Theology in the Raw - 833: Understanding the Book of Judges: Dr. Michelle Knight

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

This episode is a deep dive into the book of Judges with one of the world's leading experts in the book: Dr. Michelle Knight. We focus mainly on Judges 4-5, the story about that BA Woman, Jael, who smashes a tent peg through the skull of a skilled warrior and the follow up poem that celebrates the incident. We also talk about the horrific rape of the concubine in Judges 19 and some ethical problems with the conquest in the book of Joshua. 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today Dr. Michelle Knight. Dr. Knight teaches Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. She got her PhD at Wheaton College. She is an expert in the book of Judges. She did her PhD dissertation on the song of Deborah and Barak from Judges 5. And that's where we go in this podcast. This is an in-depth Bible study podcast. We talk about specific nitty gritty elements of the book of Judges. Then we talk about the conquest, some of the ethical problems of the conquest in the book of Joshua. And so this is just a pure And so this is just a pure grade A, unadulterated, high octane look at some of the most neglected books. Well, I think Judges is often neglected, at least in the popular Christian circles.

And so we just go after it. This is just a hardcore Bible study. So please welcome to the show for the first time, Dr. Michelle Knight. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am here with my new virtual friend, Dr. Michelle Knight. Michelle, thanks so much for being on the show for the first time. I'm excited to be here. Thanks. All right. So, Michelle, you have a PhD in Old Testament and Semitic languages from Wheaton College. And I don't know if people know, but that PhD program, I remember when they first started it.

And it was like so incredibly hard to get into. Like they take just a couple students a year in each discipline. Is it still like that? Yeah, they still just take two. At least the last time I was there, they took two Old Testament students a year or two for each advisor. And so, yeah, it was competitive. I mean, it's one of the most competitive evangelical programs. So it was but it was a really good fit. So I'm glad it was competitive. I mean, it's one of the most competitive evangelical programs. So it was, but it was a really good fit. So I'm glad it worked out. And you studied under Daniel Block, who, again, if people don't know that name, he is, to my mind, at least one of the top five evangelical Old Testament scholars who is truly evangelical. And yet, I hate saying and yet, but you know what I mean?

And yet a world renowned Old Testament scholar. Like he wrote the definitive, from my mind, commentary on the book of Ezekiel. It's like, what, 1600 pages or something? Yeah, and still considered to be. He's a profound Old Testament scholar. And now you're a professor, assistant professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages, right? At Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which, again, if you know the field of seminaries, is one of the top evangelical seminaries in the world, really. So you're kind of a big deal, Michelle. And here you're on my little podcast.

Yeah, something like that. So let's just dive in. One of your main areas of research is the Book of Judges. So let's just dive in. One of your main areas of research is the book of Judges. And as we just mentioned offline, that is one of my favorite books in the Old Testament, specifically because of the literary genius of the book. I mean, people usually go to Judges because it's an engaging book. There's lots of gnarly stories. It's not hard to read. Whenever I want to wake my kids up to the Bible, I just say, all right, let's turn to judges at the edge of their seat.

But having taught Old Testament survey over the years, every year I've constantly noticed just little things throughout the book that shows that the author is so intentional, not just in what they say, but how they say it. Like little tiny details, right? Am I right there? Absolutely. I mean, there have been, I mean, the amount of research I did for my dissertation. I mean, there was so much written on the literary artistry and judges, and there's still more to be said. I mean, there's so much to notice the literary artistry and judges, and there's still more to be said.

I mean, there's so much to notice. Yeah. So it is really brilliant. Good. I mean, I would notice things. I'm like, am I just seeing this? And I wish I can get some examples. Well, let me just say this, and I want to jump into Judges 5, your dissertation topic.

But Daniel Block, your advisor, famously said, you know, the theme of judges is the Canaanization of Israel. If you don't drive out the Canaanites, you will become one of them. And judges one and two sets it up. They didn't drive them out. And then you had this downward spiral, right? Am I correct me if I'm wrong? I'm, I'm kind of nervous. The judge is special. This downward spiral and they become more and more and more canonized so that when you get to the end of the book um you have this famous and one of the most gruesome um disturbing passages in all of scripture judges 19 um which is a mirror it's it's a it's almost a a replica of the story of sodom and gomorrah only now instead of these horrific Sodomites doing all this terrible stuff, they're Israelites, Benjamites in particular, who are acting like Sodomites.

And just the way the author retells that story and maps it on the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. But all throughout this story, there's little details. It's just like, is society just turned inside out this is just a really uh yeah um what so judges five is uh is it called deborah's song is that the official kind of academic or what's the sure that's what most people call it is the song of deborah every now and again when i'm trying to be nitpicky, I call it the song of Deborah and Barack, because sometimes we forget that Barack sang with Deborah and that's kind of a big deal. Um,

it's one of the only times in the book that God and the people seem to be on the same page. So for a prophet and for the judge to be singing alongside each other, it's kind of a big deal. So, uh, it's a mouthful, but I tend to like to call it the song of deborah and barack for that reason i did yeah that's totally chapter five verse one and that then that on that day deborah and barack uh sang and then they sang the song yeah because i always thought it was yeah we totally miss it i know that and i mean she's the prophet and it's

definitely in her voice uh but the fact that he was able to sing it too is pretty key to how the narrative unfolds. Now her name's listed first. Is that significant? Because she does kind of, she's kind of the leader of the day in Judges 4. Well, in Hebrew, it's even more significant because like the verb only agrees with her as the subject and he's kind of tacked on. So it's really clear in the Hebrew that she is the primary voice. It's like a feminine verb. So she sang and he's kind of tacked on so it's really clear in the hebrew that she is the primary voice it's it's like a feminine verb uh so she's saying and he's saying too uh so and that's a standard kind of hebrew construction it's not too weird but it does identify her as like the main

subject but isn't that the whole point of judges for the whole story that it's celebrating that barack is there but she's really in control kind of thing i mean or it really depends on how you read it okay you guys okay but i challenged that a little bit okay okay well let's go back to judges for give us your your from your vantage point just an overview of judges for what's going on there and then we'll get into uh song of Deborah and Barack. Sure. And you said Barack a couple of times, and that's, I think, maybe the standard English reading. So sorry that I keep switching. No, it's fine.

