Judges

By Serge Frolov

This commentary is the eighteenth published volume in The Forms of the Old Testament Literature (FOTL), a series that aims to present a form-critical analysis of the books and units in the Hebrew Bible. Serge Frolov's valuable study of Judges, addressing both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, offers the first full-scale form-critical treatment of Judges since 1922 and represents an important application of form criticism as practiced today.

Fundamentally exegetical, Frolov's work examines the structure, genre, setting, and intention of Judges. Focusing on the canonical Hebrew text, Frolov argues that what we know as the book of Judges is not a literary unit but rather a series of interconnected units that are for the most part closely linked to adjoining books. In particular, he shows how the sequence "apostasy-oppression-repentance-deliverance" traverses the boundary between Judges and Samuel. Frolov also analyzes the history behind the form-critical discussion of this book and exposes the exegetical process so as to enable students and pastors to engage in their own analysis and interpretation of Judges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: May 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781467437479

Serge Frolov

Serge Frolov is Nate and Ann Levine Professor of JewishStudies and associate professor of religious studies atSouthern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas.,

Book preview

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

I am deeply grateful to the editors of the FOTL series, Marvin A. Sweeney and Rolf P. Knierim, for inviting me to work on this project. Special thanks go to Dr. Sweeney for his meticulous editorial work on the volume.

Much of the commentary was written during a semester-long research leave granted by Southern Methodist University. The project was also supported by an award from the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies. I would like to thank my colleague John C. Lamoreaux for his help with ancient Greek and Syriac versions of Judges as well as for our long and stimulating discussions of all things biblical, ancient, cultural, linguistic, and political. I hope my final product will be to his liking.

While I was working on this volume, news came in quick succession of the passing of two people with whom I was close in different periods of my life. The commentary is dedicated to their memory.

SERGE FROLOV

METHODOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION

Bibliography

Blokland, A. F. den Exter. In Search of Text Syntax: Towards a Syntactic Text-Segmentation Model for Biblical Hebrew. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1995.

Gressmann, Hugo. Die Anfänge Israels (von 2. Mosis bis Richter und Ruth) übersetzt, erklärt und mit Einleitungen versehen. Die Schriften des Alten Testaments in Auswahl 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1914.

Knierim, Rolf. Criticism of Literary Features, Form, Tradition, and Redaction. Pp. 123-65 in The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters. Edited by Douglas A. Knight and Gene M. Tucker. Philadelphia: Fortress; Chico: Scholars, 1985.

———. Old Testament Form Criticism Reconsidered. Int 27 (1973) 435-68.

Sweeney, Marvin A. Form Criticism. Pp. 58-89 in To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Applications. Edited by Stephen R. Haynes and Steven L. McKenzie. Rev. ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999.

The raison d’être of the present commentary is exceedingly simple: since Hugo Gressmann’s 1922 volume (Anfänge, 151-52, 163-272), there have been no full-scale form-critical treatments of the texts that make up the canonical book of Judges. This gap is unfortunate for two interrelated reasons.

First, form criticism is by far the most universal among the basic tetrad of modern exegetical approaches to the study of the HB (the criticisms of sources, form, tradition, and redaction). Obviously, not all of the Bible’s parts necessarily fall into independent sources, present themselves as records of oral tradition, or display signs of redactional intervention. However, any text, even if it is not a part of the biblical canon, by definition has a certain structure, falls into a certain generic category (although its genre may be hybridized or otherwise modified), and has its origin in a certain communicative situation. Accordingly, an act of reading inevitably involves conscious or (more frequently) unconscious judgments on all these matters, lying at the heart of form-critical investigation; as Antony Campbell has aptly put it, form criticism is as unavoidable as breathing. We practice both all the time (1 Samuel, 3). As far as the HB is concerned, this means that no kind of interpretation, be it synchronic or diachronic, historical-critical or literary-critical, text- or reader-oriented, can proceed without making explicit or implicit assumptions about the structure, genre, and setting of the studied piece; when these assumptions are unfounded, the interpretation built upon them is vulnerable at best. In the words of Marvin Sweeney, form criticism is uniquely suited among the critical methodologies in biblical exegesis … to serve as a fundamental method of biblical interpretation (Form Criticism, 69). Just as fear of YHWH is, according to Prov 1:7, the beginning of all wisdom, form criticism is the beginning of all biblical exegesis.

In this sense, critical studies of Judges rest on a foundation that is almost a century old. Recent literary treatments, such as Yairah Amit’s erudite and insightful monograph (Art), have renewed it to a degree, but a full-fledged form-critical investigation remains in order, as demonstrated, for example, by the fact that the exegetes still routinely assume the book’s status as a literary unit, a proposition that does not withstand consistent form-critical scrutiny (→ Ch. 1 below). The present commentary thus responds to what amounts to an increasingly pressing, if largely unrecognized, need.

Second, form-critical methodology is perhaps the most misunderstood and underappreciated of all biblical criticisms; to cite Campbell again, it is for many a ‘red rag’ word (1 Samuel, 3). Much of the misunderstanding stems from the exclusive association of form criticism with the works of Hermann Gunkel and his immediate followers, such as Gressmann and Sigmund Mowinckel, all of whom were active in the first half of the twentieth century; the resultant impression is that it is hopelessly dated. Nothing can be further from the truth. In recent decades, Rolf Knierim (Form Criticism; Criticism), Marvin Sweeney (Form Criticism), and others have profoundly transformed the methodology in question (→, e.g., Synchronic and Diachronic and Genre below), weaning it from the epistemologically questionable presuppositions of its pioneers (while retaining the heuristic kernel of their approach) and positioning it to thrive in the twenty-first century. Yet, when a scholar or a lay reader tries to learn how exactly form criticism works in application to Judges, Gressmann’s oeuvre is all he or she has available. From this perspective, the present commentary introduces the audience not only to the biblical text that it analyzes, but also to the methodology that it employs.

In line with the basic form-critical premise that the genre of the communication is shaped by the communicative situation, the format of the present publication is dictated by the purposes outlined above. This is not a standard commentary, offering comprehensive coverage of the exegetical issues pertaining to Judges and of the scholarly opinion on these issues. Both are discussed only to the extent of their relevance to form-critical examination of the text. The trajectory of the discussion likewise largely, albeit not entirely, follows the conventional form-critical procedure of the FOTL series. What follows is a brief review of the main steps of this procedure and related issues.

