This is the second of a three part symposium commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Dr. James B. Jordan’s publication of Judges: a Practical and Theological Commentary. Judges was the first book length exposition of Theopolitan Reading, a practice of reading Scripture in its fullness that Theopolis continues to refine and grow through its online journal, dozens of publications on the subject, and our app, available free for a limited time.
Judges: A Practical and Theological Commentary
by James Jordan
Wipf and Stock, 334 pages
“And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah…and all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” (Hebrews 11:32,39)
War is hell. It is a curse on any nation that must wage or endure it. Destruction is its sole outcome no matter what noble motive may have provoked it. The book of Judges is a dark and disturbing record of Israel’s descent from hopeful promise into corruption and division through frequent and widespread warfare and violence. Within this tragedy, James Jordan found parallels to late 20th century American political culture. His commentary on Judges became his warning call to repentance for American Christians in hopes that the United States might avoid the catastrophe suffered by post-Exodus Israel. Though his particular issues of concern restrict the applicability of his commentary to a particular chapter of American history, his attentiveness to the biblical text and his enthusiasm for mining its depths are worthy of consideration.
Jordan focuses on four themes in his commentary on Judges: God’s faithfulness against man’s unbelief, the promised land of Canaan and its conquest, God’s covenant with Israel, and the successive cycles of Israel’s bondage and deliverance. He draws these from Exodus 6 and presents them as the chief components of God’s revelation of His name, Yahweh, in redemptive history to this point. According to Jordan, Judges does not contain “moral tales of what men did rightly or wrongly.” Rather, it provides “stories about how God deals with man, in judgment and redemption” (pg xvii). The interpretive agenda of Judges, just as its companion, the book of Ruth, is a canon for understanding Samuel and the Kings. Jordan, however, investigates the lives of the main characters with their (mostly) failings and triumphs with varying levels of typological speculation towards broader purposes, both Christological and political.
At the outset, Jordan urges the reader to “…not be afraid to hazard a guess at the wider prophetic meanings of Scripture narratives” (pg xii). This experiment in bringing “vague images” into sharp focus is the book’s greatest strength and a refreshing approach against moralizing biblical events and characters and detaching them from their role and relation to Christ’s redemption of the world. By his extensive drawing together of threads from the Law and from linguistic insights of the Biblical Hebrew, Jordan also offers an antidote to common proof-texting habits in Evangelicalism. His conclusions and analysis often run counter to convention and press the boundaries of certitude in Near Eastern history and linguistics. But the sheer expanse of his effort pushes back on current exegetical trends that have diluted too much of the richness of American protestant and evangelical theology through facile frameworks.
Jordan’s description of sacred geometry and Hebrew terms is admittedly speculative and its ubiquity in this commentary deserves special note. Per Jordan, “[W]e ought not to blind ourselves to the possibility that a more general picture of the kingdom of God is presented here” (pg xiii). As an example of this, he cites Caleb’s gift of his daughter, Achsah, to Othniel after the latter’s victory over the giants of Hebron in Judges 1. “Can we see a vague image of the gospel here?” Yes, Christ receives his Church, the Bride, from the Father for His victory over the Enemy. But Jordan argues for theological significance in almost every numerical expression, from numbers of sons to sizes of armies, to numbers of donkeys and locks of hair, all with varying degrees of seemliness with respect to redemptive history. Is the three-year reign of Abimelech typological of Christ’s three days in the grave? (pg. 168) In this case, it is not so clear. Additionally, Jordan is often as selective in this exercise as his interpretations are subjective. Jordan finds a complete theological basis for capitalism in Jotham’s speech from Mount Gerizim (pg. 165) but finds nothing significant to report in the service of the judges Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Jair, and Tola. In the 4th century AD, Evagrius of Pontus warned against a preacher excessively interpreting details about Jonah’s ship lest one’s listeners begin to ask about riggings and fittings and forget the reason for the sermon in the first place. Jordan’s commentary is not a sermon and a biblical commentary is the place to address the text in detail. But commentaries are intended to clarify and excessive and uneven typological speculation infuses confusion in this case.