I can't help but read it in Hebrew. But anyway, yeah. So in Judges 4, we have the people yet again have started doing evil, as we have kind of every time somebody new gets on the scene in Judges, we have them transgressing their agreement with God. And so that's how it starts out. He sells them into the hand of the Canaanites. So this is a big deal, because this is the first time in Judges that it's actually people from inside the land of Canaan that are oppressing Israel. He's not bringing somebody new in. These are like the stereotypical people. Their one job in life is to fight these guys. And these are the people that are giving Israel a hard time. And the Jabin is the king, but he has a general named Sisera. Sisera and Jabin are set up pretty nicely because they have iron chariots. So we're at like the turn into the

iron age. And so for there to be um chariots is kind of a big deal and that also shows us that they have chariots which is more than israel had and this is also the weapon that in judges one gave everybody trouble this is the reason they couldn't complete the conquest is because there were these really well um armed people so these are the people who have israel under their control in judges four um deborah comes on the these are the people who have Israel under their control in Judges 4. Deborah comes on the scene because the people have cried out to God like they always do. And they go to Deborah for help. And they're like, we don't know what to do. And she says, well, we got to get Barak in here. And what is generally, this is the part that we all argue about as scholars. The general

reading is that Barak says, I don't want to go to battle. And then Deborah has to be like, dude, get with the program. God called you, you got to do it. And so we tend to paint it as him being like hesitant, but her being courageous and strong and being the real leader. And she's like dragging him along the whole way.

Occasionally, I think we're over-reading there a little bit because what she does in Judges 4 is say, let me read it here so I'm not making this stuff up. He says, if you go with me, I'll go. But if you don't go with me, I won't go. And she says, listen, I'll go with you. But because of what you're doing, the honor won't be yours. For God's going to deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman. So a lot of times we hear that honor word.

We automatically mean that if he's not getting honor, he's getting shamed. And then that tends to be how we read the whole chapter. But what it really looks like is happening is God saying, listen, something great is going to happen, but you're not going to be the guy who does it. I'm going to do it through a totally different way. In fact, it's going to be a woman. And it being a woman isn't shameful. It being a woman is a civilian. It's not going to be the military that brings victory.

It's going to be a housewife. And so right off the bat, she's like, I'm happy to go with you, but going with you isn't going to be where the battle happens anyway. It's going to be in jail's tent is kind of this how I would read that. And I'm not totally alone there. Just FYI. I'm just going out on a limb a little bit. No, yeah, the reading you're kind of countering a little bit is how I always understood it, that it is,

he's kind of a wuss, you know, and he needs this woman to come along and it's kind of a roundabout shaming of him. So you're saying it's not that clear. I would argue it's not. There's all sorts of shaming in the narrative, but it's all centered on Sisera. He's really the only one that experiences shame.

And at the end, we do get a little bit, I mean, he's definitely criticized. But what's interesting is in the Song of Deborah in Chapter 5, when she goes through, she evaluates everybody that took part in the battle. She yells at certain tribes for not coming. She applauds other ones. She never at certain tribes for not coming. She applauds other ones. She never says Barak did anything wrong. So it's kind of interesting that in that prophetic moment, she never calls him out. So it seems like more what she's doing is educating him.

Again, he did something wrong by not immediately listening to a prophet. But the narrative goes out of its way to make Sisera look like a wuss. It doesn't do so much with Barack. I would say it mostly shows Barack is hesitant and that's going to be problematic. Gideon's going to kind of take that and roll with it and be really a problem. That makes more sense in light of where it's at in the narrative.

Cause this is what always threw me off. If this was a massive shaming and barrack, I wouldn't expect it so early on because early on, you know, Ehud is, he's pretty good he's there's you know what's with the idols and this stuff but then the next one shouldn't be that bad and then we get all the way down to samson right i would actually argue that we don't

start evaluating the judges till chapter six and there's a couple others that agree with me because if you think about it we don't have that much information about ehud like he did his job and he did it well and we have a little more information about Barak, but it's not until we meet Gideon that we know about his motivations, that we hear his internal monologue, that we know why he's making decisions. We have none of that information for the first three judges. And so I would argue, and some others with me, that the first three judges are more about saying, look at what God can do. And he can do it with the most unexpected instruments, whether it be a left-handed warrior from Benjamin or a woman with a tent peg. And then it's going to be how will Israel respond

to these three great victories? And we're going to see they're going to respond worse and worse as they go on. But I do think you're right. We already have hints in the early chapters that things are going to go awry. So it's not like it's all sunshine and rainbows. But I think that we overread just a little bit some of the negatives in these early narratives, personally. All right. I'll process that. That makes sense.

Does she give him milk because it is kind of a sedative? Some people argue that. Other people just talk about – some people would say that. Some people would say it's like a maternal picture. And feminists tend to kind of highlight that, that there's some motherly imagery going on. She kind of – and it's part of the shaming of Sisra. She gives him milk. She puts him to bed.

Yada, yada, yada that's put him to bed uh i would say something more like every time he asks her to do something she does something else i call it subtle insurgency uh it's kind of uh a way the narrative is just showing us that at every stage uh she's kind of got her own agenda and she's doing her own thing um but I think that you're right there's definitely a sense in which it can make him tired that's how some people talk about it and it's certainly also an honorary thing she didn't just give him water she gave him something more costly and in the song it calls it a bowl fit for nobles so that would suggest that part of it is her showing her deceiving him by making it look like she's honoring him.