Synchronic and Diachronic

Like the entire critical scholarship of the time, the form criticism of Gunkel and Gressmann was profoundly diachronic: they not only assumed several stages of composition behind the received biblical text, but also focused primarily on the origins of biblical literature in the short, self-contained, oral unit (Sweeney, Form Criticism, 62). However, in contradistinction to source, tradition, or redaction criticism, form criticism is not inherently diachronic, and subsequent theoretical advances have massively shifted its emphasis towards the final form of the HB (see esp. the discussion of the issue by Sweeney, Form Criticism, 67-68). In accordance with this shift, one of the basic premises of the present commentary is that exegesis should proceed, in the first instance, in the mode suggested by the interpreted text; specifically, since the entire Enneateuch (Genesis–Kings), including Judges, presents itself as an integral composition, it will be mostly read as such, i.e. from the synchronic perspective.

At the same time, the current version of form-critical methodology stands apart from various literary, rhetorical, and narratological approaches in that it does not eschew diachronic investigation to the extent that it is justified by the study of the text’s final form. Such justification may come in two forms. First, investigation of a literary unit may indicate that it had a setting of its own — in other words, that it emerged and circulated independently prior to its inclusion, in a pristine or transformed shape, in a larger composition. Since it stands to reason that the creator of the latter chose to include an existing text because it suited his or her objectives, this type of diachrony (which can be dubbed collection) does not clash with the default synchronic mode of the present commentary. It will examine, where appropriate, the unit’s meaning and thrust in its original setting but they will have no hermeneutical consequences as far as the received version is concerned.

Second, synchronic reading may discover factual contradictions, inconsistencies of outlook, structural abnormalities, doublets, repetitions, and other features potentially incompatible with it due to their association with redactional intervention, a diachronic activity par excellence. Such diachrony (correction) may destabilize the default mode of reference, but only if two conditions are met. First, the hypothetical precanonical version of the text, free of the above-mentioned wrinkles, should constitute a reasonably definable composition in its own right contained within the received version of the HB. In other words, the latter’s formation over time is conceivable only as expansion; all speculation about the pieces that were lost in the process should be avoided as unfalsifiable and therefore invalid by definition. Second, it must be possible to show that the fragments that were allegedly added to the precanonical version rendered it both more and less coherent, not only creating problems but also generating a new meaning; to put it differently, the interpolation is to be plausibly motivated.

As this writer explained elsewhere in some detail (Frolov, Turn, 27-33), when the above conditions are met, the exegete arrives at a bifurcation point where two options present themselves as equally viable: to abandon the synchronic approach and switch to the diachronic mode (bottom branch of the interpretive trajectory) or to develop a new, more sophisticated synchronic reading (top branch). The present commentary explores both options in its final chapter, upon completion of the initial synchronic examination of Judges and its immediate and broader literary environment.

Text: Choose One

Since form criticism can obviously address only one version of the Bible at a time, the present commentary deals almost exclusively with the canonical Hebrew text. Although form-critical exploration of the LXX, Peshitta, or Vulgate might prove a worthwhile project in its own right, it would not bear directly on the study of the MT. Alternative ancient readings may nevertheless prove instrumental in detecting and correcting possible scribal errors in the MT (to avoid building an exegetical edifice upon what amounts to a typo) as well as in making sense of it. For that reason, analysis of an elementary literary unit in many cases begins in the present commentary with discussion of difficult and potentially corrupt Hebrew or significant disagreements between the versions within its boundaries. Such discussion is limited, however, to the instances where the formulation of the Hebrew text is consequential with regard to its structure, genre, setting, or intention.

Structure: Juggling the Units

Although the form of the communication is by no means reducible to its structure, the importance of the latter is difficult to overestimate: no form-critical investigation (and indeed no other exegetical project) can proceed until the studied fragment is positioned vis-à-vis the hierarchy of the literary units that make up the received HB. Surprisingly, form critics and biblical scholars in general rarely discuss the principles of text segmentation (notable exceptions include Longacre, Joseph; Blokland, Syntax), and no attempt has been made to develop consensus on at least the most basic of them. As a result, treatments of the matter, both in Judges and beyond, are often inconsistent and impressionistic; many of them heavily rely on such imprecise and subjective criteria as theme and subject matter. In order to avoid pitfalls of this kind, the present commentary strictly keeps, in establishing the inner structure of Judges and its relationship to larger literary entities, to the following set of guidelines:

1. Paratextual phenomena, such as division of the biblical text into books or masoretic demarcations (petuḥot, setumot, multiline breaks, masora finalis), are, in and of themselves, of no structural value. Organizing commentaries around canonical books or groups of books is a long-standing custom, almost a sacred tradition, of biblical exegesis, going back about two centuries. Although in recent decades several series have started to publish volumes that do not cover entire books (mostly on the books with relatively clear internal subdivisions, such as Genesis, Exodus, or Isaiah), few commentaries have ever been published that traverse the boundary between two books without fully covering both of them (all or almost all such commentaries deal with Haggai — Zechariah 1–8 or Zechariah 9–14 — Malachi). The FOTL series is no exception in this respect: despite devoting multiple volumes to Exodus, Psalms, and Isaiah, it obviously shares the widespread, if rarely articulated, presumption that a book constitutes a major and well-defined exegetical unit. This can be seen, among other things, in the series’ format that requires a discussion of the book as a whole, complete with its genre, setting, and intention; moreover, this discussion usually precedes the examination of the book’s constituent parts. But is the boundary between two biblical books always the natural, or even defensible, choice of a literary boundary? This question should be answered in the negative.

