Judges
Introduction
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21

Injustice
Absurdities
Cruelty and Violence
Intolerance
Contradictions
Women
Family Values
Sex
Interpretation
Language
Prophecy
Science and History
Good Stuff
SAB: Judges

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on CD 		"And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel." -- Judges 19:29

Judges for Skeptics

Judges is a violent book even by biblical standards. It begins by chopping off the thumbs and big toes of a captured king and ends by chopping up a dead concubine's body and sending the pieces in the mail parcel post. Along the way it describes, with apparent relish and approval, a gruesome "message from God" (a knife blade stuck deeply into a fat man's belly); a tent stake driven through a sleeping man's skull; a couple of severed heads delivered to Gideon; the killing of 69 brothers upon a single stone; a daughter killed by her father as a sacrifice to God; 300 foxes tied together by their tails and lit on fire; 1000 men killed with a jawbone of an ass; and, in what is probably the most disgusting story in all literature, the rape, death and mutilation of the Levite's concubine. And I've left a lot out. Read it yourself, if you have a strong enough stomach, that is. And be sure to check out:

  • Cutting off the thumbs and big toes of a captured king. 1:6-7

  • God couldn't drive out the valley people because they had chariots of iron. 1:19

  • Ehud's message from God. 3:20-22

  • God sells the Israelites into slavery. 3:8, 4:2, 10:7

  • Shamgar kills 600 Philistines with an ox goad. 3:31

  • Jael drives a tent stake through her guest's head. For this she is "blessed above women." 4:17-23, 5:24-26

  • "Have they not divided the prey, to every man a damsel or two?" 5:30

  • God takes Gideon's fleece/dew test. 6:36-40

  • God finds a few good men with a dog-lapping test. 7:4-7

  • "The Lord set every man's sword against his fellow." 7:21

  • Two princes killed and their heads delivered to Gideon 7:25

  • Gideon tears the flesh of the elders of Succoth and kills the men of the city. 8:7, 16-17

  • Gideon's many wives" 8:30

  • Abimelech kills 69 brothers "upon one stone." 9:5

  • God sends an evil spirit. 9:23

  • Jephthah sacrifices his daughter to God. 11:29-39

  • The spirit of God comes mightily upon Samson (and he kills things). 14:6, 14:19, 14-16

  • Samson catches 300 foxes, ties their tails together, and sets them on fire. 15:4-5

  • Samson kills 1000 men with the jawbone of an ass. 15:14-16

  • Samson goes in unto a harlot. 16:1

  • The Levite and his concubine. 19:22-30
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Christian Response
Annotated Skeptic's Annotated Bible
Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? (Judges, introduction)