Whereas instead, she's kind of got her own thing going on. It could be like the last meal before execution. Indeed, she's sending him for the slaughter. The sedative effect is possible, I suppose, but I actually don't hear that too frequently. Well, it does say, you know, he was sleeping from exhaustion in verse 21. It doesn't say he was sleeping because he was from milk. So it doesn't seem like the author could possibly imply, but he's not drawing attention to that. He certainly had a big enough day that I don't think milk is going to be what sets him over the edge at this point.

He didn't have to flee the battle on foot. So I think he had other reasons to be tired oh she here's typical judges um she hammered the peg into his temple which is that's you could we could end there and maybe get the picture and drove it into the ground and he died you know yeah you think and he died died. And in Judges 5, in the song, it uses seven verbs. Not just one or two. It uses seven verbs to describe her pounding it into his temple just to make sure that we stop and slow down and take in all of that horror. That's 5, 26, and 27.

She reached for the ten-pagan right hand hammered sisera crushed his head shattered and pierced his temple he collapsed he fell he laid down at her feet he collapsed he collapsed he fell at her feet what's with the rep in chapter and i'm kind of getting ahead here but in chapter 5 verse 27 i've always it's so poetic it's so repetitive is that just that is that like a ancient aries version of like slow motion? Like, you know, absolutely. It's part of I mean, the whole song uses a different kind of repetition than we see in poems in the other parts of the Bible. So it's already kind of a weird sort of extra repetitive kind of poetry. If you read other parts, it's like that. But in that part, I would absolutely say that it slows it down. Uh, it's incredibly slow motion, um, to a degree that we actually don't

see a lot in poetry. So this is a really, um, it's a really artistic rendering of what's going on. But yeah. And does that go with the shame, even him laying down at her feet? Is that like a posture of submission or worship or um yeah i would i would say something like conquering but i think it's especially important when we read it um with what comes next in the song uh the next part of the song is um sisera's household they're sitting around at home like waiting for him to come home they don't know what's happened so we're supposed to kind of enjoy that irony as much as it's a cruel irony. But they are sitting there kind of daydreaming about the spoil he's going to bring home. And that spoil includes women that he has conquered.

And so part of the juxtaposition of the two images is the vulnerable civilian woman that would have been a prisoner of war that would have become one of the women he brought home for himself is actually the one that subdued him at her feet. And so whether that has some sexual overtones or not, it definitely means she conquered him in a way that he would have expected to conquer her. So the reversal is really staggering. Yeah. That verse 30, the mother saying, you know, like, when's my son going to show up with a couple of his, you know, conquered slave women, you know, like, Oh my God, the mother's like, it's just bizarre. Yeah.

Every now and again, I'm like, why did I work in this chapter for like four years? It's a lot. All right. So let's, let's just go back. Tell, tell, okay. So we, you summed up Judges 4. So what's going on at Judges 5? And I, I am one of these people who, you know, I appreciate the poetry, but I haven't always, I've always wondered, like, what's, if I just skip over chapter 5, how much is lost? And that's probably so insulting to somebody that did their dissertation on chapter 5, but I'm just being honest, you know? So yeah, tell us about chapter 5.

What should the average reader take away here? Let me set it this way. At the end of Deuteronomy, we get this prophecy that there will be other prophets that rise up. There'll be a prophet like Moses. The first person in the Old Testament who was called a prophet after Moses is actually Deborah. And what's interesting is we, I mean, we have Joshua, he's called a slew of things. He's never called a prophet. Similarly, we have a messenger in Judges 2, never called a prophet. That might be a big deal. It might not. But the point is, by calling her a Neviah, sorry, a prophet or a prophetess,

we are identifying her as somebody who is like Moses and somebody who speaks for God. In fact, if you look at Judges 4, even the narrative just sets her up as the spokesperson of God. She's always saying, did not God say, has not Yahweh commanded? And so when we get into Judges 5, it's important to remember that we have a prophetic authority speaking. A battle has just happened, yeah, but then a prophet stands up and says, let me tell you what just happened in my own words and from my own perspective. And so right here on the battlefield, rather than having to wait for the author of Judges to help us understand what happened, they on that day had somebody with

an inspired authoritative voice explain to them what just happened and how they should understand it. And so one of the ways I tend to talk about Judges 5 is it's a prophetic interpretation of the battle. It tells us what happened with a more kind of theologically robust way. She does things like criticize certain people. She yells at them for not coming at the moment of need. She does things like identify that what JL did is blessed. This is something that we should look at and see positively,

which is helpful when all of us come and ask what happened with Jael. Was it okay that she did that? We should probably remember that the prophet said it was a good thing. She talks through the fact that the stars from their courses, that's the word she uses,

fought against Sisera. When she talks about the battle, she doesn't glorify the men who did this or that or the other. The actual battle scene that she describes talks about stars and it talks about the water. These are the two entities that fought. And so when she reimagines the battle, she does it in terms of God's agency. Can you explain stars are you talking like is that paralleling like angelic beings kind of like not literal stars or either way when we talk about the stars from their courses we're generally talking about creation

responding and within the hebrew bible i mean we have a theophany uh which would be an appearance of god early uh in judges five so we're already waiting for kind of creation to respond because he shows up, he's shaking the mountains. And so we're waiting for creation to respond. So we see stars, we see the Kishon River for Awadi, if you know Israel. But so we're already expecting that. Other people have drawn attention to the fact that stars are associated with rain in the ancient Near East. They're also associated with like the goddess Anot. And so there is kind of just a general expectation that if creation is responding, it's responding

to a deity and that a deity is the one kind of in charge of that. And so to talk about all these supernatural things happening is a way of saying, sure, Israel, you were there. And in fact, this song celebrates that you showed up, but showed up is all you did. God was the one that brought victory. And that's the way Judges 4 says it too. It says God was the one that routed Sisera on that day.