To begin with, the concept of a book in general and the notion of what constitutes individual books of the Hebrew Bible are not as clear-cut as they might seem to be, and certainly not static. What counts as such in one canon may be greater or lesser than a book in another: to cite just one example, while all canons of the Old Testament know twelve books of minor prophets, in the Jewish Tanach they form a single book of the Twelve. Even within a single tradition, substantial variations are possible. Josephus probably regarded the Torah as Pentateuch (as suggested by his report in Against Apion 1:38-41 that Jewish Scriptures include 22 books); this view was shared by the Masoretes, who placed masora finalis after each book of the Torah, but apparently not by certain sages of the Talmud, as indicated by their references to the book of Moses (e.g., b. B. Bat. 14b-15a). The boundaries between the books may be fluid as well: for instance, some Lucianic MSS include what is commonly known as 1 Kgs 1:1–2:11 in 2 Samuel (Basileion B) rather than 1 Kings (Basileion C).

Furthermore, the exegetical value of the canonical divisions, even uncontestable ones, is not immediately obvious, in part, because the origin of these divisions is unclear. Was a certain book created as a literary entity in its own right or detached from what precedes it and/or what follows by a different hand? If the latter is true, was it done in order to indicate that the text in question should be regarded as a self-contained hermeneutical unit or because of purely technical considerations, i.e., with a view to creating a manageable scroll? Did liturgical factors play any role? Due to these uncertainties, paratextual elements can be used to determine the structure of the biblical text only when their evidence is corroborated by sufficiently strong signals in the text proper, and that, of course, brings their independent structural value down to almost a zero.

2. The macro-structure of the biblical text is defined, in the first instance, by explicit authorial signals, such as superscriptions (e.g., Isa 1:1), recurrent formulae (e.g., the regnal formulae in Samuel and especially in Kings), and summaries (e.g., the regnal summaries in the same books, starting with 1 Sam 14:47-52). Major, unquestionable shifts of subject matter and literary format may also be of importance. For example, although the book of Ezekiel does not have a superscription, the fact that it prominently features a prophet by that name and never mentions Jeremiah makes it impossible to subsume it under the words of Jeremiah referred to in Jer 1:1. Likewise, despite the fact that the book of Psalms has no overall superscription and is highly diverse in terms of subject matter, its uniformly liturgical character clearly indicates that it has to do neither with the preceding sermons of Malachi (or, in Christian Bibles, the concluding narrative of Job) nor with the wise sayings of Proverbs (or, in the Codex Leningradensis and several other masoretic MSS, the opening narrative of Job) that follow it (Proverbs, in addition, begins with a superscription).

3. Apart from these signals, the layout of the biblical text is controlled exclusively by its syntax. Narrative prose is structured by interaction between the narrative’s master sequence, formed by waw-consecutive imperfect verbs (Schneider, Grammatik, 182-87, 207-8; Niccacci, Syntax; Hatav, Semantics; Goldfajn, Order, 105-15, 123-35, 143-48), and other syntactic forms. The patterns of this interaction are as follows (for a more detailed discussion, see Frolov, Turn, 54-56):

Quoted speech and dependent clauses do not disrupt the master sequence even if they are syntactically divergent. Clauses that follow the demonstrative הנה and the impersonal ויהי are seen as dependent (e.g., Judg 19:27b should be properly translated, And he saw that the woman, his concubine, had collapsed at the door of the house, etc.).

Perfect main clauses outside quoted speech are disruptive unless the use of the form is attributable to rhetorically motivated shift of the subject or the object to the forefront or the presence of the negative particle לא before the verb.

Waw-consecutive perfects, plain imperfects, participles, and nominal clauses are disruptive if they occur in narratorial discourse and do not depend upon main clauses governed by waw-consecutive imperfects.

Magnitude of a disruption is directly proportional to that of the intrusion of divergent forms. Minor intrusions (mostly limited to a single disruptive clause) divide the narrative into elementary units, referred to in the present commentary as episodes (cf. Andersson, Book, 78-82). Major ones delineate series of episodes or even larger literary entities, especially when a clause or a series of clauses is formulated asyndetically.

Syntactic shifts also mark the layout of biblical poetry, represented in Judges mainly by the so-called Song of Deborah in ch. 5. However, poetic pieces usually do not have a master sequence, with verbal forms mainly coming in clusters and occasionally in small, sharply divergent wedges that separate between these clusters. Also, in contradistinction to uniformly third person narrative prose, poetry often switches from one person to another; such switches may also function as structural indicators, although usually they come in tandem with shifts in verbal patterns.

Genre: How It Works

Identification of the communication’s literary format, commonly known as genre, is a crucial, if in most cases unconscious, component of its reception by the addressee. To cite a topical example, the entire creationist movement hinges upon the assumption that the biblical narratives, including those in the opening chapters of Genesis, are eyewitness or participant accounts of actual events — in other words, that they are chronicles or even logs rather than stories, myths, or legends. Even in the case of an unintended reader, who is not interested in what the sender wanted the communication to say (→ Intention below), if the text is interpreted at all, it is ipso facto assigned a genre.

The genre of a communication is defined primarily by organization of its content, in other words, by its structure, which in written texts is mainly rooted in syntax (→ Structure above). Wording, especially clichéd expressions, may also play a role; thus, in modern cinema vodka martini, shaken not stirred is an unmistakable marker of the Bond movie genre. By contrast, subject matter is not per se a generic property. For instance, all four installments of the Alien franchise revolve around the battles between the indomitable Sigourney Weaver character and a deadly creature from outer space, but the original Alien is a horror movie, Aliens falls squarely into the action category, Alien 3 presents itself as a futuristic incarnation of film noir, and Alien Resurrection is generically ambiguous. The common categorization of the narratives about Israel’s deliverers that dominate the canonical Judges as hero legends (Heldensagen) is consequently unsustainable because there is no identifiable structural pattern or vocabulary uniquely identified with this alleged category.

Of course, under the above criteria many narrative units of the HB, and certainly most of them in Judges, would have to be blandly and uniformly categorized as stories. That, however, is not a cause for concern, even if the corollary in question would seem to perpetuate the commonly noted tendency of form criticism, in all its iterations, to have success mostly with nonnarrative biblical texts. Rather than stymieing exegesis, generic uniformity of a string of units opens new vistas by drawing attention to frequently overlooked literary entities of the higher order, circumscribed by this uniformity in terms of extent and genre.

