Judges of Israel (All Notes)

This series includes Judges

Othniel (All Notes)

• First Judge of Israel

• Son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother (Judges 3:9)

• Saved the Israelites from King Cushan-Rishathaim of Aram Naharaim (Judges 3:9)

• The Spirit of the Lord filled him, and he became (the first) judge for the Israelites (Judges 3:10)

• He led the Israelites to war (Judges 3:10)

• God helped him defeat King Cushan-Rishathaim of Aram (Judges 3:10)

• Under his reign, Israel was at peace for 40 years (Judges 3:11)

• After his reign, the Israelites turned back to doing evil (Judges 3:12)

Ehud (All Notes)

• Second Judge of Israel

• Son of Gera, from the tribe of Benjamin (Judges 3:15)

• Was trained to fight with his left hand (Judges 3:15)

• Tricked King Eglon of Moab, who was ruling over Israel at the time, into receiving a gift that was actually a sword that he then used to stab him (Judges 3:15-21)

• As he was about to stab him, he remarked that this was a message from God for King Eglon (Judges 3:20)

• He pushed the sword through his belly so far that even the handle sank in and the fat closed around it with the point of the blade coming out his back, and he left the sword inside him (Judges 3:22)

• He then went out of the king’s private room, locked the king inside, and then was found dead when his servants came to find him (Judges 3:23-25)

• He then escaped to Seirah and blew a trumpet there signaling to the Israelites that with the help of God, he had saved them from King Eglon and the Moabites (Judges 3:26-28)

• The Israelites followed him down to take control of the places where people could easily cross the Jordan River into the land of Moab, not allowing anyone to go across the Jordan River (Judges 3:28)

• The Israelites killed 10,000 strong and brave Moabite men, with not even one Moabite man escaping (Judges 3:29)

• From that day, he and the Israelites ruled over the Moabites (Judges 3:30)

• Under his reign, Israel was at peace for 80 years (Judges 3:30)

• After his reign, the Israelites turned back to doing evil (Judges 4:1)

Shamgar (All Notes)

• Third Judge of Israel

• Son of Anath (Judges 3:31)

• Helped save Israel after Ehud (Judges 3:31)

• Used an ox goad to kill 600 Philistine men (Judges 3:31)

• After his reign, the Israelites turned back to doing evil (Judges 4:1)

Deborah (All Notes)

• Fourth Judge of Israel (and prophet)

• Wife of Lappidoth (Judges 4:4)

• Judge of Israel during the time they were being ruled by King Jabin of the Canaanites and his army commander Sisera (Judges 4:4)

• In response to the people asking her what they should do about Sisera, she sent a message to a man in Israel named Barak, telling him that God commands him to gather men from the tribes of Napthali and Zebulun, go to Mount Tabor, meet Sisera there at the Kishon River, where God will help him defeat Sisera there (Judges 4:5-7)

• But because Barak gave her a condition in going, that she go with him, she told him he will not be honored when Sisera is defeated (Judges 4:8-9)

• Thus, God allowed a woman to defeat Sisera instead of a man (Judges 4:9)

• She and Barak did as God commanded but first went to the city of Kadesh (Judges 4:9-10)

• She and Barak and his men attacked Sisera and during the battle God confused Sisera and his army and chariots and helped her and Barak defeat Sisera’s army but Sisera escaped (Judges 4:14-15)

• Barak fought Sisera’s army until all of his men were killed and not one man remained alive (Judges 4:16)

• When Barak eventually came to catch up with Sisera, he had found him already dead in the tent of a woman named Jael with the tent peg through the side of his head (Judges 4:22)

• This thus fulfilled her prophecy that a woman would come to save Israel

• Famous for her song, which she sang along with Barak (Judges 5:1-31)

• Under her reign, Israel was at peace for 40 years (Judges 5:31)

• After her reign, the Israelites turned back to doing evil (Judges 6:1)

Gideon (All Notes)

• Fifth Judge of Israel

• Talks with God

  • The angel of God appeared to him and told him “God be with you, brave soldier” (Judges 6:11-12)

  • In response to the angel, he asks God why he and Israel are having so many troubles and how come things are not like how they were for their ancestors who were saved from Egypt and are worse off now under the cruel rule of the Midianites (Judges 6:13)

  • The angel of God responds back to him and says that he has great power and is sending him to save Israel (Judges 6:14)

  • In response to the angel, he asks how he can even do this given that he is the youngest in his family and his family is the weakest in his tribe, the tribe of Manasseh (Judges 6:15)

