Judges 10 Study Notes

10:1-5 After Abimelech, there were a pair of minor judges, Tola and Jair. Both “judged” Israel administratively, like Deborah, without being involved in direct conflict. The description of Tola recalls the days of the good judges. However, Jair the Gileadite sounds more like a “minor Gideon,” with his thirty pampered sons. “Thirty sons” suggests multiple wives, while thirty donkeys and towns implies a tendency to accumulate personal wealth. Like Abimelech, there is no mention that they were raised up by the Lord or empowered for their task by him. Yet they form part of the total number of twelve judges in the book of Judges. This suggests that they were also part of God’s provision for his people.

10:6-9 Israel now plumbed the depths of idolatry, serving no fewer than seven false gods. Seven was the number of completeness, just as there were seven nations listed that Israel needed to drive out of the land of Canaan (Dt 7:1). In accordance with the pattern of Jdg 2, the Lord’s anger burned and he sold them to an oppressor: the Philistines occupied the coastal plain west of Israel while the Ammonites occupied the Transjordanian region to the east.

Since the Ammonites were the oppressors in the Jephthah narrative (chap. 11) while the Philistines were the enemy with whom Samson had to deal (chaps. 13-16), this description of spiritual unfaithfulness seems to introduce both of these episodes, which may have been contemporaneous. The Lord’s anger with Israel was so great that he afflicted them with two oppressors at once. They crushed Israel, just as Dt 28:33 had predicted. The initial focus is on the Ammonites, who for eighteen years oppressed the Israelites living east of the Jordan River in the land of Gilead. The affliction was not limited to the part of Israel closest to the Ammonite homeland. They went further afield, crossing the Jordan and fighting against Judah, Benjamin, and . . . Ephraim.

10:10-18 When under pressure, Israel cried out to the Lord, confessing their sin of abandoning him. Before, the Lord had sent a prophet to rebuke them (6:7-10), but this time he confronted them himself. Though the Israelites called him our God, the Lord refused to accept their claim of a relationship to him. He had in the past delivered them from seven oppressors, a number that matched the number of other gods they had been worshiping (v. 6). Now he would no longer deliver them. If they wanted the Lord to help them in their hour of distress, they should have served him in the good times also. At this, the Israelites “repented” once more. They got rid of their foreign gods and worshiped the Lord. Was their repentance real, or was it just another attempt to manipulate God into rescuing them again? The Lord declared that his patience with Israel’s suffering was exhausted. In the face of their repentance, there was no word of any deliverer to come. The only sound was the impending arrival of the Ammonites camping for war in Gilead. Far from receiving a deliverer from the Lord, the Gileadites were left leaderless. As a result, instead of seeking a man empowered by the Spirit of God, they sought to motivate someone—anyone—to step forward with the promise of human reward: leadership over all the inhabitants of Gilead. This Mizpah (v. 17; 11:11,29,34) was in Transjordan, not on the border between Benjamin and Ephraim (as in 20:1,3; 21:1,5,8).