As a part of the quest for the authentic formulation of the Scripture that prevailed in biblical scholarship in the first century and a half of its existence, form criticism of Gunkel and Gressmann was largely about trying to distil generically pristine literary entities out of the received text of the HB. Fragments that did not fit into the generic archetypes, mostly if not exclusively developed by Germanic and Nordic folkloristics, were dismissed as secondary contributions by editors or compilers. Today’s form critics approach such archetypes as scholarly abstractions that may be heuristic in delineating generic categories but by no means exhaust them and recognize that in most, if not all, instances the actual literary compositions, especially written ones, deviate from these abstractions, adapting and modifying the genres as well as blending and mixing them. Accordingly, generic discussions and definitions in the FOTL series, including the present commentary, apply to the biblical texts as we know them, and their generic distinctiveness serves as the basis for inferences about the text’s setting and intention in the synchronic perspective rather than about its diachronic development. In addition, the present commentary draws for generic parallels primarily on the biblical corpus, secondarily on its ancient Near Eastern milieu, and only in the third instance on other cultures, up to and including the mass culture of the modern West.

Setting: Why It Matters

In a famous 1980 article, Stanley Fish argued that it is impossible even to think of a sentence independently of a context (Text, 527): the air is crisp is plausibly interpretable as referring to the state of the atmosphere when it occurs in a description of a Vermont winter and praising a musical piece when included in a review of a concert. This is what the form-critical rubric of setting is about: it places the discussed literary unit into a context and thus makes an indispensable step towards endowing the unit with a meaning.

Any text originates either on its own or as a component of a larger piece. In the former case, its only context is that of the communicative situation in which it originated; form criticism, in deference to its German provenance, refers to such context as Sitz im Leben, literally a seat in life. In the latter case, the text’s immediate setting is that of the unit to which it belongs (Sitz in der Literatur, a seat in literature), but even when there is a number of such settings (in case of a multitiered structure) it always has a Sitz im Leben because that of the overarching literary entity is shared by all its constituent parts.

Form criticism holds that each genre has one or more generalized settings associated with it: thus, psalms likely come from a cultic milieu, wisdom literature (at least its didactic branch) conceivably suggests an educational background of some kind (family-based or formal), and a list is a bureaucratic format par excellence. While sharing this premise, the present commentary goes where few, if any, form critics have gone before by continuously probing whether the content of individual units matches the settings presupposed by their generic properties. If that is the case, chances are that the unit in question originated in its own setting as a self-contained piece and only later was included in larger compositions, all the way to the Enneateuch and the Hebrew Bible as a whole. In other words, it has its own Sitz im Leben that can be narrowed down to a more or less specific sociohistorical situation (if sufficient information is available) but no Sitz in der Literatur. Conversely, discrepancy between the text’s content and the setting primarily associated with its genre raises the possibility that it never circulated on its own, especially if it cannot be plausibly assigned an alternative Sitz im Leben. In such instance, the unit’s Sitz in der Literatur is the literary entity that encompasses it on a higher structural level, and its Sitz im Leben is that of this entity. This means, in essence, that the unit’s Sitz im Leben is defined by its Sitz in der Literatur.

The sociohistorical setting of the biblical text is obviously crucial with regard to its evaluation as a historical source. However, since such evaluation lies beyond the scope of form-critical analysis, the present commentary does not discuss to what extent the story told by the book of Judges can be used to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel and Near East as a whole. Everything that will be said below with regard to individuals, institutions, and events pertains to the world of the HB, not to the historical reality, if any, standing behind it.

Intention: The Form-Critical Challenge

The intention heading of the FOTL series may look like a carryover from the times of Gunkel and Gressmann when biblical scholars naively believed that a sound methodology is capable, if properly applied, of firmly establishing the true, authentic meaning of a given text, intended by its creator (who may or may not be the Creator). That is not the case, as form critics, including this writer, are supremely aware today that no interpretation is absolute; each interpretation is inherently hypothetical (Sweeney, Form Criticism, 83). Indeed, nothing in the current version of form criticism prevents its practitioners from subscribing to the postmodern notion that a text can sustain multiple equally valid interpretations and that there is consequently no way of being certain about the design operative in it. However, given that no communication takes place without a purpose, even when it is not meant to reach anybody (with the speaker or writer just venting), any quest for the text’s meaning inevitably assigns an intention to it. Furthermore, a major, if largely implicit, premise of form criticism is that polyvalence does not equal omnivalence; there may be an infinite number of legitimate interpretations, but not every interpretation is legitimate. Above all, exegesis is constrained by formal features of the biblical text because without a foothold in this text the interpretation becomes something else.

Some exegetes would probably object at this point that as described here, form criticism becomes a stranglehold on their creativity, setting limits within which it can be exercised. But why not regard it, instead, as a challenge? Faced with form-critical inferences about the structure, genre, and setting of Judges arrived at by the present commentary, an interpreter still has a plethora of options apart from accepting what it says about the text’s intention. One alternative is to develop a different reading on the basis of these inferences. Another is to demonstrate that some or all of them are unsound and to offer new ones. Finally, it may be possible (although, admittedly, nothing of the kind has ever been tried) to build several equally valid frameworks within which to address the formal aspects of a biblical fragment. Form criticism is then primarily about challenging those interested in rendering the Bible meaningful to take these aspects seriously and especially to avoid making facile assumptions about them.

Technical Matters

The present commentary mostly adopts the generic nomenclature of the FOTL series. Definitions of all genres discussed in the volume are included in the → Glossary below.

Bibliography at the end of each chapter includes only the books and articles devoted mostly or exclusively to the texts or issues discussed in it. All other publications referenced in the chapter can be found in the Supplemental Bibliography.

Biblical verses are numbered in accordance with the Masoretic canon. Apart from a few exceptions, subdivision of verses keeps to the disjunctive signs of the Tiberian Masorah as found in BHS. All biblical translations are the author’s unless marked otherwise.

In keeping with the author’s religious practices, the proper name of the God of Israel is rendered throughout, excluding bibliographic references, as יי in Hebrew and YHWH in English. Both masculine and feminine pronouns are used with reference to the Deity.

Chapter 1

JUDGES AS A WHOLE: WHAT LIES BENEATH

Bibliography

Ackerman, Susan. Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel. ABRL. New York: Doubleday, 1998.