  • The angel of God responds back to him and says that He will be with him so it will be easy for him to defeat the Midianites, as if they were only one man (Judges 6:16)

  • In response to the angel, he asks God to prove He is Him by requesting Him that he stay where he is at while goes and gets an offering (Judges 6:17-18)

  • He prepares the offering to God and gives it to Him under an oak tree, to which the angel of God responds back to Him how to conduct the offering to Him and then summoned a walking stick in his hand which he used to touch the offering which then burned up and then the angel disappeared (Judges 6:19-21)

  • In response to the angel, he realizes he had been talking to and seeing God ‘face to face’, but the angel of God responds back to him and says to calm down and not be afraid for he will not die (Judges 6:22-23)

  • In response to the angel, he builds an altar there at the site where this happened in the city of Ophrah, and used it to worship God and named it “God is peace” (Judges 6:24)

• God then commanded him to use his father’s best bull to pull down the altars his father had built to worship Baal and Asherah and replace them with altars for God and then offer the bull and the wood from the Asherah pole to burn the offering to Him (Judges 6:25-26)

  • So he did what God commanded but was afraid that his family and men of the city might see what he was doing, so he did what God commanded at night (Judges 6:27)

  • When the men of the city find out he had done it, his father Joash commands that any one who takes Baal’s side be put to death by morning and challenges them that if Baal really is a god, then he should be able to defend himself when someone pulls down his altar (Judges 6:28-31)

  • From that day forward, his name would be known as Jerubbaal (Judges 6:32)

• The Spirit of God filled him, he blew a trumpet to call his family of Abiezer to follow him, sent messengers to all the people of the tribe of Manasseh to get their weapons and prepare for battle and also sent messengers to the tribes of Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali and all went up to meet Gideon and his men (Judges 6:33-35)

• Asks God for proof again that He would help him save the Israelites by asking Him to perform two miracles: one in which dew on sheepskin appears among a dry ground and another in which a dry sheepskin appears among a ground wet with dew; and both times God had caused the miracle to happen, thus sending him a signal that He was going to save them (Judges 6:36-40)

• When he and his men were ready to attack the Midianites, the people who were ruling over Israel cruelly at the time, God commands him to tell his men that any who are afraid are permitted to go back home because God does not want Israel to forget Him and brag that they saved themselves and so over 2/3 of his men left for home (Judges 7:2-3)

  • God told him there were still too many men, so he told him to have his men go down to the river to see how they would drink its water, whether they drank it like a dog or like a human being and he told the men who drank it like a human being to go home and so there were 300 men left (Judges 7:4-8)

  • Overhears a dream a Midianite man had about a loaf of bread that came rolling into the Midianite camp hitting their tent so hard that the tent turned over and fell flat, and overheard another man interpret the dream as prophesying that Israel would defeat Midian and once he heard this he bowed down to God and gathered his 300 men for battle (Judges 7:13-15)

  • Commands his men to do as he does and blow their trumpets when he blows his and shout “For God and for [him]” (Judges 7:16-18)

  • Has his men blow their trumpets, smash their jars, and hold their torches in their left hands and trumpets in the right hands and shouted “A sword for God and a sword for [him]” (Judges 7:19-20)

  • As he and his men remained were they were and blew their trumpets, the Midianites began to ran away to faraway cities and God caused the men of Midian to kill each other with their swords so soldiers from certain Israelite tribes were commanded by him to chase down the Midianites who ran away and he sent messengers to give those soldiers further instructions and those soldiers caught up and killed two of the Midianite leaders Oreb and Zeeb, cutting off their heads and taking their heads to Gideon (Judges 7:21-25)

  • The men of Ephraim became angry with him because he did not call on them initially to fight Midian, but when he told them that their killing Oreb and Zeeb made them successful enough, their anger resided (Judges 8:1-3)

  • After having defeated Midian and crossed the Jordan River, his men became very tried and hungry and so he told the men of the cities of Succoth and Penuel, where they had stayed, to give his soldiers something to eat but they both denied his requests because he hadn’t yet captured the other two Midianite leaders Zebah and Zalmunna so he told them he would return to the city after they captured those Midianite leaders to beat up Succoth and damage Penuel (Judges 8:4-9)

  • God had helped him and his men reduce the Midianite army from 120K to 15K and then to help him defeat the Midianites altogether, capturing Zebah and Zalmunna at the city of Karkor (Judges 8:10-12)

