Dominic Bnonn Tennant (the B is silent)

Judges 12

1

And the men of Ephraim were called,1 and ·they crossed northward, and ·they said to Yiphtah, “Wherefore didst thou cross to war with the sons of Ammon—and to us callest2 not to go with thee? Thy house we shall burn upon thee with fire.”

2

And Yiphtah said unto them, “A man of contending3 was I, I and my people, and the sons of Ammon very ‹much› afflicted us.4 And I cried5 unto you, and ye saved me not from their hand,

3

and I saw that ye saved not, and ·I set my lifebreath6 in my palm, and ·I crossed unto the sons of Ammon, and Yahweh gave them into my hand; and for what have ye ascended unto me this day to war with me?”

4

And Yiphtah gathered7 all the men of Gilead and warred with Ephraim, and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, ‹in› that they said, “Escapees of Ephraim, ye Gilead, in the midst of Ephraim, in the midst of Manasseh.”

5

And Gilead captured the passes of the Jordan to Ephraim, and it was that the escapees of Ephraim said, “Let me cross,” and the men of Gilead said to him, “An Ephraimite thou?” and he said, “No,”

6

and they said to him, “Say, pray, shibboleth,”8 and he said, “Sibboleth,” and was not prepared9 to speak it so. And they seized him, and ·they slaughtered him at the passages of the Jordan, and ·there fell in that time from Ephraim forty and two10 thousand.11

7

And Yiphtah judged Israel six years, and Yiphtah the Gileadite died and was buried in the cities of Gilead.12

8

And after him Ibzan from Bethlehem13 judged Israel,14

9

and he had thirty sons and thirty daughters he sent forth outside, and thirty daughters he brought in for his sons from outside, and he judged Israel seven years.

10

And Ibzan died and was buried in Bethlehem.

11

And after him Elon15 the Zebulunite judged Israel, and he judged Israel ten years,

12

and Elon the Zebulunite died and was buried in Ayyalon in the land of Zebulun.

13

And after him Abdon16 the son of Hillel17 the Pirathonite18 judged Israel,

14

and he had forty sons and thirty sons of sons that rode upon thirty ass-colts,19 and he judged Israel eight years.

15

And Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite died and was buried in Pirathon in the land of Ephraim in the mount of the Amalekites.

Footnotes

  1. called. Literally “cried,” but in English unfortunately this is not a word that can be used this way, and would also imply weeping rather than summonsing. ↩

  2. callest. This is not the same verb as when Ephraim are called together at the beginning of the verse. ↩

  3. contending. Or strife. In general ryv is best translated “contend,” but this is a rare case where strife is the more illuminating word. ↩

  4. A man of contention…very much afflicted us. The received text is awkwardly worded: literally, “A man of contention was I, I and my people, and the sons of Ammon very.” Most translations smooth this out along the lines of, “I and my people were at great strife with the Ammonites.” However, while it is both common and uncontroversial to translate the adverb m’od (“very ‹much›”) as “great,” its placement here is so odd that I assume Masoretic corruption. The LXX manuscript tradition A adds another verb, “humble” or “afflict,” most likely reading from a Hebrew text that includes anah, to which m’od would attach neatly and without the strange rhetorical move of separating it so far from “was.” ↩

  5. cried. Not the same word used in the beginning of verse 1, though they are similar. There the men of Ephraim were “cried” (tsa’aq) together; here Yiphtah cried (za’aq) to them. ↩

  6. lifebreath. Or soul. ↩

  7. gathered. This chapter plays on ironic reversals, and this is signaled here in the literal phonetic reversal of the root tsa’aq—“called,” “cried together”—in verse 1, into the root qa’ats—gathered. The two roots are functionally identical in the passage, but inverted in their sound. I don’t want to overstate the case, as the conjugated words actually used in the text do not in themselves generate this phonetic inversion—wayitsa’eq versus wayiqbots. Nonetheless, the contrast did strike me, so it is hard to imagine it is not intentional. ↩