It doesn't say anything about the army. And so it kind of reiterates the same thing we started to see in Judges 4, that this wasn't about the army. It wasn't about the army. It wasn't about their strength. In fact, Judges 5 goes out of its way to highlight how weak Israel's army was. They didn't have any spears. They didn't have a sword. There was nothing there. They had no commerce. They weren't doing daily life. I'm looking, when I talk about that up in Judges 5 versus 6 and 7. The highways were abandoned.

Travelers had to use kind of winded paths that were safe. And so we see Israel completely dilapidated and unable to do anything. And so what the song does is highlight Israel had nothing. He can use whatever he needs to to get the job done. Ultimately, no matter how weak we are, no matter how weak an army is, he can enable them to do great things. And in Judges 4 and 5, he proves that to them by using jail. It's not going to be the Israelite army that brings victory. It's going to be jail and a tent. It's going to be a non-Israelite, just in case you want to get nationalistic. And it's going to be a woman just to make sure you don't get militaristic. Uh, and so at the end of the

day, God is one who brings victory and he does it in really weird and unexpected places. And he does it with the people you consider to be weakest. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Dale, she's not a, she's not an Israelite. Oh, Hebrew, the wife of Hebrew, the Kenite. Yeah. She's not an Israelite. Oh, Hebrew, the wife of Hebrew, the Kenite. Yeah. She's not an Israelite. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I never, wow. Okay. And so at the end of the day, when the song ends, we have kind of this challenge to Israel that those who love God can go forth with his might. Like you have no reason to be nervous about going to battle. God is a God

who does miraculous things just like he did in the Exodus. He's doing it now, which is going to set us up for chapter six when after we've had this massive display of God's sovereign ability to control things and bring victory, Gideon's going to be like, you haven't done anything for us since the Exodus. And that's going to just kind of ring in our ears as line to what God has just done. Mine's spinning here. This is good stuff. I feel like I owed Ted some tuition money for this. I did just talk a lot. I'm sorry about that.

Seriously. Yeah. I'm still just reeling from she's the first. Deborah's the first prophet since Moses. And for any Israelite who knows Deuteronomy 18 is looking for a prophet like unto Moses, which is a very, can we say, messianic theme expectation-ish? I mean, at least when you get the Jesus, he taps into that. Wow. I know. And it's a woman.

And it's a woman. And if you read Judges 4 carefully, I did an intertextual study for one thing I did. And all of her actions have really strong mosaic overtones. Really? Even sitting under the palm of Deborah and people coming up to her for judgment. That's the way Moses is described, the way that they came to him. So it's really interesting how mosaic she is. She is the person at this point in this area who speaks for God. And that's what Moses was for the people.

What tribe is she from? Oh, I don't know. Or Naphtali? I think that we tend to guess based on where she does her stuff because she's in the hill country of Ephraim. That's where she held court. And so we are assuming she's from that, but we aren't told exactly what i mean we know who her

wife is or her husband rather yeah well depending on how we translate them okay okay so the uh judges five has this kind of divine warrior theme i mean we see this oh absolutely in most battle scenes in israel it's typically you got a weak army. God's a big God. Have faith in me and I'll take care of it. That's kind of the summary of. Yeah, pretty common. And even like, yeah, even in Joshua is at 10 when like not only did the sun stand still and hailstones come down,

but the author makes it a point like more people were killed by the hailstones than by the swords. It's actually, it's a really consistent motif in all of the warfare passages of the Old Testament to really assign primary agency to Yahweh. So how does this song, a song of Deborah and Barak, how does it function in the rest of the book? Like, cause you said you tied this to the kind of overarching literary purpose of the book. Yeah. Well, I would say part of what the book is doing, as you have articulated, Dan Block did before that, that we're showing kind of the canonization of Israel. We've shown how they've come from the Joshua generation, who was really faithful. The whole book of Joshua is talking about how great everybody did at following instructions and how faithfully God completed his work in them. The judges generation then is, or generations, are all of the people who steadily fell away,

so that we understand where we end up by the time we get to the monarchy and we see what's happening with Samuel and everything. And so in this process of notice of tracking the downturn, what Judges does in Judges 2 and 3, it sets us up for the book by saying they're going to have all of these military skirmishes, and these are going to teach them about war, but it's also going to help us evaluate, it's going to help to show whether or not they're going to be able to follow what God has had for them to do. It's important to remember that most of the legal literature they've gotten at this point is giving them instructions on how to settle in the land. Properly following all of these rules about dedicating this land to God and doing it fully and making sure to resist the influence of the inhabitants of the land is crucial to the way that we identify whether or not they're being faithful. So how people respond in war is evaluated every time we have a battle narrative in Judges.

And what Judges 5 does is it kind of gives us a paradigmatic battle. It's the one that's against the Canaanites, which is like the name of can happen to the land. And it gives us kind of a hermeneutical key to say, how should we interpret what we're seeing here? And we get a moment where somebody speaking with God's voice tells us it tracks all of the people, what they did, and then tells us if it was good or bad. Um, and so we also get the, the, the, um, we get all of the standards we need to keep making those judgments as we keep reading. The other thing I would say about it in the book is that the first three narratives, like I insinuated earlier, are a little more focused on God and his great deliverance and a little bit less on the judges and their failures. That's a little bit more in the second half of the book.

a little bit less on the judges and their failures. That's a little bit more in the second half of the book. So this is the song that comes after those first three judges and before the next three. So it provides kind of a break where it's like, let's review. God was really awesome. And he did really great things. Now, what are you going to do about it? So when Gideon starts out being like, I don't know, God hasn't really done anything for us recently. That's the beginning at the end. And so we see, even though it's a gradual downturn, it becomes sharp right then. So from Gideon onward, we see things kind of spiral out of control a lot more quickly because we've had this moment where the judge and the prophet were on the same page for a second. And we start thinking that like, maybe they're going to be okay. And we find out that they're not. That makes total second. And we start thinking that like, maybe they're going to be okay. Um,

and we find out that they're not. That makes total sense. So it's kind of like a, yeah, it's a transition. I mean, that plays a really significant theological point then, because this is like,

yeah, concluding the good perspective before we kind of get into the downfall. Um, where Israel, like this is what the author judges thinks, where they think Israel should be, trusting in God, not in their own might, not being fearful. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Is there, you mentioned offline, you know, you've done some work in like kingship and Old Testament and ancient Near East. Is there like a critique of power or kingship here i mean it's the in verse three chapter five you know listen kings pay attention princes and you've already shown that like you know this this housewife is the hero of the day um is that is that going on in judges as well i mean I mean, that's obviously an ongoing discussion. I mean, in Judges, we always debate whether it's pro or anti-kingship, especially because at the end of the book, it talks about how all of this happened in a day when there wasn't kings.