  • Goes back to Succoth to beat their men and Penuel to damage their city and kill their men (Judges 8:13-17)

  • Finds out Zebah and Zalmunna killed his brothers so he orders his oldest son Jether to kill the Midian kings, but Jether was too young and afraid, so after taunting by Zebah and Zalmunna, he killed them himself (Judges 8:18-21)

• Tempted by his people Israel to rule over them but he refuses and says God rules over them (Judges 8:22-23)

  • Makes a golden idol out of the gold earrings of the Ishmaelites, a subgroup of the Midianites they had defeated, and moon and jewelry shaped like teardrops and the purple robes of the Midianite Kings and put the idol in his hometown of Ophrah where all the Israelites worshipped it (Judges 8:24-27)

  • This idol he had created caused him and his family to sin (Judges 8:27)

• Under his reign, after the defeat of the Midianites, where they did not cause anymore trouble, and as long as he was alive, Israel was at peace for 40 years (Judges 8:28)

• Had many wives and 70 sons and one of his sons was conceived by a slave woman who lived in the city of Shechem (Judges 8:29-31)

• Died and buried at his tomb in Ophrah, the same one of his father Joash (Judges 8:32)

• Near the end of and after his reign, the Israelites turned back to doing evil (Judges 8:33-35)

Tola (All Notes)

• Sixth Judge of Israel

• Son of Puah, the son of Dodo (Judges 10:1)

• He was from the tribe of Issachar and lived in the city of Shamir (Judges 10:1)

• Sent by God to save the Israelites after the death of Abimelech (Judges 10:1)

• Under his reign, Israel was at peace for 23 years (Judges 10:2)

• Buried in the city of Shamir (Judges 10:2)

Jair (All Notes)

• Seventh Judge of Israel

• Under his reign, Israel was at peace for 22 years (Judges 10:3)

• Had 30 sons who rode 30 donkeys who controlled 30 towns in the area of Gilead, which is where he was from and these towns are named after him (Judges 10:4)

• Buried in the city of Kamon (Judges 10:5)

• After his reign, Israel turned away from God and started doing evil again, worshipping the false gods Baal and Ashtoreth as well as the false gods of the people of Aram, Sidon, Moab, Ammon, and the Philistines (Judges 10:6)

  • So God allowed the Philistines and Ammonites to defeat them as a result and bring about many troubles for them (Judges 10:7-9)

  • So Israel suffered for 18 years after his reign as a result (Judges 10:8)

Jephthah (All Notes)

• Eighth Judge of Israel

• Led Israel for 6 years (Judges 12:7)

• He was from the tribe of Gilead (Judges 11:1)

• He was a strong soldier (Judges 11:1)

• He was the son of a prostitute (Judges 11:1)

  • His brothers did not like him and forced him to leave his home and not inherit his father’s property because of this (Judges 11:2)

  • So he went away from them and lived in the land of Tob, where some “rough” men began to follow him (Judges 11:3)

• When the Ammonites come to attack Israel, Gilead’s elders suddenly want him to return to save them from their enemy given the influence he began to gain and promise him a commander position (Judges 11:4-8)

• He makes a deal with the elders that he assume leadership (as judge) of Gilead upon his return if God helps him win against the Ammonites as commander of Gilead and the elders agree acknowledging that God is watching all of them and promise to do what he tells them to, and so he repeats this in front of God at the city of Mizpah (Judges 11:9-11)

• He asks the Ammonites (via his messengers) why they came to oppress Israel (Judges 11:12)

  • They respond by saying that they are fighting Israel because Israel took their land when they came up from Egypt so they want their land back from them without them having to fight for it (Judges 11:13)

  • He responds (via his messengers) by stating that Israel did not take land of Ammon (or Moab, for that matter) because when Israel came out of Egypt they requested the kings of Edom and Moab to allow them to go through their land by the time they reached Kadesh, but Edom and Moab refused, so Israel went around those lands and did not cross their borders (Judges 11:14-18)

  • He continues by stating that when Israel requested the king of the Amorites to go through their land after they reached there, their king refused and went to war with them, and God helped Israel defeat and own them (Judges 11:19-22)

  • He makes a series of arguments against the King of Ammon about his reasoning including that

    • It was God who forced the Amorites to leave their land, so he parallels that situation to the situation here with the Ammonites (Judges 11:23)

    • The King of Ammon would justify his nation’s ownership of the land via their god Chemosh and so Israel is not doing any different by justifying their ownership of the land via their own God (Judges 11:24)