Jordan’s attempt to parallel the narrative of Judges with 20th century secular humanism and contemporary American ecclesiastical betrayal of conservative causes is overplayed at the expense of the timelessness of the biblical record. Perhaps this is because this commentary has its origins in his preparation for an adult Sunday School class at that time and retains the essence of this initial intended audience. Jordan wrote his commentary in 1978-9, in the tumultuous days in Presbyterian and Reformed circles as debates raged over Theonomy and Christian Reconstruction. Francis Shaeffer’s How Should We Then Live, published two years earlier, attempted to alert the faithful to the beginning of western Christendom’s death throes. This was the era of the Moral Majority, the Cold War and Liberation Theology. Secular humanism was, and remains, a threat, especially the over-centralizing tendencies that Jordan notes throughout the book. But late Bronze Age Canaanite religion, to which Jordan draws direct parallels throughout the book–had very little in common, philosophically or otherwise, with it. Secular humanism trumpets the sufficiency of human reason and calls for liberation from religious belief and superstition. Ancient Baal cults (Jordan anachronistically calls this Baalism) played on base human fears of starvation and violent death in an agrarian environment at the whims of drought and flood before the benefits of modern technology. To say that “the heart of ancient Baalism was secular humanism” and the “…underlying philosophy of Baalism…is regnant in American education and life today, and…taught in the science departments of almost all Christian colleges today” says too much.
Jordan’s stinging comparison of “so-called evangelical leaders” (page 109) who did not come to the aid of Everett Sileven with the cowardly Israelite tribes who failed to rally to Barak and Deborah against Jabin and Sisera is the chief example of this overextension. Inclusion of such a criticism might have been less inordinate in 1985 when the first edition was published. Sileven had not yet been convicted in a U.S. Federal Court of money-laundering (1989), nor had his conviction sustained on appeal en banc (1993). Why, however, this material remains in the 1999 printing is as unknown as his assessment of Sileven was incorrect.
One evil which is shared by ancient Baal worship and secular humanism is the low view of human life, specifically children. Baal cults practiced infant sacrifice to propitiate local deities and to bring fertility of herds and well-watered and fruitful crops. Today’s practice of abortion has the same purpose in mind, an exchange of a helpless human life for economic well-being and comfort. Expanded treatment on this Canaanite cultic wickedness would enhance the commentary since God particularly cites this practice as the reason for God’s holiness laws for Israel and the basis for total warfare against the seven peoples of Canaan during Israel’s conquest of the Promised Land.
Regarding offensive warfare, Jordan’s treatment of Judge’s pervasive organized violence is nuanced and, on measure, careful. He does not shy away from or dilute holy war and its origins in God’s commandments. Yet he is careful to note that Christians wage our holy war in the New Covenant through “preach(ing) the full gospel of judgment and salvation,” (pg 139) and not by the sword. He admits that prescriptions for military tactics and strategy in the Bible are “unhelpful” since Israel’s victories were achieved by divine intervention. He does, however, stray into anachronism with respect to the law of armed conflict. For example, he labels Eglon’s death by Ehud’s hand an “assassination”. Today, Eglon’s death would have perhaps been considered a decapitation strike since military commanders are legitimate military targets and he was clearly in command of an invading force from Moab across the Jordan River. Use of the term obscures the value of the modern conventions against assassination of political leaders, one that should be thankfully seen as an outworking of common grace rooted in Christendom’s Just War Tradition. The same could be said for his approval of the maiming of Adoni-Bezek.
Jordan clearly views the wars suffered by Israel in Judges, especially the civil war against the tribe of Benjamin, as the judgment of God for disobedience to God and thus, symbols of judgment within the six cycles recorded in the text. But he does not limit his symbolism to this period of redemptive history. Instead, he finds in these war analogies for the Church today and this is where confusion occurs. In the post-Ascension era of a global Church beset with complex challenges, how should these wars inform the Church’s collective self-perception today? And given his frequent and extended excursions addressing the evils of the Soviet Union and the virtues of decentralized government, his explanation of a biblical approach to jus ad bellum for Christians in a pluralistic, post-revelatory world would be helpful. Jordan’s categories in this regard assume a Christian nation—or at least a national consensus on biblical values—that had already disappeared in the late 20th century. We are even further away from this consensus now.
This book is most suitable for use by pastors, elders and advanced theological students as a companion to research in Old Testament narrative and interpretive method and historical theology, especially for comparisons with methods of exegetes from Late Antiquity. Jordan’s pursuit of the typological and symbolic makes one imagine that Jordan would have fit in well with Clement, Origen and Cyril in Alexandrine circles. At the same time, his attention to minute details of biblical language, geography and history puts him in good company with Antiochenes such as Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret. Regardless where Jordan places himself, Judges: A Practical and Theological Commentary is a modern example of a pastor laboring to understand this difficult and yet essential part of God’s word to mankind.
J. Darren Duke is a PhD student in the Department of Semitic Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is also a retired Marine Corps colonel, serving in intelligence and special operations assignments in the Middle East and Africa. His research is focused on eastern Christians of Late Antiquity and their views of empire and government.