The Skeptics' Overrated Bible on Judges

as analyzed by Sheila Rangslinger

We have plenty of repetition here. Arguments by outrage, answered generally by this, are denoted with an OUTR. Anti-miracle bias that deserves no complex answer is denoted with a MIR.

1:2-7 God appoints Judah to succeed Joshua. The Lord delivers his foes into his hands and another 10,000 are slain. In the process, they capture Adonibezek and "cut off his thumbs and great toes." Nice guys. Nice indeed. Better to let them still be capable of war and of killing more people later. SAB just can't see beyond that short-term.
1:12 Caleb offers to give his daughter to anyone who conquers the city of Debir. Caleb's nephew wins the contest and is given his cousin for a prize. Yes, and, what? This was normal social practice for the day and Caleb's daughter would have been thrilled by the honor associated with being married to such a person. If SAB wants to complain about the hint of incest, there are states today that still allow this type of marriage. And SAB doesn't complain about a major Skeptics' hero, Charles Darwin, who married HIS first cousin. Unlike SAB, you don't see major creationist websites whining about this.
1:17, 19 "They slew the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and utterly destroyed it ... And the Lord was with Judah." (You can tell by the number of innocent people he killed.) OUTR.
1:19 "The Lord ... could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." So I guess God can't do everything. See here.
1:21, 27-30 God promised many times that he would drive out all the inhabitants of the lands they encountered. But these verses show that God failed to keep his promise since he was unable to driver out the Canaanites. See here, Land Promise debate.
2:12 God gets angry when the Israelites reject him and decide to worship other Gods. OUTR.
2:14 God anger "was hot against Israel, and he sold them." Well, I hope he got a good price. (See 3:8, 4:2, and 10:7 where he sells them again.) OUTR.
2:17 They went a whoring after other gods...." Which to SAB is no big deal, since all gods are equally invalid.
3:1-5 God promised many times that he would drive out all the inhabitants of the lands they encountered. But these verses show that God failed to keep his promise since he was unable to drive out the Canaanites. See above.
3:8 God anger "was hot against Israel, and he sold them." Again -- See 2:14, 4:2 and 10:7 See above.
3:10 The spirit of the Lord comes upon Othniel and causes him to go to war. This is the same spirit that is said to bring joy, peace, and gentleness (Gal.5:22-23). See here.
3:15-22 Ehud delivers a "message from God" to the king of Moab. God's message consists of a knife thrust so deeply into the king's belly that it could not be extracted, "and the dirt came out." Just another lovely Bible story. OUTR. Poor SAB's Victorian prudery notwithstanding.
3:28-29 God "delivers" more folks into the hands of his chosen people. "And they slew of Moab ... about 10,000 men ... and their escaped not a man." OUTR.
3:31 Shamgar kills 600 Philistines with an ox goad. Praise God. OUTR. Of course the Phils were just picking flowers at the time.
4:2 God gets angry and sells the Israelites again. (He had already sold them to another king in 2:14 and 3:8 and he sells them again in 10:7.) See above.
4:11 Moses' father-in-law was Hobab -- or was it Jethro as is said in Exodus? See here.
4:15-16 "The Lord discomfited Sisera ... with the edge of the sword ... and there was not a man left." Someone should take the big guy's sword away. OUTR.
4:17-23 Jael (our heroine) offers food and shelter to a traveler (Sisera, Jabin's captain), saying "turn in my Lord ... fear not." SAB evidently thinks that an unarmed woman should have challenged a fully armed soldier to one-to-one combat -- he's been watching too many Xena episodes. Then after giving him a glass of milk and tucking him in, she drives a tent stake through his head. "So God subdued on that day Jabin by Jael." OUTR. I guess SAB thinks they should have stayed oppressed. Or maybe written their Congressman instead. See also 5:30.
5:24 For murdering her guest while he slept, Jael is "blessed above women." (Hail Jael, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women....?) OUTR. As blessed as say, someone who would assassinate Saddam? See also 5:30.
5:30 "Have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two?" Yes. The words of the enemy of Israel, which SAB forgets to mention. No wonder, because it shows that Jael knew exactly what was in store for her fellow Israelite women if this brigand was allowed to survive -- and regroup to attack Israel again.
