Judges spans the years between the conquest under Joshua and the kingship under Saul.
Although the book of Judges seems to start brightly, as when “they defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites” in the battle for Bezek (Jdg 1:5), the tide of war soon turns, with the encroaching waves of disobedience and unbelief. The period of the judges begins after the death of Joshua in the early fourteenth century BC and, in an almost precipitous decline, continues to deteriorate until Saul is crowned king of Israel by Samuel, the last of the judges, in 1051 BC (1 Sam 10:24). The book presents the judges in a set of remarkable contrasts. It begins with “Who shall be first to go up for us against the Canaanites?” (Jdg 1:1) and decays until we read the same people asking, “Which of us shall go up first to battle against…Benjamin?” (20:18). The first judge, Othniel, is known for his marriage to Caleb’s daughter; the last one, Samson, is remembered for his infidelities. The second judge, Ehud, slaughters the Moabites at the fords of the Jordan; the second last, Jephthah, slaughters the Ephraimites at the same place. The third, Barak and his encourager, Deborah, enjoyed total victory when a woman killed Sisera with a blow to the head. Abimelech, supposedly a judge but in fact a tyrant, had to be stopped by another woman with a blow to the head. And Gideon, the man in the middle, is a contrast with his earlier self, beginning by destroying idols and ending by making one. In the book of Joshua, we can learn strategies for corporate victory. But in Judges, we have strategies for personal victory, even when surrounded by moral deterioration and unbelief, for the same Lord was with them individually as had led the whole nation. We might write over the lives of these heroes: When you don’t have any good examples, be one!