And so a lot of people would say all of Judges is about showing how badly kings were needed. And I would want to, if I said that, I'd want to say it shows us how badly good kings were needed. And I would want to, if I said that, I want to say it shows us how badly good kings were needed. Because most of the time, the word kings is used in judges. As you pointed out, it's negative. The only time we talk about kings and judges, they're non-Israelite kings, and they're a bad example. The one Israelite king we get is Abimelech. And he took the throne by force. And he's actually painted less like an Israelite and more like one of these other Canaanite rulers. The point is, when Israel tries to make the king for itself, it looks a lot more like the nations. And Samuel's going to say

the same thing in the next book of the Bible. That's exactly how I've taken it. So that's, and that's not overly simplistic, like that it's not critiquing kingship per se, but it's critiquing kingship like the nations. Yeah, absolutely. And I think Samuel is very clear about that, I would argue. And the way that he articulates the problem, it's the like the nations part. In fact, in his speech with the people in his conversation,

he specific, at point, they say we want to be like the nations, they don't even just say we want a king like the nations. And so the problem with kingship in judges is not that there's a king, but the kind of kingship there is. And I would say that has something to do with this military business. The kind of kingship that's really militaristic and about getting as much land as possible and conquering other people, that's the kind of kingship that's problematic.

And that's what gets Solomon in trouble in his later days. And it's what makes Saul a bad king too. David's going to be one that conquers and does all of these things, but he constantly says, God fights, I don't fight. That's David's whole thing. And so I would say the good kingship is one that recognizes and defers ultimate authority, specifically in military matters, to God.

That's kind of a big theme. I mean, throughout all of scripture, really. Yeah, I mean, it's the, and that's what's, I know it's, I don't mean to make it so simple, but it really is. And it's, it's constant throughout the old Testament. Um, and kingship seems to be the mode by which that gets measured in the faithfulness of Israel, uh, in the way that these military things seem to just be kind of the crucible in which we see, um, everybody's hearts, uh, kind of the crucible in which we see everybody's hearts kind of laid bare. And so it ends up being the mode by which everybody's faithfulness is measured. Kings, judges, even the people in the wilderness. It was in battle that we discerned whether or not they were obedient.

Wow. And then Jesus comes along and kind of redefines kingship according to the original vision, which was incredibly countercultural, but was kind of there all along, right? The Deuteronomy 17 King. Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, judges, so you would say it is a pro-Davidic book or, or is that too much? I mean, I'm not ready. I i mean am i ready to say that somebody sat down and was like i want to say that david's awesome and they wrote the book that way i'm not

sure i would say that uh but i would say that it is written to show how israel ended up wanting the wrong kind of king i think that's what I want to say. And that's embodied in the judges as they get progressively worse and worse and worse. Well, and most importantly, they get bad when they start choosing them themselves, which is exactly what they tried to do with the king too. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. What's going on at the end of the book? So this, I mentioned, you know, judges 19, um, you got this horrific incident where you have the,

is it the Levi goes and stays at, I'm reading out of a newer Bible here and I, all my notes are gone, but, um, that's the worst. You're talking about the Gibeah incident and judges. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Within Denny. yeah, he had this brutal, I mean, rape scene. Yeah. How do you, how do you, when you read this, and I don't know what to say as a female, but I mean, I just. I understand. I read it through a male lens for so many years and then tried to recognize that I'm reading it through a male lens, which is still disturbing. But yeah, what's going on in this passage in Judges 19? So many things. The one

thing that I'll highlight before we start is right in the middle of the passage, you already identified the fact that in these last chapters of Judges, we kind of have a body of chapters designed to show us just how bad Israel has gotten. So the fact that it's tucked in there should give us a lot of guidance about how to read the story. We should expect this to be Israel at her worst. And the other thing we'd want to highlight is one of the things Judges 17 through 21 says all the time is they did what was right in their own eyes. Right smack dab in the middle of judges 19. One of the characters says that. And so this is an important minute for us to realize that these people are living out.

This is supposed to be the apex of the sin of the nation. So that needs to guide what we're watching for. So in judges 19, we have a Levite. Um, we don't have his name and a lot of the people on the end of the book are anonymous, partially because I think the narrative is going out of his way to make us think in terms of their social function, not kind of their particular story. But I just call him a Levite. It reminds us that this is the religious leader of Israel, a religious leader of Israel. And so what do we see? We see him be fairly self-centered throughout the narrative. We see him party with this girl's dad and she's kind of barely mentioned.

We see her agency kind of go away throughout the narrative. And then, like you noticed, they get to Gibeah. There's a Levite, his friends, his male servant, and then the concubine or his secondary wife. And when they're there, people want to rape him. But instead, the host offers her to the crowd. And you highlighted something. You highlighted the fact that this has a lot of echoes, actually very specific and very strong resemblances with Sodom and Gomorrah.

And you talked about how important it is that this is an Israelite settlement that's acting like Sodom, not an anti-Israelite settlement. But the other key thing to remember is that this was only threatened in Sodom. This didn't actually happen in Sodom. And so we not only have the fact that this is Israel acting like Sodom, we have Israel doing what even Sodom wasn't allowed to do. And one of the key things I want to highlight, too, is that the reason it didn't happen in Sodom is because God rescued the victim. But God doesn't rescue the victim here. And that, I think, is like the key that we all have to sit with as we try to read this and try to understand how people interpret this as a woman. But I mean, as other people who have spoken, who have experienced sexual victimization, like that is the part that they can't get past because God didn't save her.