5:31 "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord." (Let them all have their temples pierced by blessed women.) OUTR.
6:1-6 Every male Midianite was killed during the time of Moses (Num.31:7), and yet just a few years later they flourish like grasshoppers "without number." Ancient war hyperbole.
6:36-40 Gideon needs some signs to convince him that God isn't lying to him. So he puts down some wool on the ground and asks God to make it wet, while keeping the surrounding ground dry. And God does it, no sweat. But Gideon is still not sure he can trust God, so he asks him to reverse the trick, and make the ground wet and the wool dry. "And God did so ..." Gideon must have been impressed by a God that could do such great things. MIR.
7:4-7 God picks the men to fight in Gideon's army by the way they drink water. Only those that lap water with their tongues, "as a dog lappeth," shall fight. That from SAB the expert tactician. See here.
7:12 The Midianites and Amelekites had an infinite number of camels -- well, maybe not quite, but at least as many "as the sand by the sea shore." Ancient hyperbole, as noted above.
7:22 When Gideon and his water-lapping companions blow their trumpets, God forces all the enemy soldiers to kill each other. See above link.
7:25 Two princes are killed and their heads are brought to Gideon. OUTR.
8:7, 16 God refusing to feed him and his army, Gideon tears the flesh off the elders of Succoth and kills the men of the city. Where's it say God did this? Not in these passages.
8:20 Gideon orders his son to kill two kings, but he refuses. So Gideon has to do it himself since his son isn't "man" enough to do it. OUTR.
8:27 Gideon made an Ephod out of camel necklaces that caused "all Israel" to "go a whoring after it." And the problem is, what?
8:30-31 Gideon had 70 sons (no one knows how many daughters) "for he had many wives." Yes, and who said Gideon was perfect? Hello?
9:5 Abimelech kills 70 brothers "upon one stone." (He was trying to get in the Guinness Book of World Records.) Pointless remark by SAB.
9:13"Wine ... cheereth God and man." So God drinks wine and it makes him happy. But elsewhere, the bible condemns drinking alcohol. See here.
9:23-24 God sends evil spirits that cause humans to deal treacherously with each other. See here.
9:53-54 After being hit in the head with a millstone thrown by a woman, a soldier orders his armor bearer to kill him so that no one would say that a woman had killed him. Yep. And what? That's how many men thought in that day.
10:7 God is angry at Israel so he sells them to the Philistines. He had previously sold them to the kings of Mesopotamia (3:8) and Canaan (4:2). I guess he's a pretty shrewd businessman! See above.
11:21 God smites Sihon and all his people and gives their land to Israel. OUTR.
11:24 "Whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we [the Israelites] possess." OUTR.
11:29-39 When "the spirit of the Lord" comes upon Jephthah, he makes a deal with God: If God will help him kill the Ammonites, then he (Jephthah) will offer to God as a burnt offering whatever comes out of his house to greet him. God keeps his end of the deal by providing Jephthah with "a very great slaughter." But when Jephthah returns, his nameless daughter comes out to greet him (who'd he expect, his wife?). Well, a deal's a deal, so he delivers her to God as a burnt offering -- after letting her spend a couple of months going up and down on the mountains bewailing her virginity. See here.
12:6 42,000 men are killed because someone mispronounces "shibboleth." JUST for that? Do tell. No, they were thereby identified by their speech as enemies of war, and it was not just one person.
13:2-3, 6, 9 Manoah's nameless wife, like so many biblical women, is barren. But an angel fixes that, and Samson is born. MIR. And many women were barren in these hard times. Is SAB making fun of infertility problems?
13:5 Samson is not to cut his hair because he is a Nazarite unto God. But Paul (1 Cor.11:14) considers it shameful for a man to have long hair. See here.
13:22 "And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God." I'm not sure who they thought was God, but I guess it was the "man of God" or "angel" that came in unto her. Or maybe it was God himself. Hard to tell. In any case, they saw God, contrary to many Bible verses that insist that no one has ever seen God. See here.
