Week 5 Judges
While I was reading the stories of the twelve judges I paid a bit more attention to which tribe each judge came from.
I was surprised to see that only four of them had a definite tribal connection:
Ehud > Benjamin
Tola > Issachar
Elon > Zebulun
Samson > Dan.
With four other judges there’s only a hint at their tribal connection:
Barak. Maybe Naphtali
Gideon. Maybe Manasseh
Ibzan. Maybe Judah
Abdon. Maybe Ephraim.
And I couldn’t find any tribal link for:
Othniel (a Kennite / Kennizite)
Shamgar (unidentified)
Jair & Jephthah (from Gilead).
Anyway the reason I started looking at the tribal connections in the first place was because of the Victory Song of Deborah in Judges 5. The song celebrated the win and in the process it praised the tribes that pitched-in to help – Ephraim Benjamin Zebulun Naphtali Issachar all got kudos. But the Reubenites were kind of iffy – they might or might not have helped out. And it looks like Dan & Asher were complete no-shows.
The point being that in Judges the web of inter-connectedness among the twelve tribes – which seemed tight – was showing signs of fraying around the edges. Fine cracks are appearing in the spirit of all-for-one and one-for-all. Maybe not Twelve Independent Tribes so far. But not One Confederated State either.
Note: see Ehud in Judges 3:15 Tola 10:1 Elon 12:11 Samson 13:2 Barak 4:6 Gideon 6:12 Ibzan 12:8 Abdon 12:13 Othniel 3:9 Shamgar 3:31 Jair 10:3 Jephthah 10:18. One paragraph in Deborah’s Song 5:14-18