded Jephthah, judged Israel for seven years, and was buried in Bethlehem. He is recorded as having had thirty sons and thirty daughters.
Jether
[People]Jether was the firstborn son of the judge Gideon. In Judges 8 he appears as a youth whom his father commanded to kill Zebah and Zalmunna, the two kings of Midian, but who did not draw his sword because he was young and afraid.
Shibboleth
[Bible]Shibboleth is the Hebrew word that, according to Judges 12, the Gileadites required people to pronounce at the fords of the Jordan in order to identify Ephraimites. The Ephraimites pronounced it "Sibboleth" and thereby revealed who they were.
Ophrah
[Bible]Ophrah is an Old Testament place name borne by two towns: the hometown of the judge Gideon and a town of the tribe of Benjamin. First Chronicles also mentions a man by this name.
Jehovah-shalom
[Bible]Jehovah-shalom is the name Gideon gave to the altar he built at Ophrah in Judges 6:24. In Hebrew it means "the LORD is peace."
Oreb
[People]Oreb was one of the two princes (leaders) of Midian who were captured and killed by the men of Ephraim during the judge Gideon's war against Midian. He appears in Judges 7 and 8 and is mentioned again in the Psalms and Isaiah as an example of God's overthrow of His enemies.
Eli
[People]Eli was an Israelite priest who served at the sanctuary in Shiloh at the close of the period of the judges. He raised the boy Samuel but failed to restrain the wickedness of his two sons, and his house came under judgment. His story is told in 1 Samuel 1–4.
Philistia
[Bible]Philistia is the name of both a people and the land they inhabited on the Mediterranean coastal plain of southwestern Canaan. In the Bible, the Philistines appear as a power that frequently opposed Israel from the period of the judges through the time of David.
Jonathan (Grandson of Moses)
[People]Jonathan was a Levite of the period of the judges who is introduced in Judges 18:30 as "the son of Gershom" and the grandson of Moses. He became the priest of the household of Micah the Ephraimite and later went with the tribe of Dan, serving as priest at their idolatrous shrine.
Mahlon
[People]Mahlon is a figure from the period of the judges who appears in the Book of Ruth. He was the son of Elimelech and Naomi of Bethlehem and the first husband of Ruth the Moabitess. He died childless in the land of Moab.