13:24 "And the child [Samson] grew, and the Lord blessed him." Samson was one of the vilest of all the vile Bible heroes; Yet he was especially blessed by God. As a child here, yes. I guess SAB thinks he shouldn't have been given a chance.
14:1-3 Samson sees a Philistine woman and tells his parents to "get her for me; for she pleaseth me well." Yep. Sam wasn't perfect. Is SAB? Too bad.
14:5-8 Samson rips up a young lion when "the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him." Later, when going to "take" his Philistine wife he notices a swarm of bees and honey in the lion's carcass (a Divine miracle -- or just rotting flesh and maggots?). Need be neither. Why?
14:19 "And the spirit of the Lord came upon him [Samson], and he ... slew thirty men." (Samson might have been a decent person if he could have kept the spirit of the Lord off him.) Can this be the same "spirit of the Lord" whose fruit is love, peace, gentleness, goodness and meekness? (Gal.5:22-23) OUTR and see here.
15:2 Samson's father-in-law gives Samson's wife away to a friend, since he thought Samson "hated" her. He suggests that Samson take his younger daughter instead, saying the younger one's prettier anyway. Yes, so he was a jerk. So? Does SAB want truth or not?
15:4-8 Samson catches 300 foxes, ties their tails together, and sets them on fire; the Philistines burn Samson's' ex-wife and father-in-law; and Samson smites them "hip and thigh with a great slaughter" -- all in five action-packed verses! Don't you just love the Bible. Sounds like real life in ancient world, contrary to SAB's raised-on-Rambo implication. Again, what does he want, sanitized lies?
15:14-15 "The spirit of the Lord came mightily upon" Samson and "he found a new jawbone of an ass ... and took it, and slew 1000 men therewith." This is just another display of the fruits of the spirit described in Gal.5:22-23. Another display of SAB's unidimensionalism; see above.
16:1 "Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her." Did Samson do this because the spirit of the Lord came upon him again? Or does Samson only kill things when he is possessed by God? Pointless remark; otherwise see above.
16:3 Samson, after "going in unto" a harlot, takes the doors, gate, and posts of the city and carries them to the top of a hill. Why did he do this? Did God make him do it or was he just showing off? The Bible doesn't say. Like it needs to just to make SAB the wooden thinker happy 3000 years later?
16:17 Samson reveals the secret of his strength to Delilah: "If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me." (And I thought his strength was from God.) He thought wrong. It says that nowhere.
16:28-30 Samson, with God's help, kills himself and 3000 Philistine men and women by causing a roof to collapse. OUTR. One man's jerk, another man's freedom fighter. I guess Israel should have stayed oppressed.
19:22-30 After taking in a traveling Levite, the host offers his virgin daughter and his guest's concubine to a mob of perverts (who want to have sex with his guest). The mob refuses the daughter, but accepts the concubine and they "abuse her all night." The next morning she crawls back to the doorstep and dies. The Levite puts her dead body on an ass and takes her home. Then he chops her body up into twelve pieces and sends them to each of the twelve tribes of Israel (Parcel Post?). The story, which must be one of the most disgusting stories ever told, ends with: "consider of it, take advice, and speak your mind." Those who do consider it will immediately reject the idea that the Bible is inspired by God. Hopefully, they then will speak their mind. Hopefully SAB does not watch the news. If he wants only flower stories, he can look beyond reality. Otherwise see here for contextual perspective rather than just emotive immediate outrage.
20:18, 21 God tells the Israelites to send the tribe of Judah into battle and 22,000 men were killed by the Benjamites. Yes, it's war. And the problem is?
20:23, 25 God tells them to go to battle again and another 18,000 are killed. How does SAB know more would not have been killed had not someone else been sent?
20:35, 37 Finally, God enters the fray and kills 25,100 Benjamites. Actually, it just the text giving God sovereign credit. Not direct attribution.
21:7-23 To find wives for the Benjamites (they were unwilling to use their own daughters), the other tribes attacked and killed all occupants of a city except for the young virgins. These virgins were then given to the Benjamites for wives. SAB I suppose would prefer that they just die out. Not that the ancients with their group-orientation would have objected. All marriages were arranged to start with.