Judges. By Trent
Butler. WBC 8. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009, xcii + 538 pp., $49.99.
Think Adrian Monk—or go back, if you remember him, to
Peter Falk’s Columbo on television. Trent Butler likens his work in solving the
riddle of Judges to that of a detective. Over the course of his investigation,
Butler unravels many enigmas, examines evidence that may help solve a few more,
and leaves some to stand as cold cases. This volume stands in the top tier of
studies on this knotty book for four reasons: (1) it tackles difficulties in
the text honestly and offers plausible solutions; (2) it converses with an
extensive sampling of modern literature on Judges; (3) it displays sustained sensitivity
to the rhetorical features of the text; and most noteworthy (4) it views the
book as accurate historical testimony and gives the textual record the benefit
of the doubt instead of presuming it to be a hypothetical reconstruction of
dubious historical value.
The translation is Butler’s own. It is lively but not
at the expense of transparency, colloquial but not eccentric. His rendering of
5:26, for example, retains the participles ma˙åqâ and ma˙åsâ in his
rendering, “shattering, piercing” (p. 115) while most versions
transform them into full verbal clauses. He also
preserves the ambiguity in idiomatic expressions, avoiding speculative
reductionism. The reader, then, may interpret for himself whether “sustain your
heart” (19:8, p. 405) means “refresh yourself ” (niv) or something with more spiritual
substance.
Text-critical notes to the translation amount to a
veritable textual commentary on Judges. Here Butler is thorough and judicious,
focusing mainly on variants involving lxxa and lxxb. The Old Latin version also receives special
attention via Niditch’s recent work (S. Niditch, Judges [WJK, 2008]).
He even mentions the mysterious apocryphal judge Asemada, known only in the OL
at 17:1.
According to Butler, Judges shows that Israel’s
covenant disloyalty to Yahweh and to each other brings anarchy and
self-destruction. The cycle leading from obedience to apostasy to deliverance
deteriorates as the period unfolds. At the core of this degeneracy is failed
leadership; in fact, he argues that the judges are mere caricatures of leaders.
Butler discusses the “no king in Israel” refrain in
detail and concludes that the writer looks to a true king emulative of Joshua’s
earlier leadership. Further, Judges is the rhetorical
and theological foil of the book of Joshua—the
anti-Joshua. The people of God have now abandoned their commitment seen at the
close of Joshua and are serving Canaanite gods. Notable in Judges is the
absence of specific, detailed statements about God. Yet the text makes a
significant theological point metonymically. The individual stories are parts
representing the whole—that is, the larger message that God’s people
desperately need to be one with him if they are to be one with one another.
Also characteristic of the volume is Butler’s repeated
affirmation of the accuracy of the Judges narrative in depicting true history.
Contrasting his continual assertion in the 1983 WBC volume on Joshua that
Deuteronomic redactors had reworked many accounts, he takes nearly every
opportunity he finds in Judges to cast doubt on theories that “long-removed
historians created material to construct a previously unknown identity for
Israel” (p. 58). Such a welcome shift builds upon Provan, Long, and Longman’s
verification principle in viewing testimony as real history.
Butler astutely examines literary features in the text
as well. He credits the author, not hypothetical “imbecilic editors” (p. lvii),
with a dexterous employment of “complex structures . . . literary figures,
complicated characterization and plotting, and exquisite use of irony” (p.
lvii). As with Joshua, Judges displays a thematic structure anchored by the
themes of failure and lack of leadership. The Judges author has sprinkled
satire, mirroring, inclusio, chiasm, hendiadys, pun, and other literary devices
throughout his work. However Butler wisely cautions against imposing chiastic
structure where none is evident (“pan-chiasm,” p. 412). Many of Butler’s
insightful appendices in the volume offer fresh approaches to genre analysis
and narrative structure as alternatives to hypothetical redaction postulates.
For added value, this work navigates a deft course
through many of the traditional difficulties in Judges, including: the book’s
provenance (a polemic against Jeroboam’s illicit worship centers in the north);
complexities in Deborah’s song (“Commentary on
Judges 5 may be the most difficult task that an
interpreter of the OT attempts,” p. 135); the Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, and
Samson fiascoes in light of Hebrews 11:32; the Spirit’s “clothing” Gideon; the 300
years of 11:26 (a round number); Jephthah’s daughter (he did sacrifice her out
of a lack of trust in Yahweh); the sibbolet/ŝibbolet issue in 12:5– 6; chapters 17–21 as occurring early in
the period; and the curious reading in 19:18, among others.
More features that enhance the value of the commentary
include: Butler’s attention to key Hebrew words and important syntactical
features; his restraint in offering unsubstantiated speculation (p. 297, though
he does some on p. 327); welcome restraint in discussing sexual allusions in
the text; relevant archaeological and geographical details; a pastoral tone in
his summary comments; and a wry sense of humor (such as the “goat parade” in
15:1–3).
The work’s strong points thus outweigh the few areas
of concern I have. Some frustrations are due to the cumbersome WBC format. The
“Form/Structure/Setting,” “Comment,” and “Explanation” sections, for instance,
tend to promote a repetitious style. As a case in point, note that the opening
paragraph in the “Form/Structure/Setting” units for 13:1–16:31; 17:18–31; and
19:1–30 are exactly alike except for changing the text reference numbers.
Butler occasionally gives too much weight to oral tradition in the composition
of Judges, in my opinion. Archaeology has shown that a dominant written
tradition existed early in Israel’s history, as suggested by Judges 8:14—which
curiously stands without note in his “Comments” section on the verse. Butler
seems fairly certain that “separate traditions lie behind” portions of the
Abimelech story (p. 233), and that the Samson narratives “incorporate folklore
elements” (p. 347). How would he or we know that? I would also like to read
more on how he views inspiration and the Spirit’s role in producing the text.
And in a related vein, the volume seems a bit thin in defining the role of
Judges within the larger framework of OT theology. Is “the basic question of
the Old Testament and even biblical theology: who are the people of God?” (p.
33)? My inclination is that he overstates this thesis. Finally, as I read to
understand Butler’s views on what the text is saying, it was often difficult to
know what his conclusions were, so thorough was his treatment of the relevant
literature.
Still, Butler’s Judges is a
commendable work and takes its place alongside Block and Younger as
indispensible tools in solving the riddles posed by this essential, enigmatic
OT voice.
Garnett Reid
Free Will Baptist Bible College, Nashville, TN
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