Judges
Introduction
Print Version

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

Injustice
Absurdities
Cruelty and Violence
Intolerance
Contradictions
Women
Family Values
Sex
Interpretation
Language
Prophecy
Science and History
Good Stuff
SAB: Judges

Source Index
-Brick Testament
-Illustrations

Encyclopedia Articles
-Wikipedia
-Columbia Encyclopedia
-Catholic Encyclopedia

Other Versions
-Nevi'im
-NWT
-JST
-NIV
-Douay-Rheims
-NAB

Get the SAB
on CD

Injustice in Judges

  1. God appoints Judah to succeed Joshua. The Lord delivers his foes into his hands and another 10,000 are slain. In the process, they capture Adonibezek and "cut off his thumbs and great toes." Nice guys. 1:2-6

  2. Caleb offers to give his daughter to anyone who conquers the city of Debir. Caleb's nephew wins the contest and is given his cousin for a prize. 1:12-13

  3. "They slew the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and utterly destroyed it ... And the Lord was with Judah." (You can tell by the number of innocent people he killed.) 1:17, 19

  4. The Israelite spies killed everyone in Bethel, except for the man (and his family) who showed them how to enter the city. 1:25

  5. An angel drops by to rebuke the Israelites for being too tolerant of the religious beliefs of the people they have been massacring. He tells them that since they didn't complete their job (of killing everyone), God will not completely drive them out (like he promised to do). Instead he'll keep some of them around so that the Israelites will be ensnared by their false gods. 2:1-3

  6. God anger "was hot against Israel, and he sold them." Well, I hope he got a good price. 2:14, 4:2

  7. God anger "was hot against Israel, and he sold them." 3:8

  8. The spirit of the Lord comes upon Othniel and causes him to go to war. 3:10

  9. God "delivers" more folks into the hands of his chosen people. "And they slew of Moab ... about 10,000 men ... and their escaped not a man." 3:28-29

  10. "The Lord discomfited Sisera ... with the edge of the sword ... and there was not a man left." 4:15-16

  11. Jael (our heroine) offers food and shelter to a traveler (Sisera, Jabin's captain), saying "turn in my Lord ... fear not." Then after giving him a glass of milk and tucking him in, she drives a tent stake through his head. "So God subdued on that day Jabin." 4:17-23

  12. For murdering her guest while he slept, Jael is "blessed above women." (Hail Jael, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women....?) 5:24-26

  13. "Have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two?" 5:30

  14. "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord." (Let them all have their temples pierced by blessed women.) 5:31

  15. "The LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man." God promises to help Gideon kill all the Midianites. 6:16

  16. When Gideon and his water-lapping companions blow their trumpets, God forces all the enemy soldiers to kill each other, killing 120,000. 7:22, 8:10

  17. Two princes are killed and their heads are brought to Gideon. 7:25

  18. For refusing to feed him and his army, Gideon tears the flesh off the elders of Succoth and kills the men of the city. 8:7, 16

  19. Gideon orders his son to kill two kings, but he refuses. So Gideon has to do it himself since his son isn't "man" enough to do it. 8:20

  20. Abimelech kills 70 brothers "upon one stone." (He was trying to get in the Guinness Book of World Records.) 9:5

  21. God sends evil spirits that cause humans to deal treacherously with each other. 9:23-24

  22. "Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto his father, in slaying his seventy brethren."
    Abimelech's sin wasn't against the 70 brothers that he killed but against his father (Gideon, already dead). 9:56

  23. God is angry at Israel so he sells them to the Philistines. He had previously sold them to the kings of Mesopotamia (3:8) and Canaan (4:2). He's such a shrewd businessman! 10:7

  24. God smites Sihon and all his people and gives their land to Israel. 11:21

  25. "Whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we [the Israelites] possess." 11:24

  26. When "the spirit of the Lord" comes upon Jephthah, he makes a deal with God: If God will help him kill the Ammonites, then he (Jephthah) will offer to God as a burnt offering whatever comes out of his house to greet him. God keeps his end of the deal by providing Jephthah with "a very great slaughter." But when Jephthah returns, his nameless daughter comes out to greet him (who'd he expect, his wife?). Well, a deal's a deal, so he delivers her to God as a burnt offering -- after letting her spend a couple of months going up and down on the mountains bewailing her virginity. 11:29-39

  27. The Israelites "did evil in the sight of the Lord," so he "delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years." 13:1

  28. "And the spirit of the Lord came upon him [Samson], and he ... slew thirty men." (Samson might have been a decent person if he could have kept the spirit of the Lord off him.) 14:19

  29. Samson's father-in-law gave Samson's wife away to a friend, since he thought Samson "hated" her. He suggests that Samson take his younger daughter instead, saying the younger one's prettier anyway. 15:2

  30. Samson catches 300 foxes, ties their tails together, and sets them on fire; the Philistines burn Samson's ex-wife and father-in-law; and Samson smites them "hip and thigh with a great slaughter." 15:4-8

  31. Samson, with God's help, kills himself and 3000 Philistine men and women by causing a roof to collapse, setting an example for Bible-based terrorism. 16:27-30

  32. The Danites massacre the "quiet and secure" people of Laish. 18:27

  33. After taking in a traveling Levite, the host offers his virgin daughter and his guest's concubine to a mob of perverts (who want to have sex with his guest). The mob refuses the daughter, but accepts the concubine and they "abuse her all night." The next morning she crawls back to the doorstep and dies. The Levite puts her dead body on an ass and takes her home. Then he chops her body up into twelve pieces and sends them to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. 19:22-30

  34. God tells Phinehas to fight against the Benjamites, saying he will deliver them into his hand. So the Israelites kill some more people for God. 20:38-41

  35. God helps the Israelites kill 25,100 Benjamites. 20:35

  36. The Israelites killed everyone in the city with the edge of the sword. 20:37

  37. Another 25,000 Benjamites are killed by the God-assisted Israelites. 20:44, 46

  38. The Israelites finish their massacre of the Benjamites by killing all the men, animals, and everything they could find in every Benjamite city. Then they burned the cities to the ground. (In this way God helped the Israelites make everything better after the rape and dismemberment of the concubine.) 20:48

  39. To find wives for the Benjamites (they were unwilling to use their own daughters), the other tribes attacked and killed all occupants of a city except for the young virgins. These virgins were then given to the Benjamites for wives. 21:7-23