I kill ... I wound ... I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh. Deuteronomy 32:39-42
Judges is a violent book, even by biblical standards. It begins with six God-assisted genocides and then repeats the following story, with slight variation, five times:
Some of the variants are more interesting than others. There's Ehud's message from God (a knife blade in a fat man's belly); Jael's tent stake pounded through a sleeping man's skull; and Gideon story's -- one of the most bizarre in the entire Bible.
There are other killings in Judges, though. Shamgar kills sixty Philistines with an ox goad; a city is massacred and 1000 burn to death because of God's evil spirit; Jephthah sacrifices his daughter to God; and 42,000 are killed for failing the "shibboleth" test.
And then there's the whole series of Samson killings. The spirit of the Lord comes on Samson and he kills 30 men for their clothes. The spirit of the Lord comes on him again and he kills 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. And in his final act, Samson kills 3000 in the first suicide terrorist attack.
The book ends with a holy civil war and two genocides following the rape, dismemberment, and mail-message dispersal of a concubines body.
Judges has no message or moral. It is just bizarre, grotesque God-inspired carnage from beginning to end.
Here are the killings in Judges
