Book of Judges

Book of Judges (ספר שופטים, Sefer Shoftim) is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the Books of Samuel, during which biblical judges served as temporary leaders. The stories follow a consistent pattern: the people are unfaithful to Yahweh; he therefore delivers them into the hands of their enemies; the people repent and entreat Yahweh for mercy, which he sends in the form of a leader or champion (a "judge"; see Shophet; the judge delivers the Israelites from oppression and they prosper, but soon they fall again into unfaithfulness and the cycle is repeated.

Chapter 4

 * But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent-peg and picked up a mallet; she crept up softly to him and drove the peg into his temple right through to the ground. He was lying fast asleep, worn out; and so he died.
 * NRSV, 4:21

Chapter 5

 * He asked for water; she gave him milk; she offered him curds in a lordly dish. She reached her hand out to seize the peg, her right hand to seize the workman's mallet. She hammered Sisera, she crushed his head, she pierced his temple and shattered it. Between her feet, he crumpled, he fell, he lay; at her feet, he crumpled, he fell. Where he crumpled, there he fell, destroyed. At the window, she leans and watches, Sisera's mother, through the lattice, 'Why is his chariot so long coming? Why so delayed the hoof-beats from his chariot?'
 * NRSV, 5:25-28

Chapter 7

 * The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon.
 * NRSV, 7:18

Chapter 12

 * They then said, 'Very well, say Shibboleth.' If anyone said, "Sibboleth", because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion.
 * NRSV, 12:6

Chapter 14

 * So he said to them: Out of the eater came what is eaten, and out of the strong came what is sweet. But three days went by and they could not solve the riddle.
 * NRSV, 14:14
 * If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.
 * NRSV, 14:18

Chapter 15

 * He smote them hip and thigh.
 * NRSV, 15:8
 * With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, wth the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
 * NRSV, 15:16

Chapter 16

 * She cried, 'The Philistines are on you, Samson!' He awoke from sleep, thinking, 'I shall break free as I have done time after time and shake myself clear.' But he did not know that Yahweh had left him. The Philistines seized him, put out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. They fettered him with a double chain of bronze and he spent his time turning the mill in the prison.
 * NRSV, 16:20-21
 * And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.
 * NRSV, 16:30

Chapter 17

 * In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did as he saw fit.
 * NRSV, 17:6

Chapter 20

 * The people arose as one man.
 * NRSV, 20:8

Quotes about Judges

 * The next stage in Israelite history is the era of the judges, or tribal chiefs. The most famous of them, Samson, establishes his reputation by killing thirty men during his wedding feast because he needs their clothing to pay off a bet. Then, to avenge the killing of his wife and her father, he slaughters a thousand Philistines and sets fire to their crops; after escaping capture, he kills another thousand with the jawbone of an ass. When he is finally captured and his eyes are burned out, God gives him the strength for a 9/11-like suicide attack in which he implodes a large building, crushing the three thousand men and women who are worshipping inside it.
 * Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (2012)