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PDF FormatThis episode certainly has its morally problematic aspects, in the Danites’ taking the graven images and the priest against the will of the sanctuary’s owner, and establishing a ritual of dubious legitimacy for the worship of God. But a positive interpretation seems more in keeping with how the arrival of the Danite emissaries at the sanctuary is described. There, they ask of the priest: “Please, inquire of God; we would like to know if our mission will be successful.” The response is unequivocal: “Go in peace,” the priest answers, “the Eternal views favorably the mission you are going on.”97 The priest assures them that God is with them, and in fact the expedition of the Danites is totally successful. Thus, the sequence depicts a fundamentally positive course of action under difficult conditions—how an entire tribe of Israel, after failing in the basic existential task of establishing itself in its own territory, survives and even manages to find new territory where it can worship the God of its fathers.
The second episode describes the incident of the concubine at Gibeah.98 A man from the tribe of Levi arrives with his concubine in the town of Gibeah, in the land of Benjamin. The Benjaminite townspeople take the concubine and rape and abuse her through the night, until she dies at daybreak. The Levite then cuts her body into pieces and sends them to all the tribes of Israel, as evidence of the horrendous act committed. The response of the people is furious and resolute: “And everyone who saw it cried out, ‘Never has such a thing happened or been seen from the day the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt to this day! Put your mind to this; take counsel and decide.’”99 The tribes of Israel gather at Gibeah and demand that its inhabitants be punished by being put to the sword, but the tribe of Benjamin sends reinforcements to the town and refuses to hand over the perpetrators. The result is a civil war, spurred by the Israelites’ profound moral outrage against Benjamin for protecting its kinfolk rather than pursuing justice.
The war continues for three days. For the first two days the Benjaminites have the upper hand, killing thousands from the other tribes. At this point the Israelites hesitate. Wondering whether they were wrong to go to war, they turn to the sanctuary at Bethel and inquire of God: “Shall we again take the field against our kinsmen the Benjaminites, or shall we not?” The answer is clear and decisive: “Go up, for tomorrow I will deliver them into your hands.”100 And indeed, on the third day, the Israelites rout Benjamin. The great majority of the recalcitrant tribe are killed, and their cities put to the torch. “Thereupon the Israelites dispersed, each to his own tribe and clan; everyone departed for his own territory. In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his eyes.”101
This episode is clearer than the earlier one: The people make a basic moral commitment, without king or judge to guide them, and act upon it. The alternative would have been to let the atrocity of Gibeah go unanswered—in other words, to allow a breach of the most fundamental moral standard for any society. The people also exhibit a profound sense of national responsibility when, afterward, they take steps to keep the tribe of Benjamin from being wiped out completely: Despite the tribe’s great sin, its few hundred refugees are allowed to marry women from the other tribes, thereby perpetuating their line. Here again, the people of Israel take independent action, guided solely by “what was right in their eyes.”
In both episodes the Israelites make independent moral decisions based on values inscribed in their consciousness by shared tradition and accepted values—a combination of natural morality and common sense on the national level. Both decisions receive an unequivocal, if indirect, seal of approval from on high: The Danites’ query to the priest in Micah’s sanctuary, and the Israelites’ question at Bethel, are answered with divine assurance of success, which is in fact realized.102
These two instances in Judges, describing situations in which “everyone did what was right in his eyes,” are connected to the fact that “there was no king in Israel,” nor any judge or prophet—in other words, no institutionalized national leadership capable of showing the people the proper way. Consequently, the entire people had to take responsibility for its actions and act as best it could to the extent of its moral judgment—doing what was right in its eyes.
“Righteousness” in Judges, therefore, refers to the nation’s ability to maintain a minimal moral standard even in the absence of moral leadership. Yet it cannot be overlooked that this book’s conclusion also demonstrates just how far some segments of Israelite civilization had fallen, just how difficult a time the nation had in fulfilling the most elementary moral principles, to say nothing of maintaining an exemplary society. As the nation’s story continues into the book of Samuel, the people conclude that if they continue under this kind of informal, improvised self-rule—benefiting in times of crisis from the leadership of judges, but lacking any permanent political system—they will have no chance of establishing a normal life for themselves in this land. Even their experience with Samuel, the greatest of the judges, does not change the people’s decision. After some decades of successfully leading the nation, Samuel discovers that the people reject the ambiguous, unstable type of political regime that has held sway for centuries. They ask him to impose a new type of regime on Israel, “a king to govern us, like all the nations.”103 The Israelites want a permanent political order, as is common to all peoples: Central rule, an executive arm, tax collection, a standing army, binding legislation and the authority to impose it upon the public at large. To replace the voluntary, personal and limited leadership of judges and prophets, they seek a fixed type of regime with coercive powers—in short, they want a state.
From its first day, the new state is forced to contend with that unique Israelite tension between two frames of reference: Normative political life according to the criteria applicable to every nation—national defense, economic prosperity, and the maintenance of law and order—together with the need to honor the higher moral criteria demanded by Israel’s special heritage. The ceremony to invest the monarchy reflects this tension, when Samuel turns to the entire people in assembly and asks them to testify that his leadership has been fair and free of injustice:
Then Samuel said to all Israel, “I have heeded your call in all you have asked of me, and have set a king over you. And now, the king will go before you. As for me, I have grown old and gray, but my sons are still with you, and I have led you from my youth until this day. Here I am—testify against me before the Eternal and before his anointed: Whose ox have I taken, whose ass have I taken? Whom have I defrauded, whom have I robbed? From whom have I taken a bribe to look the other way? I will return it to you.” They responded, “You have not defrauded us, you have not robbed us, you have not taken anything from anyone.” He said to them, “The Eternal is witness, and his anointed is witness against you this day that you have found nothing in my possession.” They responded, “Witness!”104
The dual testimony that Samuel seeks, before God and king, refers to the two sets of criteria to which the Israelites must relate, the moral and the practical. But the matter does not end there. At the outset, Israel was granted a singular existential status—a direct link to God—but at a singular price: If Israel as a collective conducted its affairs in accordance with the laws of God, it would succeed; if it strayed from this path, in due course it would meet with failure. When the people now declare themselves no longer capable of meeting these conditions, they are granted the concession they seek—but this also carries a price.
With the establishment of the monarchy, a new relational status is created in which the state, represented by the king, takes on the primary responsibility for the people’s material and moral well-being. In the biblical conception, the political community’s central purpose is to fulfill the obligations of “righteousness.” This new political-moral order introduces a fundamental change in the Jewish nation’s relationship with God: The people are no longer constantly required to meet the ideal moral level defined by the Tora; now their efforts focus on satisfying the minimal principles consistent with the basics of natural morality. This is not to say that Israel is abandoning its noble ideal of aspiring to fulfill the demands of divine law. It is, rather, an acknowledgment that this ideal is extremely difficult to realize, something that Israel can approach only at certain times, under special conditions and with great effort. As they look back over the period of judges, the Israelites realize that when given the freedom to choose the moral ideal without the “aid” of a coercive state, time and again they failed. With the creation of the monarchy, the possibility of reaching the minimal standard of “righteousness” increases because of the existence of coercive central power, but this power also makes the ideal of voluntary virtue all the harder to attain.
