What Was the Role of Judges in Ancient Israel Before It Became a Monarchy?

The story of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, with Moses as its protagonist, is probably the most well-known of all stories in the Hebrew Bible. Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, epitomized by the siege of Jericho, is also retold often. Similarly, David’s slaying of Goliath, his flight from King Saul and rise to kingship, and the dynasty he established is a celebrated epic. But between the Exodus and Conquest, and the Saul-David sagas lies a period of several centuries in which charismatic political leaders called “judges” held the reigns of Israel’s national destiny. 

Moses was not a king. Though he had two sons, he was succeeded by Joshua, who was not even from the same Israelite tribe. Yet, Moses wielded authority that could be described as kingly. Those who challenged it are typically punished swiftly and lethally in the biblical story, often by unmediated divine action. 

No leader in the story of biblical Israel achieved Moses’s level of unmatched authority over the nation. But the tradition of charisma-based leadership rather than a dynasty that Moses established lived on into Israel’s future. Unlike Moses, however, these leaders arose to meet the demands of settled rather than nomadic peoples, and their influence was limited to segments of the population. Some of the stories of the judges in the Bible, thus, occur simultaneously. 

Some of the biblical judges do preside over legal questions, but this is not highlighted in their stories. Rather, they are best described as military deliverers.  

A Diversity of Characters

Biblical judges come from various tribes, various socio-economic classes, and from a variety of vocations. There is also one female judge, named Deborah, who is presented as the quintessential leader of the period. While the other judges exhibit flaws in leadership and morals—some of which are quite egregious—Deborah’s choices stand out as particularly incisive, and she is the only judge also afforded the title of prophet. Another judge named Samson stands out as the only one whose judgeship was predicted from birth.

Unlike the other judges, who are clever and able, but not supernaturally so, Samson is filled in particular moments with God’s spirit and manifests enormous strength, slaying vast numbers of Israel’s enemies by himself. Samson is, perhaps surprisingly, the most charismatically endowed with God’s spirit while also the poorest judge. 

While all of the judges in the Bible are said to be gifted with the “Spirit of God,” their backstories are surprisingly divergent. In each case, the text says that Israel commits the sin of worshipping a spurious deity. God respond by sending an enemy to oppress them. Israel pleads with God for deliverance, and then a judge appears. But in some cases, such as that of Othniel, Ehud, and Deborah, no direct divine action or miracle, is apparent in the narrative—the person simply takes initiative, is recognized by the people as a judge, and proceeds to rally the Israelites to victory. In the story of Gideon, by contrast, an angel appears to call him to the task, and Gideon reluctantly complies. In Samson’s case, his mother is informed of his destiny before his birth. 

These tropes—the pre-birth calling, the reluctantly-received divine calling, and the human initiative followed by divine blessing—all appear elsewhere in stories of kings and prophets.

An Embattled Judge: Who Was Samson?

Samson is the only judge whose power depends on the state of a physical object—namely, the length of his hair. Samson is the epitome of the embattled hero—a man blessed with extraordinary abilities yet plagued by personal weakness. His compulsiveness coupled with his preference for Philistine women proves his undoing when, for the sake of money, his Philistine mistress Delilah betrays the secret of his strength to his enemies. They cut his hair while he sleeps in Delilah’s house, and he spends his final days blinded and tortured in prison.

Samson’s suffering is vindicated in the end, however, when God’s spirit falls upon him one last time as the Philistines mock him in the temple of their deity Dagon. In one of the most dramatic scenes in the book of Judges, Samson asks God to give him strength one last time. Dislodging the temple’s pillars, he causes it to fall and perishes underneath with his enemies.  

Unlike Samson, Jephthah had no supernatural abilities. Like Samson he is also famous for a prayer—but Jephthah prays before entering battle rather than in defeat. If Samson’s prayer was a final plea, Jephthah’s was a bargain. 

The son of a prostitute, Jephthah was ostracized by his family. But his prowess as a military leader was so exceptional that his family chooses him as their leader against their Ammonite antagonists. The text says that Jephthah was given, even as the other judges, the spirit of God. But in what appears to be desperation, he tells God that, if God will grant him victory, he will sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house to greet him upon his victorious return. 

He is, not surprisingly, victorious. But to his horror his daughter and only child Mizpah (presumably rather than an animal) is the first to run out of the house to greet him.

 Is “Judge” a Misnomer?

What modern folk picture when they use the word “judge” bears very little resemblance to the biblical judges. Though these characters arbitrate disputes and, in that sense, function similarly to modern judges, the diversity of personalities presented, some of whom appear to have virtually no legal acumen, means they either fall far short (a la Samson) or far exceed (a la Deborah) what is typically imagined at the mention of a “judge.” Some suggest, therefore,  “savior” or “deliverer” as a preferable title for this hodgepodge of pre-monarchy Israelite leaders. 

But no matter what they are called, the judges are some of the most colorful characters in the Bible. Moreover, the book of Judges itself, ending with Israel at war with itself instead of with an outside foe, functions as a kind of judge—critiquing human violence, searching for the locus of evil, and raising questions about what deliverance really means.