  8. shibboleth. “Stream.” ↩

  9. was not prepared. Not that he wasn’t willing, but that his tongue had not been “made ready” to “establish” the word “reliably”—these all being other ways of translating kun; cf. Genesis 41:32; 43:16; Psalm 51:10. The LXX has him unable to “keep straight” when saying it. ↩

  10. forty and two. As 6×7, we see that Ephraim falls short of entering God’s rest. ↩

  11. thousand. Young alone renders this “chiefs.” The word eleph generally means a thousand (often in the military or judicial sense as in Judges 5:8 and 6:15), but by merit of this association, it also occasionally refers to those put over thousands. Hence in Genesis 36 we read of the chiefs of Esau. Curiously, except for Zechariah 9:7; 12:5–6, this word seems to be reserved specifically for Edomites, those descended from Esau. ↩

  12. the cities of Gilead. The LXX amends this to “his city, Gilead,” which strikes me as an effort to gloss the received reading because it is too difficult. In my view, the phrasing is symbolic, closing out Yiphtah’s tale as it began, with him being depicted as a child of Gilead as a whole, rather than of any one man. The rabbis parsed this strange wording as evidence that Yiphtah was struck with a plague from God, in judgment for burning his daughter, which caused his limbs to fall off every time he entered a new city. Thus parts of him are buried in “the cities of Gilead.” While obviously nonsense, I include note of this for reasons of whimsy. ↩

  13. Bethlehem. Not Bethlehem-Y’hudah, which is always designated as such, but probably a town in Zebulun or Naphtali. The only Y’hudahite judge was Othniel (Jdg 1); this is theologically significant in view of the “Judges Cycle.” ↩

  14. and…judged Israel. The Hebrew places the verb first, emphasizing the action, but this is unfortunately excessively awkward in English: “And judged after him Israel…” Similarly in vv. 11 and 13. An alternative rendering which sticks closer to the word order, and is perhaps fairly euphonious, would be, “And judged after him Elon over Israel,” but this has the downside of adding a preposition not present in the text—though arguably the direct object marker et, absent in English, does a similar job. ↩

  15. Elon. “Oak.” ↩

  16. Abdon. “Servile.” The name forms a strange juxtaposition in combination with his father’s name and origin: Servile the son of Praising the princely. ↩

  17. Hillel. “Praising.” ↩

  18. Pirathonite. The root, para, may refer to the leader or commander of an army, but is also used in Judges 5:2, where it may refer to the loosing of (Nazirite) hair, perhaps foreshadowing Samson. ↩

  19. ass-colts. This completes the chiasm begun with Gideon, but most easily spotted through the symmetry of the ass-colts in Judges 10:4:

    A. Gideon, 70 sons
    — B. Tola, no sons
    — — C. Ya’ir, 30 sons + 30 ass-colts + 30 cities
    — — — D. Yiphtah, only daughter
    — — C. Ibzan, 30 sons + 30 daughters sent out + 30 brought in
    — B. Elon, no sons
    A. Abdon, 40 sons + 30 grandsons = 70; the grandsons ride on ass-colts.

    Since ass-colts are symbols of kingship, what is signaled here is that Israel has not learned its lesson after Yiphtah any more than after Gideon and Abi-Melek. Their judges, though saviors, are still being tempted by the idea of being king instead of God. Yiphtah, in the center, is the only character without a reflection—he is, both literally and symbolically, the crux of the chiasm, and thus the Christ-figure. Yiphtah’s faithful sacrifice stands at the heart of this series of judges. But the rest of the series does not reflect his sacrifice. Yiphtah is an intervention by God, through his Spirit, to arrest the sequence that is being created; to change its direction. It is on a downward trajectory. But it does not change direction; in fact the descent steepens. Abdon, who is symmetrical with Gideon, reflects Gideon in having 70 descendants—but he also reflects Ya’ir by the connection with the ass-colts. In this way, he progresses the chiasm rather than merely completing it; things are worse at the end of Judges 12, because the unrighteous characteristics of both dynastic judges from chapter 10 are summed up in this one character here. In chapter 10, the first half of the chiasm, it takes two men to express these bad characteristics. One man has 70 sons; another has them riding on ass-colts. By the end of chapter 12, one man is doing both these things. ↩