Alonso-Schökel, L. Erzählkunst im Buche der Richter. Bib 42 (1961) 148-58.

Amit, Yairah. The Book of Judges: The Art of Editing. Biblical Interpretation Series 38. Leiden: Brill, 1999.

———. Judges. Pp. 508-57 in The Jewish Study Bible. Edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Andersson, Greger. The Book and Its Narratives: A Critical Examination of Some Synchronic Studies of the Book of Judges. Örebro Studies in Literary History and Criticism 1. Örebro: Universitetsbiblioteket, 2001.

Arnold, Daniel. Ces mystérieux héros de la foi: Une approche globale du livre des Juges. Saint-Legier: Emmaus, 1995.

Auld, A. Graeme. Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. Daily Study Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984.

Bal, Mieke. Dealing/With/Women: Daughters in the Book of Judges. Pp. 16-39 in The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory. Edited by Regina M. Schwartz. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990.

———. Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges. Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Bledstein, Adrien Janis. Is Judges a Woman’s Satire of Men Who Play God? Pp. 34-54 in A Feminist Companion to Judges. Edited by Athalya Brenner. Feminist Companion to the Bible 4. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993.

Block, Daniel I. Judges, Ruth. NAC 6. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999.

———. The Period of the Judges: Religious Disintegration under Tribal Rule. Pp. 39-58 in Israel’s Apostasy and Restoration. FS Roland K. Harrison. Edited by Avraham Gileadi. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988.

Blum, Erhard. Der kompositionelle Knoten am Übergang von Josua zu Richter: Ein Entflechtungsvorschlag. Pp. 181-212 in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature. FS C. H. W. Brekelmans. Edited by M. Vervenne and J. Lust. BETL 133. Leuven: Leuven University Press; Peeters, 1997.

Boling, Robert G. Judges. AB 6A. Garden City: Doubleday, 1975.

Boling, Robert G., and Richard D. Nelson. Judges. Pp. 346-81 in The HarperCollins Study Bible. Edited by Harold W. Attridge et al. Rev. ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.

Bowman, Richard G. Narrative Criticism: Human Purpose in Conflict with Divine Presence. Pp. 19-44 in Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies. Edited by Gale A. Yee. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.

Brensinger, Terry L. Judges. BCBC. Scottdale: Herald, 1999.

Brettler, Marc Zvi. The Book of Judges. Old Testament Readings. London: Routledge, 2002.

———. The Book of Judges: Literature as Politics. JBL 108 (1989) 395-418.

Brown, Cheryl A. Judges. Pp. 123-289 in Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Edited by J. Gordon Harris, Brown, and Michael S. Moore. NIBCOT 5. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000.

Budde, Karl. Das Buch der Richter erklärt. KHC 7. Freiburg: Mohr (Siebeck), 1897.

———. Die Bücher Richter und Samuel, ihre Quellen und ihr Aufbau. Giessen: J. Ricker, 1890.

Burney, C. F. The Book of Judges, with Introduction and Notes. 2nd ed. London: Rivingtons, 1920.

Butler, Trent C. Judges. WBC 8. Nashville: Nelson, 2009.

Chisholm, Robert B. The Role of Women in the Rhetorical Strategy of the Book of Judges. Pp. 34-49 in Integrity of Heart, Skillfulness of Hands. FS Donald K. Campbell. Edited by Charles H. Dyer and Roy B. Zuck. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.

———. What’s Wrong with This Picture? Stylistic Variation as a Rhetorical Technique in Judges. JSOT 34 (2009) 171-82.

Dumbrell, W. J. ‘In Those Days There Was No King in Israel; Every Man Did What Was Right in His Own Eyes’: The Purpose of the Book of Judges Reconsidered. JSOT 25 (1983) 23-33.

Ederer, Matthias. Ende und Anfang: Der Prolog des Richterbuches (Ri 1,1–3,6) in Biblischer Auslegung. Herder’s Biblical Studies 68. Freiburg: Herder, 2011.

Exum, J. Cheryl. The Centre Cannot Hold: Thematic and Textual Instabilities in Judges. CBQ 52 (1990) 410-31.

———. Feminist Criticism: Whose Interests Are Being Served? Pp. 65-90 in Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies. Edited by Gale A. Yee. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.

———. Was sagt das Richterbuch den Frauen? Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 169. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1997.

Fleenor, Rob, and Mark S. Ziese. Judges and Ruth. The College Press NIV Commentary. Joplin: College, 2008.

Fokkelman, Jan P. Structural Remarks on Judges 9 and 19. Pp. 33-45 in Shaʾarei Talmon. FS Shemaryahu Talmon. Edited by Michael Fishbane and Emanuel Tov. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1992.

Frolov, Serge. Fire, Smoke, and Judah in Judges: A Response to Gregory Wong. SJOT 21 (1997) 127-38.

———. Rethinking Judges. CBQ 71 (2009) 24-41.

Garstang, John. The Foundations of Bible History: Joshua, Judges. New York: R. R. Smith, 1931.

Gaß, Erasmus. Die Ortsnamen des Richterbuchs in historischer und redaktioneller Perspektive. Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 35. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005.

Gillmayr-Bucher, Susanne. Framework and Discourse in the Book of Judges. JBL 128 (2009) 687-702.

Globe, Alexander. ‘Enemies Round About’: Disintegrative Structure in the Book of Judges. Pp. 233-51 in Mappings of the Biblical Terrain: The Bible as Text. Edited by Vincent J. Tollers and John Maier. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1990.

Görg, Manfred. Richter. KAT. Würzburg: Echter, 1993.

Gooding, D. W. The Composition of the Book of Judges. ErIsr 16 (1982) 70*-79*.

Gray, John. Joshua, Judges and Ruth. Century Bible. London: Nelson, 1967.

Greenspahn, Frederick E. The Theology of the Framework of Judges. VT 36 (1986) 385-96.

Gros Louis, Kenneth R. R. The Book of Judges. Pp. 1:141-62 in Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives. 2 vols. Edited by Gros Louis, James S. Ackerman, and Thayer S. Warshaw. Nashville: Abingdon, 1974.

Groß, Walter. Richter übersetzt und ausgelegt. HTKAT. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2009.

