King James Version · The judges
Judges 12
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And the men of gathered themselves together, and went northward, and said unto , Wherefore passedst thou over to fight against , and didst not call us to go with thee? we will burn thine house upon thee with . And said unto them, I and my people were at great strife with ; and when I called you, ye me not out of their hands. And when I saw that ye me not, I put my life in my hands, and passed over against , and them into my hand: wherefore then are ye come up unto me this day, to fight against me? Then gathered together all the men of , and fought with : and the men of smote , because they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of among the , and among the . And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the : and it was so, that when those which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of said unto him, Art thou an ? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the forty and two thousand. 7And judged Israel six years. Then the Gileadite, and was buried in one of the cities of . And after him of Beth–lehem judged Israel. And he had thirty sons, and thirty daughters, whom he sent abroad, and took in thirty daughters from abroad for his sons. And he judged Israel seven years. 10Then , and was buried at Beth–lehem. 11And after him , a Zebulonite, judged Israel; and he judged Israel ten years. And the Zebulonite , and was buried in in the country of . 13And after him the son of Hillel, a , judged Israel. And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts: and he judged Israel eight years. And the son of Hillel the , and was buried in Pirathon in the land of , in the mount of .
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The judges, 1200 BC to 1050 BC ›
No central government and no standing army. The great empires are weak, which is precisely why Israel's troubles come from close neighbors: Moab, Ammon, Midian, and the newly arrived Philistines on the coast.
- Egypt
- Broken into competing power centres and no longer able to project force into Canaan. Its withdrawal is the single biggest reason this period has no imperial overlord.
- Mesopotamia
- Assyria exists but is dormant, hemmed in and looking east. The century that would have crushed a stateless Israel simply has not arrived yet.
- The coast
- The Philistines settle their five cities after arriving from the Aegean world, bringing Mycenaean-style pottery, a taste for pork, and an early advantage in ironworking. Further north the Phoenician ports of Tyre and Sidon start the trading expansion that will eventually give the alphabet to Greece.
- Further afield
- Greece has entered its dark age: the palaces are gone, Linear B is forgotten, and writing disappears from the Aegean for three centuries. In China the Zhou dynasty replaces the Shang in 1046 BC and issues the doctrine that heaven withdraws its mandate from unjust kings, an idea with an interesting resemblance to the book of Judges.