And I think the key that we need to remember is, again, the context of Judges. I think the key that we need to remember is, again, the context of Judges. In Judges 10, he had said, listen, you guys have cried out to me over and over and over again, but you keep turning away from me. And he says, I will save you no more. And in Judges 10, he stops delivering them fully. He protects them. He gives them Jephthah. He gives them Samson. Actually, he doesn't give them Jephthah.

The people choose Jephthah, but he uses him. And even though they're a mess, he uses them to keep Israel going, to kind of hold on. But he doesn't give them pure military victory anymore. He stops saving them. And so in this apex of the terrible story, we see him yet again not save. We see him yet again, not save. And so we see what kind of if we want to use a Pauline phrase, he gives them over to their own selfish and their own vein. He gives them over to their own sin, basically. And we see what happens when people are left to their own devices. If you aren't going to follow me, I'm going to let you do your thing. And so I guess I'll say as a woman,

as somebody who's trying to be sensitive to the experience of victims of sexual abuse, that violence being there is a critique in and of itself. That's God's way of saying, I have preserved the story to make sure that this woman's horror is heard. Okay. And I'm judging it and I'm calling it the apex of what a sinful society can do. And so it being there in some way gives a voice to all the people who have experienced that to know that God recognizes and judges this to be the worst that somebody could do to dishonor him. No, that's super, that's super helpful. It's just such a disturbing passage.

One of several in the book. Yeah. Let's go to, so we, speaking of ethically troubling passages, before I let you go, are we doing okay on time? You got one more? Yeah, I'm good. All right, let's talk about the conquest. Just right here at the end.

We'll just talk about that. Yeah, we'll throw it in for the last five minutes. Even the word conquest is a real positive way of describing what one could consider, although I have critiques about the language, genocide. or although I've critiques about the language, genocide. Deuteronomy 20, 16, when you go into the land of Canaan,

do not, how's the old translation? Do not save alive anything that breathes. I think he even said like slaughter the cows or I mean, it's like a full on annihilation. And it's one thing to say, hey, these are really bad people um the soldiers are going to come at you i want you to just destroy their military force but to kill off anything that breeze includes women children pregnant women little baby i mean it's when you really think through the actual historicity of this it it's, it's again, very disturbing.

And I'm almost equally disturbed that so many Christians raised in the church have grown up with the book of Joshua and aren't disturbed. I wasn't for so many years. I love Joshua. Quote Joshua, Joshua one, nine, you know, be strong and courageous as you're committing genocide, you know, and we wear that on our... Help us, how have you worked through the ethics of the book of Joshua? Yeah, I mean, not sufficiently is the short answer. But one of the things that I always tell my students is when they come to these passages, they should bother them, as you articulated.

We should have to grapple with this a little bit. That doesn't show a lack of faith. That doesn't show a lack of understanding. It shows that we value life and we have to wonder what God is doing. There are a couple of things I try to keep in mind as I read these passages. One of those is that historically, and I, I hate even making this argument because it sounds like I'm trying to make it easier to swallow and that's not what I'm trying to do. Um, but it is important for us to remember that chances are, um, what we're talking about is the

people who didn't run away. Um, a lot of times we, I mean, we've already heard, for example, in the Jericho story, Rahab says, everybody is melted away before you because we heard about what your God did in the Exodus. And so a lot of people would actually argue that what we're talking about is some people have fled and that what this is saying is we need to have a decisive victory over those who remain. Again, I'm not sure that that solves very many problems for us, uh, really, but it is good for us to remember that this is kind of formulaic language that's used in military accounts, um, to describe a decisive victory. And it's ultimately about making the area, um, clean and pure for Yahweh. And so everybody needs to get out.

Most of the time in the deuteronomy passages actually it doesn't use the vocabulary of extinguish or kill it uses the vocabulary of drive out exactly the influence of the paganite society is what needs to be gone and so that's going to happen i mean there's no question that when you're invading a land there's either going to be peaceful covenants or there's going to be fighting. Those are really your only two options. And so covenants aren't allowed. So there's going to be fighting with whoever remains. And so that's what we're talking about is the people who won't leave. This is this is what we're doing. So there's there's that. Yeah. But on top of that, because that doesn't solve everything.

One thing I try to remind people, it doesn't solve anything, frankly, I think. One thing we need to remember is that nations rise and fall all throughout the Bible. All throughout the Bible, God builds up nations and tears them down. In fact, he's going to tear down Israel in a pretty decisive way. Some of the very vocabulary that's used of the way that the Canaanites get driven out of the land is the same vocabulary we see used in the prophets for the way that Israel is driven out

of Israel, that the Israelites are driven from the land in the exile. And so it's good for us to remember that, I mean, all through Daniel, we have him rising up an empire, then moving in another one. God and his providence does that kind of stuff in history. Well, depending on how you like to talk about God's providence, I acknowledge that. But he does kind of stuff throughout history. And so we have this one time highlighted because it was the one time that Israel had to be obedient and had to be a part of it. And so we hear all about it over and over. I think sometimes when we turn the story into these terrible Canaanites and these great Israelites,

we miss the fact that this wasn't about race at all. It was about faithfulness to Yahweh. Rahab gets to be part of the Israelites because she confesses that Yahweh is God for all we know that happened all the time. Um, and so I think it's just helpful to remember this isn't about Israel and the other guys. This is about Yahwism and not Yahwism. Uh, this is about a land devoted to God and not devoted to God. Um, again, that doesn't solve anything, but I think it helps us to remember that Israel is going to experience the same fate when she gets, when,

when the nation gets to a place where she is committing atrocities too. And I think, yeah, I've got several thoughts. I mean, I wouldn't say, I mean, it does solve something. I mean, it does help to read this story. If you read it through the lens of just trying to come at it with a neutral worldview or something, then, yeah, it's going to be problematic. But if you come at it within some kind of biblical worldview that we, you know, assuming that there is a God who does have the right to punish whole people groups. In fact, if you go back to Genesis 6, you can almost say God genocided the entire human population through the flood.

