Berit Olam: Judges

Tammi J. Schneider is assistant professor in the religion department at Claremont Graduate University, in Claremont, California. She received her BA in Hebrew language and literature from the University of Minnesota, and a PhD in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania. She has excavated at a number of archaeological sites in Israel and is co-director of the excavation of Tel el-Fara' South in Israel. She is project director at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont and area editor for Ancient Near East for Religious Studies Review. Her publications cover topics in Assyriology, ancient Near Eastern history, archaeology, and biblical studies.

• CONTENTSAcknowledgments    ixIntroduction    xiChapter One: Setting the Stage: Judges 1:1-36    1Chapter Two: A Look Back and a Look Ahead: Judges 2:1-23    25Chapter Three: Final Bridge to the New Generation: Judges 3:1-14    35Chapter Four: Ehud: Judges 3:12-30    45Chapter Five: Deborah: Judges 3:31–4:24    53Chapter Six: The Poem of Deborah: Judges 5:1-31    85Chapter Seven: Gideon/Jerubbaal: Judges 6:1–8:35    99Chapter Eight: Abimelech: Judges 9:1-57    133Chapter Nine: Some Minor Judges: Judges 10:1-5    153Chapter Ten: Jephthah: Judges 10:6–12:7    159Chapter Eleven: More Minor Judges: Judges 12:8-15    187Chapter Twelve: Samson: Judges 13:1–16:31    193Chapter Thirteen: The Danite Migration: Judges 17:1–18:31    229Chapter Fourteen: The Raped Pîlegeš: Judges 19:1–20:7    245Chapter Fifteen: Civil War: Judges 20:8–21:25    271Conclusions    287 For Further Reading    291Subject Index    299Index of Biblical References    306

I liked the use made of two things. One, the way Ancient Near Eastern scholarship, well-defined and up-to-date, was introduced into the commentary whenever possible. The effect of that was to make the biblical text more vivid and more real. And two, feminist scholarship on Judges was integrated into the work; to the best of my knowledge, this is the first commentary on Judges whose author does not shy away from feminist criticism but, on the contrary, brings it to bear on the biblical text.Athalya Brenner, University of Amsterdam