Judges10chapter 10

Judges 10:1-2

Tola comes after Abimelech, who took a crown and is never called a judge, so this sentence picks the line back up where chapter 9 broke it. The verb rendered defend is the one used of the judges at 2:16, 3:9 and 3:15, and the margin gives it as deliver. His own name and his father's are the names of Issachar's clans at Genesis 46:13 and 1 Chronicles 7:1, and he is a man of Issachar who settles in mount Ephraim, near the middle of the country. No enemy, no oppression and no battle is named in his twenty-three years, and the text gives no reason for the silence.

Judges 10:3-5

Jair holds the office twenty-two years and what is recorded of him is a family rather than a war. Thirty sons on thirty ass colts holding thirty cities is a count of rank, since the colt is what the rulers ride at 5:10, and Judges 12:9 and 12:14 repeat the shape with Ibzan's thirty sons and Abdon's seventy riders. The villages are called Havoth Jair unto this day, and Numbers 32:41 and Deuteronomy 3:14 give that name to an earlier Jair of Manasseh who took the towns in Moses' time. Barnes takes the two men for one, and Henry reads this Jair as carrying an old family name that the conquest of these towns revived.

Judges 10:6

This is the sixth of the seven times Judges says they did evil in the sight of the Lord, at 2:11, 3:7, 3:12, 4:1, 6:1, 10:6 and 13:1, and it carries the longest list of gods in the book. Seven are named, Baalim and Ashtaroth and then the gods of Syria, Zidon, Moab, Ammon and the Philistines, so the worship of every neighbour on every side is gathered into one verse. The closing clause is stronger than the earlier rounds, forsook the Lord, and served not him, which reports the abandonment as total rather than mixed. Two of the seven, Ammon and the Philistines, are the two nations in the verse that follows.

Judges 10:7-9

the anger of the Lord: He sold them, which is the verb of 2:14, 3:8 and 4:2, and here it names two buyers at once, the Philistines on the west and Ammon on the east. Both oppressions run on past this chapter, since Ammon produces Jephthah in chapter 11 and the Philistine hand is the forty years of 13:1 that Samson is born into. The ground held down is the land of the Amorites in Gilead, which is Sihon's old kingdom from Numbers 21:21-26, and that title is the whole of Jephthah's argument to the Ammonite king at 11:19-22. Verse 9 has Ammon crossing the Jordan against Judah, Benjamin and Ephraim, so the pressure reaches the western tribes as well.

Judges 10:10

This is the sixth and last time in Judges that Israel cries unto the Lord, after 3:9, 3:15, 4:3, 6:6 and 6:7, and the formula never returns. The Philistine oppression of 13:1 opens with no cry recorded at all. It is also the only one of the six that gives the words, and the words are a confession with the sin named twice, forsaking God and serving Baalim, which is the charge of verse 6 said back to him.

Judges 10:11-12

The answer sets seven rescues against the seven gods of verse 6: Egyptians, Amorites, Ammon, Philistines, Zidonians, Amalekites and Maonites. Four of them are already in the record, the Exodus, Sihon and Og, Ehud against Moab and Ammon, and Shamgar against the Philistines, and Barnes matches them off in that order. The Maonites are named nowhere else in Judges, and readers differ on who they were, with Barnes taking them for one of the peoples of the east who came with Midian in Gideon's day and others reading the name as the Mehunim of 2 Chronicles 26:7. The Zidonians are read back to the Canaanite coalition under Jabin in chapter 4.

Judges 10:13-14

Wherefore I will deliver you no more stands against every earlier round of the cycle, where the rescue follows the cry. Readers differ on how to hold it with what happens three verses later: Gill reads the sentence as conditional, since deliverance does come, and Henry reads it as what would stand if they stopped at confession and kept their idols. Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen is the Song of Moses turned back on them, Deuteronomy 32:37-38, where the gods are told to rise up and help. Jeremiah 2:28 puts it almost word for word, let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble.

Judges 10:15-16

The nation asks for the hand of God rather than the hand of men, which is where Eli stands at 1 Samuel 3:18 and David at 2 Samuel 24:14. Then the chapter turns, and it is the one round of the cycle where the nation itself puts the idols away, the act Jacob commands his house at Genesis 35:2, Joshua calls for at Joshua 24:23, and Samuel demands at 1 Samuel 7:3. His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel is the shortening of soul that the Hebrew uses of the people at Numbers 21:4 and of Samson at 16:16. Clarke reads the line as compassion of the same kind that gives the Son for the world, and Keil and Delitzsch read it as God growing impatient of the suffering itself.

Judges 10:17-18

The muster is at Mizpeh in Gilead, east of the Jordan, which is the Mizpah of Genesis 31:49 where Jacob and Laban raised their heap, and a different town from the Mizpeh of Benjamin where Israel gathers in chapter 20. The sentence the Lord raised up, from 2:16 and 3:9, does not occur anywhere in this chapter, so the army stands in the field with no deliverer named. In its place the princes make an offer, headship over all the inhabitants of Gilead for whoever will begin the fight against Ammon. That question, what man is he that will begin, is what Jephthah answers in the next chapter, and it is why he can set his own terms at 11:9-11 before he draws a sword.