Yeah, we have a lot of other violence to be upset about. The difference is this has a human agent, but again, the whole story is framed in this larger framework of divine punishment. God is using Israelrael as an agent whereas other places he doesn't like to flood or whatever um but it's still divine punishment at least that's

the perspective presented in the story so this is why i don't like to use the term genocide takes a more modern phenomenon and and places on the biblical presentation of this, but it doesn't really fit. It's not like a bunch of racist Israelites went in and just randomly slaughtered Canaanites because they didn't like the Canaanite people. That's not really what's going on in the story. And again, I'm going to give the same caveat you did several times. I don't want to overly whitewash. I'm not trying to say, yeah, really bad p you know like i i don't like that kind of approach but i think there are several other things going on um and like you even mentioned so i mean yael is a canaanite right or of the canaan i mean well she's a kenite a kenite but well yeah she's not israeli even canaanites isn't

that like a catch-all term kind of like, but there's lots of ethnicities within that? So Kenite would be – It's in different ways, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I got a theory here. I want to test this. Huh?

No, I'm excited. I want to test this with you because I'm glad you brought up the dominant languages that they were driven out the whole like the one i quoted from dude army 20 that's there's only a couple places that use that language the dominant language is driving out and then you have this whole thing with the hornet the hornet's gonna go before you and drive them out and we don't know it's a weird time right i don't know okay it might mean hornet we actually don't know what it means okay um it's a really rare word oh it is it's it might not mean actual hornet or well that's i mean that's as far as we can tell

from like comparing it to other places but it is a very rare word which is why sometimes in in the bio uh some translations translate it like a terror will go before you or something whatever we know it's scary i love having a hebrew scholar that can just so amazing okay so i got a theory deuteronomy 2016 um says you must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the lord your God has given you as an inheritance. And he says, you must completely destroy them, the Hittite, Amorite, Perizzite, Jebusite, Canaanite, so on and so forth, as God has commanded you. So that seems to be like a comprehensive annihilation.

Now, go to Joshua chapter 10. I think it's, I should have planned this. I think it's verse 40. No, you're not wrong. Verse 40. It says, so Joshua conquered the whole region, the hill country, the Negev, the Judean foothills, and the slopes. He's not talking about just the whole land with their kings, leaving no survivors. He completely destroyed every living being as the Lord, the God of Israel had commanded.

This sounds like Joshua 10 40 is saying whatever was commanded in Deuteronomy, Joshua did. However, we know as a matter of fact, from the book of Joshua, and especially judges that he didn't kill everybody, which leads me to suggest based on textual, I've had people accuse me of just you're

making this stuff up and i'm like look i'm just going on what the bible is actually saying here um clearly joshua 10 40 is some kind of hyperbole because the rest of joshua says he didn't annihilate every single living being so when he says he didn't leave any survivors he actually did leave survivors like so this is a hyperbolic statement which makes yeah and yet he connects it to the command in 2016 a deuteronomy so if since not if but since this is a hyperbolic battle kind of statement could the command don't leave a lie don't save alive anything that breathes also be hyperbolic are you following me is that tracking yes oh i'm following yeah this is actually something people have been writing about quite

a bit i thought it was the first one i was trying to figure out that's super smart person well published uh has like the definitive super scholarly work on it and he talks about it's an ancient conquest accounts is what it's called that vocabulary of like don't leave live anything that breathes is actually in a bunch of other ancient near eastern texts it's common uh so it's a standard way of identifying this kind of warfare and in those texts very much like this one, there is room for it to function as a hyperbole, not a deceptive kind, but in the same way, I can say, we completely annihilated the people on the basketball court, we're leaving room for some sort of cultural understanding that

this vocabulary is communicating an idea that might not, you know, correspond to its exact concrete words. We want to be careful to start like throwing hyperbole around and then all of a sudden the Bible can say whatever we want it to. But as you pointed out, Joshua itself encourages us if we want to read these things in a unified way to suggest this has some sort of summary or some kind of hyperbolic assumption. I also think you're right that by borrowing the language of Deuteronomy, whatever Joshua was saying about the historical reality, it's saying that Joshua did what he was supposed to.

Right. And so he did what he was supposed to. So that's one dynamic. Yes, there's hyperbole. Another factor that we talk about sometimes is there are different stages of conquering a land. And there's these initial battles where you kind of, you clear out the power structures of the enemy, but you don't actually move in. And then there's the second state where you actually move in, settle and set up camp. And another way to talk about the

difference between we see in Joshua and Judges is these are these initial entry battles where their job is to conquer all of these important places in the land. But then next, they have to move in. That's what Judges 13 and following is all about, or Joshua 13 and following. You guys actually have to go in and settle. And that's the part that Judges like that, that they did really poorly. So there's also that element. So there's several places we need to just read a little more carefully. No battle do people come in, set up a flag, and then everything's done. That's just not how war works. And so we have to remember that there might have been these initial battles where they were 100% faithful, but they didn't follow through.

Okay. What's the book you referenced again? Lawson's? Yes. Dr. Young'si ancient conquest accounts that's where i got it from okay so okay see you did read this i did i did i did so i talked about this in my book fight i actually do have it published i thought so but i got it from because i did a bunch of research in ancient Near East, like just the whole military genre, like how you talk about military victories has hyperbole built into it. Like that's just part of the genre. And yeah, you see overstatements all over the place in ancient Near East Kings saying we didn't leave alive anything, you know, like, well, actually, they're still around, you know. Well, and the good news is the biblical record doesn't lie to us.