    • Balak, the former king of Moab, did not argue with the Israelites, so he should follow his example (Judges 11:25)

    • The Israelites have lived in the cities near or associated with Ammon like Heshbon, Aroer, and all the other cities near the Arnon River, the border of Ammon, for the past 300 years - so why has Ammon not tried to take those cities in all that time (Judges 11:26)

  • Ultimately, he leaves it up to God to decide whether Israel or Ammon is right, despite his arguments that demonstrate that Israel is probably right (Judges 11:27)

  • The King of Ammon refuses to listen to this message (Judges 11:28)

• The Spirit of God comes upon him (Judges 11:29)

• He went to the land of the Ammonites, fought them, and defeated them with God’s help (Judges 11:32-33)

• Promises to God that if He lets him defeat Ammon, he will sacrifice the first thing to come out of his house, so when his daughter comes out first, he is sad because he loves her but he and his daughter agree he has to keep his promise to God but his daughter requests she spend two months with her friends in the mountains to cry knowing she won’t have children and so he accepts and then when she returns he follows through with his promise and sacrifices her to God (Judges 11:30-31, 34-39)

  • As a result, every year the young women of Israel would go out for four days to remember his daughter and cry for her (Judges 11:40)

• Under his reign, Israel engages in a civil war when the tribe of Ephraim question him for not including them in the killing of the Ammonites and threaten to burn his house down with him in it (Judges 12:1)

  • He responds by saying that he did call to them but they chose not to help and so he risked his own life to fight them (Judges 12:2-3)

  • However, he and the men of Gilead fight the men of Ephraim for insulting them, insulting them back and defeating them (Judges 12:4)

  • The men of Gilead ended up killing 42,000 men from Ephraim (Judges 12:6)

• Buried in Gilead (Judges 12:7)

Ibzan (All Notes)

• Ninth Judge of Israel

• Led Israel for 7 years in peace (Judges 12:9)

• He was from the city of Bethlehem (Judges 12:8)

• He had 30 sons and 30 daughters and told his 30 sons to marry 30 women who were not his relatives and his 30 daughters to marry 30 men who were not his relatives (Judges 12:9)

• Buried in Bethlehem (Judges 12:10)

Elon (All Notes)

• Tenth Judge of Israel

• Led Israel for 10 years in peace (Judges 12:11)

• He was from the tribe of Zebulun (Judges 12:12)

• Buried in Aijalon in the land of Zebulun (Judges 12:12)

Abdon (All Notes)

• Eleventh Judge of Israel

• Son of Hillel (Judges 12:13)

• Led Israel for 8 years in peace (Judges 12:14)

• He was from the city of Pirathon where Amalekites lived (Judges 12:13, 15)

• He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who rode on 70 donkeys (were likely mayors of their towns) (Judges 12:14)

• After his reign, Israel turned away from God and did evil, so God allowed the Philistines to rule over them for 40 years (Judges 13:1)

Samson (All Notes)

• Twelfth and final Judge of Israel

• Led Israel for 20 years (Judges 15:20)

• The Spirit of God worked through him while he was in the city of Mahaneh Dan, between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol (Judges 13:24-25)

• When he went to Timnah, he saw a young Philistine woman there whom he desired to marry and when he asked his parents to have her as his wife they complained that she belongs to a culture where the men are not even circumcised (Judges 14:1-3)

  • Neither he nor his parents realized God wanted this to happen in order to defeat Israel’s Philistine oppressors (Judges 14:4)

• When he brought his parents to Timnah, a young lion jumped on but the Spirit of God came onto him and he effortlessly tore the lion with his bare hands, but he did not tell his parents what happened (Judges 14:5-6)

  • When he came back to Timnah to marry the Philistine woman who pleased him, he went back over to the dead lion and took the honey the swarm of bees had made on the dead lion with his hands and ate it and gave some of the honey to his parents but did not tell them where he got the honey from (Judges 14:7-9)

• During the marriage party, 30 Philistine men went to the party, and he asked them to solve a riddle he had come up with by the end of the party, which lasted a week, and told the Philistine men that if they solved the riddle in that time he would give each of them a change of clothes and a linen shirt but if they failed to solve that riddle in that time then each of them would have to give him a change of clothes and a linen shirt (Judges 14:10-13)

