The Five Minor Judges

Moore reports that Schwarz proposed Sanur, between Nablus and Jenin, for Tola's Shamir in 1852. Moore judges it too far south and west for a town of Issachar and leaves Shamir unidentified.

Josephus calls Kamon a city of Gilead. Eusebius and Jerome placed a Kamon in the plain of Jezreel, six Roman miles north of Legio, and Keil holds that the question cannot be decided.

Keil proposes the ruins of Jalun, east of Acre, for Elon's Aijalon, after the traveller Van de Velde. Moore holds the place otherwise unknown.

Keil observes that the book never says the LORD raised up or called any of the five. He judges that they took the government at the wish of the tribes they served.

Keil holds that the judge's sons revived the old name of Moses' day for their thirty towns. Moore holds that the Jair of all these texts is the judge of Judges 10, since the name Havvoth-jair goes with him in every one.

C. F. Keil, in his commentary on Judges of 1865, finds the reason no deeds of the five are recorded in the fact that they waged no wars and smote no foes. He reads them as men who took the lead of the tribes after Abimelech's short reign and kept Israel from fresh oppression and from idolatry.

The objection: Keil supplies a peace and a purpose that the notices themselves never state.

George Foot Moore, in his commentary on Judges of 1895, holds that most of the five names are those of clans. Tola and Puah are clans of Issachar and Elon a clan of Zebulun, and the large households of Jair, Ibzan and Abdon mark large clans with many branches.

The objection: Moore himself allows that single men may have borne these names, and each notice gives its judge a town and a grave.

Moore reports the conjecture of Theodor Nöldeke, in his Untersuchungen zur Kritik des Alten Testaments of 1869, that an editor added the five to make up twelve judges. Wellhausen strengthened it by observing that the seventy years of the five almost equal the seventy-one years between the judges in the book's scheme. Abraham Kuenen, in his Historisch-kritisch Onderzoek, rejected that sum, since the same closing formula ends Jephthah's story. He held that the five stood in an older form of the book and came from one of its sources.

The objection: Moore judges that beyond such conjectures the question can hardly go.

Josephus, in the Antiquities of the Jews, writes that Ibzan was of the tribe of Judah and of the city of Bethlehem. Moore reports a Jewish tradition, in the Talmud's tractate Baba Bathra, that Ibzan was Boaz.

The objection: Keil answers that Scripture calls the southern town Bethlehem of Judah or Bethlehem Ephrathah when it means it.

Keil and Moore hold that Ibzan came from this northern Bethlehem. Moore places it at Beit Lahm, about seven miles west north west of Nazareth, and notes that the other judges of the group belong to the northern tribes.

The objection: Judges 12:8 gives the town no tribe, and Josephus read it as the town of Judah.

Moore holds that the words after him mean the writer set their rule end to end, with no interval between one judge and the next.

The objection: Judges 10:7 sets the Philistines and the Ammonites in one verse, and Keil reads their oppressions as running at the same time.

Keil holds that Jephthah and his three successors were not judges over all Israel. He sets their rule over the tribes east of the Jordan, and perhaps the northern tribes, while the Philistines pressed the west for forty years.

The objection: Moore answers that the author would have said so more plainly, and in its place at Judges 13:1, if he meant the two oppressions to run together.