It gives us those caveats. So it's not even like they used hyperbole and it's up to us to sort it out. The Bible's like, but let's be clear. A lot of people remain. So it even goes out of its way in ways that other accounts don't to clarify what we mean by those statements. And so in many ways it's pushing us to read those statements as hyperbole as readers. Well, I want to end with a real practical question. So Joshua 1.9 is a famous,

famous refrigerator verse. I actually love the verse. I use it a lot. You know, be strong and courageous, do what I've commanded you to do. But once I started really studying the Old Testament, I was a little more disturbed by that because the actual context is you're going to go in and slaughter all these people be strong and courageous and do that it's like oh that's not me getting pumped up for a job interview this is like you know at least in its original context however is there um can we use joshua 1 9 in more of a, can we extract maybe the principle there and post it on our refrigerator and write it on our mirrors?

And what do you think, Old Testament scholar? I mean, I hope so. Because here's the thing, at the end of the day, when Joshua reflects on this and he has his final sermons, he brings it up again. And he once again tells them to be strong and courageous.

And at that point, these initial battles that were so important have already taken place, as we've talked about, not everything. But what he also says in those chapters is choose this day whom you will serve. You choose, you can either go back, you can serve for your fathers did back when across the river, you can to uh serve the canaanite gods which is what israel is going to choose to do in judges but the point of all of this is that by following through on these very hard to follow rules they are showing that their 100 devotion is to god because like we talked about when you move into a land you you either become part of those inhabitants or not. And so if they don't drive them out, they become part of them and they get canonized. And that's what Judges shows us. And so when they are supposed to choose this day whom they will serve, that's what Joshua is really

about. And so when he says be strong and courageous, and I would probably translate it resilient, the point is it's going to be very difficult for you. But the way you're going to demonstrate your wholehearted devotion to me is by being 100% obedient to the very hard tasks in front of you. And that's something that all of us carry with that burden, that job, that vocation is something all of us carry all the time. Michelle, that's a great, great way to end an awesome podcast. Thank you so much for being on Theology in the Raw. I could talk to you for hours. I can't believe it's been almost an hour already.

I'm sorry I talked so much. No, not at all. No, gosh. You know what? No, no. Do you have like 10 more minutes? Five more minutes? I'll give you five. I'll give you five.

Five. Okay, okay. more minutes five more minutes i'll give you five i'll give you five five okay okay i always want to ask like how i you know i ask um um madison this and others like what's it been like being a female in evangelical academia if you don't mind my short answer no no that's fine my short answer, no, no, that's fine. My short answer is I think I've had an easier time than a lot of people. OK. By the grace of God, I've been, part of that was that I was a really strong complementarian until like seminary. OK. And so part of that was I didn't believe I could teach. I didn't believe I um, I was called to that, um, for a long time. And that meant there

were a lot of years of hard fighting. I didn't have to do because I wasn't convinced that was even an option yet. But aside from that, I've just always had, um, really supportive people around. I, um, I do have like the same stories we all have where like, I had one professor, an undergrad sit me down and be like, I'm teaching you exegesisesis but I actually believe it's a sin for you to teach other people and so I've had those kind of horror story experiences um but in general um I've been in places where people have really built me up uh the main issue for me is is more like a social one um it's not so much I have people disrespecting me or not thinking I should be here it's more just the difficulty of um being on a faculty where

there are few other women like I'm so grateful to have a good friend who's at the school with me um but things like what's the maternity policy. Nobody knows. Cause nobody's had to use it before. I mean, or things like that. It's just, uh, it's more of that social dynamic. I think that's hard, um, to walk into a room and to be the only woman there or to constantly have people being say, you know, and you did this today, but don't feel bad about it because you acknowledge you were doing it, but always for the question to be, so as a woman, how do you read this? And I always want to be like, I don't know. I read it in Hebrew and with the same things you do. I don't know. But as you pointed out, there's some truth to that and there's some not, but yeah. So always just everyone noticing you're a woman when you

walk in the room before they notice anything else about you, I think is the number one difficulty of being a woman in evangelical scholarship. That's helpful. I mean, yeah, I'm fine. I'll say this. I wrote a dissertation about the Song of Deborah, and I constantly have to be like, I didn't choose it because I'm a woman. I chose it because it's a really cool song. But everybody's like, Oh yeah,

of course you wrote about Deborah. That is the stigma, the stigma, the stereotype. And there's, there's enough people out there that, you know, if you're a female scholar, you must be writing on women in the Bible and it's not abnormal. But I mean, there's, there's a reason, I think there's a reason for that too. A really beautiful reason. Do you ever feel, do you ever get the, like if you're at a theology conference, do people ever, or a pastoral conference, you know, like, oh, so now are you here with your husband or have you not gotten? Constantly, constantly.

Yeah. So at ETS, I have started like wearing Trinity garb just to have less conversations, um, with people about where my husband is. Oh, your husband is a Trinity and got you a shirt. That's so sweet. Yeah. Yeah.

That's true. Maybe it doesn't help, but it stays off some issues, but yeah. And I mean, that's constant. Maybe it just doesn't bother me as much. I don't know.

but, uh, or sometimes I'll say I work at Trinityinity and people will be like oh are you a secretary and i'm like no no i'm a professor oh of psychology uh no of old testament oh with the undergrad no at the divinity school oh for you mean like an adjunct no i'm full-time it's just the expectations are really different than reality and so so that can be exhausting. I think, I think it tires me out more than it offends me. You should respond in biblical Hebrew next time. Somebody asking.

Let me tell you. Yeah, that'd be nice. All right, for sure. For real. Let's let's I'll let you go. Thanks so much,

Michelle, for being on a theology in the raw. If you want to check out Michelle's work, you can go to her, your page on the Ted's Trinity evangelicalical Divinity School, Michelle Knight. Do you have another website or anything else? No, no. Okay.

That should get you what you need. All right, cool. Thanks so much for being on. Appreciate you.