Guest, Pauline Deryn. Dangerous Liaisons in the Book of Judges. SJOT 11 (1997) 241-69.

Gunn, David M. Joshua and Judges. Pp. 102-21 in The Literary Guide to the Bible. Edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

———. Judges. Blackwell Bible Commentaries. Malden: Blackwell, 2005.

Gutbrod, Karl. Das Buch vom Lande Gottes: Josua und Richter. 2nd ed. BAT. Stuttgart: Calwer, 1957.

Hackett, Jo Ann. Violence and Women’s Lives in the Book of Judges. Int 58 (2004) 356-64.

Hamlin, E. John. At Risk in the Promised Land: A Commentary on the Book of Judges. ITC. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Edinburgh: Handsel, 1990.

Hertzberg, Hans Wilhelm. Die Bücher Josua, Richter, Ruth übersetzt und erklärt. ATD 9. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953.

Hess, Richard S. Israelite Identity and Personal Names from the Book of Judges. HS 44 (2003) 25-39.

Holland, Martin, and Volker Steinhoff. Das Buch der Richter/Das Buch Rut erklärt. Wuppertaler Studienbibel. Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1995.

Jost, Renate. Gender, Sexualität und Macht in der Anthropologie des Richterbuches. BWANT 164. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006.

Keil, Carl Friedrich, and Franz Delitzsch. Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Commentary on the Old Testament 2. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950 (orig. 1863).

Kim, Uriah Y. Postcolonial Criticism: Who Is the Other in the Book of Judges? Pp. 161-82 in Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies. Edited by Gale A. Yee. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.

Klein, Lillian R. The Book of Judges: Paradigm and Deviation in Images of Women. Pp. 55-71 in A Feminist Companion to Judges. Edited by Athalya Brenner. Feminist Companion to the Bible 4. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993.

———. A Spectrum of Female Characters in the Book of Judges. Pp. 24-33 in A Feminist Companion to Judges. Edited by Athalya Brenner. Feminist Companion to the Bible 4. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993.

———. The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges. JSOTSup 68. Sheffield: Almond, 1988.

Lanoir, Corinne. Femmes fatales, filles rebelles: Figures féminines dans le livre des Juges. Actes et recherches. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2005.

Levine, Baruch A. Religion in the Heroic Spirit: Themes in the Book of Judges. Pp. 27-42 in Thus Says the Lord. FS Robert R. Wilson. Edited by John J. Ahn and Stephen L. Cook. LHB/OTS 502. New York: T. & T. Clark, 2009.

Lindars, Barnabas. The Israelite Tribes in Judges. Pp. 95-112 in Studies in the Historical Books of the Old Testament. Edited by John A. Emerton. VTSup 30. Leiden: Brill, 1979.

———. Judges 1–5: A New Translation and Commentary. Edited by A. D. H. Mayes. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995.

———. Some Septuagint Readings in Judges. JTS 22 (1971) 1-14.

Malamat, A. The Period of the Judges. Pp. 129-63, 314-23 in Judges. Edited by Benjamin Mazar. The World History of the Jewish People 1.3. Jewish History Publications; New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971.

Marais, Jacobus. Representation in Old Testament Narrative Texts. Biblical Interpretation Series 36. Leiden: Brill, 1998.

Martin, Lee Roy. Yahweh Conflicted: Unresolved Theological Tension in the Cycle of Judges. OTE 22 (2009) 356-72.

Matthews, Victor H. Judges and Ruth. New Cambridge Bible Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Mayes, A. D. H. Judges. OTG 8. Sheffield: JSOT, 1985.

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Midden, Piet J. van. A Hidden Message? Judges as Foreword to the Books of Kings. Pp. 77-85 in Unless Some One Guide Me … FS Karel A. Deurloo. Edited by J. W. Dyk et al. Amsterdamse Cahiers voor Exegese van de Bijbel et zijn Tradites Sup 2. Maastricht: Shaker, 2001.

Millard, Matthias. Das Tun der Tora als Thema einer kanonorientierten Lektüre des Richterbuches: Beispiele anhand der drei männlichen Hauptfiguren Gideon, Jefta und Simson. Pp. 93-106 in Kanonisierung — die Hebräische Bibel im Werden. Edited by Georg Steins and Johannes Taschner. Biblisch-Theologische Studien 110. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2010.

Moore, George Foot. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Judges. ICC. New York: Scribner’s, 1910.

Niditch, Susan. Judges. OTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008.

———. Judges, Kingship, and Political Ethics: A Challenge to the Conventional Wisdom. Pp. 59-70 in Thus Says the Lord. FS Robert R. Wilson. Edited by John J. Ahn and Stephen L. Cook. LHB/OTS 502. New York: T. & T. Clark, 2009.

Nowack, Wilhelm. Richter, Ruth und Bücher Samuelis übersetzt und erklärt. HKAT 1.4. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1902.

O’Connell, Robert H. The Rhetoric of the Book of Judges. VTSup 63. Leiden: Brill, 1996.

O’Connor, M. The Women in the Book of Judges. HAR 10 (1986) 277-93.

Olson, Dennis T. Buber, Kingship, and the Book of Judges: A Study of Judges 6–9 and 17–21. Pp. 199-218 in David and Zion. FS J. J. M. Roberts. Edited by Bernard F. Batto and Kathryn L. Roberts. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004.

Page, Hugh R. Boundaries: A Case Study Using the Biblical Book of Judges. Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion 10 (1999) 37-55.

Patton, Corrine L. From Heroic Individual to Nameless Victim: Women in the Social World of the Judges. Pp. 33-46 in Biblical and Humane. FS John F. Priest. Edited by Linda Bennett Elder, David L. Barr, and Elizabeth Struthers Malbon. Atlanta: Scholars, 1996.

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Scham, Sandra. The Days of the Judges: When Men and Women Were Animals and Trees Were Kings. JSOT 97 (2002) 37-64.

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———. Judges. Berit Olam. Collegeville: Liturgical, 2000.

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Younger, K. Lawson. Judges and Ruth. NIVAC. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.