  • So he told them his riddle and the men could not solve it, so by the fourth day of the party they threatened his wife and told her to trick him into telling them the riddle or else they will burn her and everyone in her father’s house to death because they were upset that she invited them just to become poor (Judges 14:14-15)

  • His wife came to him and cried telling him he does not really love her because he will not tell her the answer to the riddle, but he eventually does because he was annoyed of her bothering him about it all the time and then she went behind his back and told her people (Judges 14:16-18)

  • When they answered the riddle on the 7th day of the party, he became very angry and went down to the city of Ashkelon and killed 30 Philistine men and then gave their clothes and property from the dead bodies to the men at the party who answered the riddle (instead of giving them his own clothes) (Judges 14:19)

  • His wife was given over to his best man (Judges 14:20)

• When he went to visit his wife and gave her a young goat as a gift, her father would not let him go into his house because he said he let her marry the best man at the wedding because he thought he hated her after what happened with the riddle (Judges 15:1-2)

  • So he got angry and told him he has good reason now to hurt them, so he caught 300 foxes, tied a torch between the tails of 150 pairs of foxes and let them run through the Philistines’ grain fields which burned up the plants, grain, vineyards, and olive tress (Judges 15:3-5)

  • When the Philistines found out he had done this and the reason behind it, they burned his ex-wife and her father to death (Judges 15:6)

  • He continued to exact his revenge on the Philistines by attacking and killing many of them (Judges 15:7-8)

  • He then hides away and the Philistines chase him to come and get him to make him their prisoner and punish him for what he did to them (Judges 15:8-10)

  • The Tribe of Judah finds him in a cave in a place named the Rock of Etam, and hands him over to the Philistines telling him that the Philistines rule over them regardless of what his personal motives were for punishing them (Judges 15:11-12)

  • He asks them to promise not to hurt him, and they agree, so they just tie him up with ropes and so when he is given over to the Philistines in ropes, the Spirit of God comes upon him and he breaks the ropes, finds the nearest weapon, and kills 1000 Philistine men with it and celebrates (Judges 15:13-17)

  • As a result of this, he became very thirsty, so he asked God to give him water so God performed a miracle and made a hole crack open and water came out and he drank the water and felt better and strong again (Judges 15:18-19)

• When he went to Gaza, he saw a prostitute there and went in to stay the night with her but only stayed until midnight because the people of Gaza found out and wanted to kill him and so he escaped in time using his strength (Judges 16:1-3)

• He fell in love with a woman named Delilah, and the rulers of the Philistines eventually got a hold of Delilah and bribed her asking her to trick him into telling her his secret about his supernatural strength and so she tried to do this (Judges 16:4-6)

  • When she asked him what made him so strong, he trolled her multiple times - each time he told her what would make him lose his strength, then she would tell him the Philistine men are going to find out and capture him, then when they do so by the method he says and he overcomes them, she confronts him about lying to her and asks him to tell the truth and continues to do so every day until he is so annoyed by her that he is overwhelmed by it and then finally tells her the secret source of his strength (Judges 16:6-16)

  • His secret was that he had never had his hair cut because he was dedicated to God before he was born, so if someone shaved his head, he would actually lose his strength (Judges 16:17)

  • So she told the Philistine men the true reason and they paid her as promised (Judges 16:18)

  • She then proceeded to get him to sleep with his head lying in her lap while another man shaved his hair off while he was asleep, so when he woke up he thought he was going to be able to escape from the Philistine men like before, but he did not yet realize God had left him and his strength was removed from him (Judges 16:19-20)

  • So the Philistine men captured him, tore out his eyes, took him to Gaza, put chains on him, put him in prison, and made him work for them (Judges 16:21)

    • During this time, however, his hair began to grow again (Judges 16:22)

  • The Philistines celebrated his capture and worshipped their god Dagon as a result (Judges 16:23-25)

    • The Philistines took him out of the prison and made fun of him (Judges 16:25)

• As he was being made fun of by the Philistines under the Temple of their god Dagon, he asked the servant who was holding his hand to lean him up against the columns of the temple and then prayed to God and asked him to give him strength one more time so he could avenge the Philistines for gouging his eyes out (Judges 16:26-28)

• As he was being made fun of by the Philistines under the Temple of their god Dagon, he took hold of the two columns in the center of the temple and pushed against them as hard as he could until the temple fell on the rulers and the 3000 men and women that were on its roof fell to the ground and died and he killed more Philistines that day than any other and died along with them (Judges 16:29-30)

• Buried between the cities of Zorah and Eshtaol (Judges 16:31)