At the beginning of the book of Judges, Caleb gives his daughter Achsah a gift of land. And not any old parcel of land – at her request he gives her a well-irrigated plot (1:15), suitable perhaps for cultivation or pasture. But by the end of the book a woman’s husband has thrown her out to be raped and murdered by a baying mob (19:25), and the ensuing civil war has resulted in the death or marriage-by-capture of hundreds more (21:10-12, 20-23). In just a few short pages, the treatment of women has deteriorated beyond utterance.
The book of Judges is set after the conquest of the land of Canaan by Joshua, but before the establishment of the monarchy. It is an object lesson of what happens in a power vacuum. Or, as the book itself says repeatedly, ‘In those days, there was no king in Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes’ (17:6; 21:25; see also 18:1; 19:1).
If you look that phrase up in your own Bible, it may well be translated in a more gender-neutral sense, such as the NRSV’s “all the people did what was right in their own eyes”. But it might be helpful to retain the male-specific language here. Because in a lawless ungoverned state, women often have little agency to do much at all of their own choosing, whereas those who wield power (usually men) can do what they like – and often do, to women’s cost.
Of course Judges is not simply a lesson in political science. It is a theological exploration of Israel’s need for a godly, righteous and just King – a need which won’t be fully satisfied until the New Testament, incidentally. And it is an exploration of Israel’s unfaithfulness to its covenant with God. To put it another way, it is like a criminal indictment of an entire nation. Analysing the traditional narrative To make this point, our writer has presented a set of stories which many scholars consider to be a descending spiral, as Israel’s unfaithfulness gets worse and worse. And their treatment of women is one of the primary litmus tests to demonstrate this.