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In all canons of the HB, the textual expanse that we know as Judges is defined as a book; however, as explained in → Introduction: Structure above, this does not render it a literary entity. In order to qualify as such, a piece needs to be circumscribed by explicit authorial signals (superscriptions, summaries, recurrent formulae), syntactic patterns, or distinctiveness of its subject matter and literary format. No indications of this kind are present in the text of the canonical Judges and adjoining books. (The following discussion of these indications is in part a revision of Frolov, Rethinking Judges.)

To begin with, the purported book does not begin with anything even remotely resembling a (→) SUPERSCRIPTION. The first verse of Judges does not contain any information pertaining to it as a whole (and only to it) but rather reports an isolated event, namely, the Israelites’ consultation with the deity. This event somewhat affects what takes place in the next few lines but does not seem to have lasting consequences. By specifying that the consultation took place after Joshua’s death, Judg 1:1 does set the developments that follow apart from those taking place in Joshua and the preceding books of the Enneateuch (Webb, Judges, 82); that, however, is true of everything recounted not only in Judges but in Samuel and Kings as well. As far as syntax is concerned, the verse in question is governed by a waw-consecutive clause that by definition belongs with a larger narrative sequence (→ Introduction: Structure above) and therefore does not stand more apart from the text that it heads (Floyd, Minor Prophets, 649).

Neither does what we know as Judges end with a summary. At first blush, the comment of Judg 21:25 that in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone would do what they deemed right may present itself as one, in that it is applicable to much, if not everything, that transpires in the purported book. Yet, the fact that identical or similar comments are also found within the canonical Judges (17:6; 18:1; 19:1) suggests otherwise. With little to set Judg 21:25 apart from these verses except for its proximity to a canonical boundary, it would be an exercise in circularity to argue that its structural function is unique.

While lacking an identifiable superscription and summary, the canonical Judges is unusually rich in formulaic patterns. Certainly the most conspicuous and best known of them is that of five formulae that repeatedly recur in the same order, although not necessarily in the same complement, through much of the book (Greenspahn, Theology, 386-89; O’Connell, Rhetoric, 20-27, isolates as many as twenty recurrent formulae in Judges, clustered into twelve essential elements, but most of them seem to be inferior to those listed here in terms of distinctiveness, stability, or frequency of occurrence):

(1) ויעשו בני ישראל/ויסיפו בני ישראל לעשות (את־) הרע בעיני יי (and the children of Israel [again] did evil in the eyes of YHWH; 2:11; 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6; 13:1).

(2) X ויחר־אף יי בישראל) ויתנם/ימכרם (יי) ביד) ([and the anger of YHWH burned against Israel], and he/YHWH delivered/sold them into the hand of X; 2:14, 20; 3:8; 4:2; 6:1; 10:7; 13:1); with significant variation: ויחזק יי את־עגלון על־ישראל (and YHWH strengthened PN against Israel; 3:12).

(3) ויזעקו/יצעקו בני־ישראל אל־יי (and the children of Israel cried to YHWH; 3:9, 15; 4:3; 6:6; 10:10).

(4) לפני/מפני/תחת יד (בני) ישראל X ויכנע and X was subdued before/by/under the hand of [the children of] Israel; 3:30; 8:28; 11:33); with significant variation: לפני בני ישראל X ויכנע אלהים ביום ההוא את (and God subdued X on that day before the children of Israel; 4:23).

(5) שנה N ותשקט הארץ (and the land was quiet for N years; 3:11, 30; 5:31; 8:28).

Recurrence of these formulae almost perfectly corresponds to the circular pattern of events that dominate most of Judges (cf. Bowman, Purpose, 28). Each cycle begins with Israel turning away from YHWH and worshipping foreign gods (formula 1); outraged, the deity leaves the people to the mercy of a foreign aggressor (formula 2); following years of oppression, they repent and plead to YHWH for help (formula 3); the deity appoints a deliverer who assumes the position of a judge and defeats the oppressor (formula 4); Israel remains faithful to YHWH in the judge’s lifetime and is rewarded by a period of tranquility (formula 5), but after the judge’s death the cycle begins again, featuring a new oppressor and a new deliverer. This correspondence renders the formulaic pattern outlined above a major marker of the text’s internal structure in what we know as Judges and beyond; nevertheless, two factors prevent it from identifying the canonical book as a literary unit.

First, the pattern in question does not fully set in until the book’s third chapter. Judges 1:1–2:10 apparently lies outside its boundaries, and even the generalized preview of the cycles in 2:11-19 does not entirely belong with it, from both formal and conceptual perspectives. Unlike the rest of the book, it stresses the people’s disobedience rather than their repentance and concomitant deliverance and, accordingly, displays only formulae 1 (2:11) and 2 (2:14) out of the above list. Second, and perhaps more important, the cycles of apostasy, oppression, repentance, and deliverance, complete with their formulaic markers, extend well beyond the boundaries of the canonical Judges. Specifically, the cycle that begins in Judg 13:1 — as clearly indicated by the presence of both formulae 1 and 2 in this verse — and features the Philistines as oppressors seems to continue uninterrupted through the book’s concluding chapters. The people never show their repentance, and although that does not prevent the deity from appointing Samson as the next deliverer, his task is limited to starting the process of Israel’s liberation (13:5). Even that apparently fails to transpire: despite killing Philistines by the thousand, Samson does not seem to make a difference, much less free Israel from the oppression. Although Judges 17–21 never mentions the Philistines, the situation apparently persists through these chapters (creating an exceedingly consequential but largely unrecognized background for them; → Ch. 10 Intention below), as it does through 1 Samuel 1–6: note the Philistines’ casual comment in 1 Sam 4:9 about the Israelites having been their servants. The task of bringing the cycle to its overdue conclusion falls to Samuel: when the people heed his advice to remove foreign gods (7:3-4), YHWH takes note of Samuel’s cry for help (7:9) and thunders upon the Philistines poised to attack Israel (7:10), so that they are defeated and subdued (7:13). Significantly, this account is the only text where Samuel is explicitly — and repeatedly — termed a judge (7:6, 15-17).

