The last five chapters of the book of Judges (chs. 17-21) contain some shocking and bizarre stories, and precisely how these stories relate to the rest of the book is a major question in scholarship on the book. Leveraging work from literary studies and hermeneutics, Beldman reexamines Judges 17-21 with the aim of discerning the "strategies of ending" that are at work in these chapters. The author identifies and describes a number of strategies of ending in Judges 17-21, including the strategy of completion, the strategy of circularity, and the strategy of entrapment. The temporal configuration of Judges and especially the nonlinear chronology that chapters 17-21 expose also receive due attention. All of this offers fresh insights into the place and function of Judges 17-21 in the context of the whole book.

"Reading these apparently unpromising texts with Beldman, you will be instructed and challenged. In short, this is a most worthwhile study of a valuable part of the Bible.."--Cover.

Judges is a book for our time. It forces readers to come face to face with the way that faith speaks into the situations we encounter and read about in our newsfeeds. Warfare, authoritarianism, sexual exploitation, tribalism—these are a few of the repercussions from not having our social order oriented toward God. In this commentary David Beldman expounds the story of God and Israel that unfolds in the book of Judges, highlighting the vital message it speaks to contemporary Christians who strive to live lives of integrity and undivided loyalty to Jesus under the constant pressure of the idols of twenty-first-century culture.

From Elie Wiesel, a gripping novel of guilt, innocence, and the perilousness of judging both. A plane en route from New York to Tel Aviv is forced down by bad weather. A nearby house provides refuge for five of its passengers: Claudia, who has left her husband and found new love; Razziel, a religious teacher who was once a political prisoner; Yoav, a terminally ill Israeli commando; George, an archivist who is hiding a Holocaust secret that could bring down a certain politician; and Bruce, a would-be priest turned philanderer. Their host—an enigmatic and disquieting man who calls himself simply the Judge—begins to interrogate them, forcing them to face the truth and meaning of their lives. Soon he announces that one of them—the least worthy—will die. The Judges is a powerful novel that reflects the philosophical, religious, and moral questions that are at the heart of Elie Wiesel’s work.

Eminently readable, exegetically thorough, and written in an emotionally warm style that flows from his keen sensitivity to the text, Barry Webb’s commentary on Judges is just what is needed to properly engage a dynamic, narrative work like the book of Judges. It discusses not only unique features of the stories themselves but also such issues as the violent nature of Judges, how women are portrayed in it, and how it relates to the Christian gospel of the New Testament. Webb concentrates throughout on what the biblical text itself throws into prominence, giving space to background issues only when they cast significant light on the foreground. For those who want more, the footnotes and bibliography provide helpful guidance. The end result is a welcome resource for interpreting one of the most challenging books in the Old Testament.

JUDGES: Book of Heroes traces the tragic story of the people of God from the glory days of Joshua to the gloomy days of Samson; from courage to compromise; from conquest to capitulation. But despite the subject matter, this book is not a gloomy book! The author shows that for all their failings, the judges were men and women of rare faith, men and women who stood for God in troubled times. And he encourages us, too, to live for God where He has placed us; to serve Him faithfully in the work to which He has called us. "We may not have the spiritual gifts of a Samson or a Deborah. We may not have the courage of an Othniel or a Jephthah. Perhaps we're just ordinary, like Gideon, or maybe we feel like one of the minor judges, like Abdon or Ibzan or Tola, whose names nobody can remember. Nevertheless, God delights to use ordinary people, and He delights even more to use really useless people! God will use those who have faith in Him, those whose hearts are loyal to Him. The judges of Israel, imperfect as they were, stand out for God like shining beacons in a dark night, because at the end of the day, they trusted God, and were available to Him."

A judge’s role is to make decisions. This book is about how judges undertake this task. It is about forces on the judicial role and their consequences, about empirical research from a variety of academic disciplines that observes and verifies how factors can affect how judges judge. On the one hand, judges decide by interpreting and applying the law, but much more affects judicial decision-making: psychological effects, group dynamics, numerical reasoning, biases, court processes, influences from political and other institutions, and technological advancement. All can have a bearing on judicial outcomes. In How Judges Judge: Empirical Insights into Judicial Decision-Making, Brian M. Barry explores how these factors, beyond the law, affect judges in their role. Case examples, judicial rulings, judges’ own self-reflections on their role and accounts from legal history complement this analysis to contextualise the research, make it more accessible and enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of judicial decision-making. Offering research-based insights into how judges make the decisions that can impact daily life and societies around the globe, this book will be of interest to practising and training judges, litigation lawyers and those studying law and related disciplines.