Antony Campbell (1 Samuel, 93) points out that both the language of 1 Samuel 7 and its presentation of the recounted events massively diverge from the stereotypes set by Judges. Samuel is raised, at least initially, as a prophet, not as a deliverer judge; although otherwise v. 9b strongly resembles formula 3, in Judges it is invariably Israel as a whole, not the judge, who does the crying; the note on the Philistines’ pacification in v. 13a deviates from formula 4 by failing to mention the hand of (the children of) Israel; and there are no traces of formula 5 in the chapter. While these observations are certainly correct, they do not disqualify 1 Samuel 7 as the conclusion of the Philistine cycle of apostasy, oppression, repentance, and deliverance launched by Judges 13. To begin with, even within the confines of the canonical Judges all cycle-marking formulae listed above display a degree of variability, sometimes a significant one; in particular, deviation from the template of formula 4 in Judg 4:23 is comparable in magnitude to that noted by Campbell in 1 Sam 7:13a. The way in which judges are appointed likewise varies in Judges from one cycle to another. While Ehud, Gideon, and Samson are raised as such, Othniel and Jephtah first distinguish themselves as warriors (cf. Judg 1:13 and 11:3, respectively), and Deborah, not unlike Samuel, is already a prophet and a judge by the time she assumes the deliverer’s mantle (Judg 4:4-5). Yet another variable is the complement of formulae: thus, formula 4 in Judg 11:33 is not followed by formula 5 (the same lacuna as in 1 Samuel 7), while formula 5 in Judg 3:11 is not preceded by formula 4.

Furthermore, formal and conceptual distinctiveness of the cycle closure in 1 Samuel 7 is compensated for by the fact that cycle-marking formulae are not the only intertextual links between it and Judges. The account of Israel’s repentance in this chapter contains multiple echoes of Judges 10, and it is hardly accidental that the latter includes Judges’ last report of such repentance. Both texts mention the Baals and the Astartes (Judg 10:6; 1 Sam 7:4; the expression occurs elsewhere only in 1 Sam 12:10) and have the Israelites acknowledge that they have transgressed (Judg 10:15; 1 Sam 7:6), remove foreign gods (Judg 10:16; 1 Sam 7:3), and serve YHWH (Judg 10:16; 1 Sam 7:3, 4). Remarkably, Judges 10 is the first and the only case of YHWH explicitly refusing to heed the people’s cry for help until they renounce foreign worship (vv. 11-14); the very next time the Israelites try to reach the deity, in 1 Samuel 7, Samuel advises them to start with removal of foreign gods (v. 3).

Finally, a simple juxtaposition of the concluding chapters of Judges and opening chapters of Samuel would strongly suggest that the Philistine cycle of apostasy, oppression, repentance, and deliverance traverses the boundary between the two canonical books. Judges narrates that Israel did evil in YHWH’s sight, that is, worshipped foreign deities (cf. Judg 2:11-13; 3:7; 10:6), and was punished by Philistine oppression (13:1) but never mentions when and under which circumstances it was lifted. 1 Samuel reports that Israel repented and renounced foreign worship (1 Sam 7:4) and was rewarded, under the leadership of a judge, with deliverance from Philistine oppression (7:10-13) but never mentions when and under which circumstances it began. Given this configuration, even if there were no cycle-marking formulae in 1 Samuel 7, nothing but preconceived notions about the exegetical value of canonical divisions would prevent the listener or reader from identifying the chapter as the terminus of the narrative continuum launched by Judges 13. With two such formulae in place, albeit in a modified form, there is no escaping the conclusion that Judges 13–1 Samuel 7 is a literary unit and that, accordingly, the sequence of the apostasy-oppression-repentance-deliverance cycles launched by Judges 3 stretches through 1 Samuel 7. The status of 1 Samuel 8–12 vis-à-vis the sequence is indefinite (→ Ch. 4 Genre and Ch. 10 Structure below), but it clearly includes Judg 3:7–1 Sam 7:17: although the Philistine cycle proper ends with formula 4 in 1 Sam 7:13a, vv. 13b-17 also belong with this cycle because they outline the consequences of what transpired in its denouement.

A less pronounced, but by no means less important, formulaic pattern confirms that the canonical boundary between Judges and Samuel does not adequately reflect the text’s literary structure. The combination of cycle-marking formulae 1 and 2 in Judg 13:1 is immediately followed by the impersonal clause and there was a certain man from Zor’a, from a Danite clan that launches a narrative sequence beginning with Samson’s miraculous conception and ending with his death. A similar expression, and there was a man from Mount Ephraim, immediately follows the conclusion of this sequence, heralding the appearance of a new protagonist, Micah (17:1); the same happens, with slight variations, not only in Judg 17:7 and 19:1, but also in 1 Sam 1:1 and 9:1 (Richter, Berufungsberichte, 14-15; Frolov, Turn, 50-51). Even the pattern’s minutiae remain stable from Judges to Samuel. In the former, the there-was-a-certain-man formula opening Samson’s birth-to-death biography (Judg 13:2–16:31) introduces his father, Manoah, while the identical or near-identical expressions ushering in accounts of isolated episodes from the lives of Micah (17:1-6), Jonathan (17:7–18:31), and an anonymous Levite (19:1–21:25) directly refer to them. In agreement with this subtle distinction, 1 Sam 1:1; 9:1, serving as the opening markers of extended, albeit incomplete, biographies of Samuel (1 Sam 1:1–8:22) and Saul (1 Sam 9:1–12:25; on the regnal formula in 13:1 as the terminal marker of this biography, see Frolov, Turn, 51 n. 45), introduce their fathers, respectively Elkanah and Kish. Both accounts that open what we know as Samuel are thus implicitly attached to the chain of four discrete literary units that conclude what we know as Judges. What makes the connection between the chain’s links especially strong is the fact that opening formulae of the there was a (certain) man/youth type governed by waw-consecutive imperfects are not attested elsewhere in the HB (although Job does begin with איש היה), certainly not in groups of six.

Admittedly, the LXX and, following it, the Christian canons of the Old Testament sever this connection by placing Ruth between Judges and Samuel. Definitely a self-contained narrative with a distinctive set of characters, Ruth does not begin nevertheless with the there-was-a-man formula. Yet it is precisely the opening clause of Ruth that somewhat paradoxically indicates that it does not belong together with the segment of the Enneateuch featuring judges as rulers and deliverers: if that