The Structure of Judges

a. Israel entered Canaan and drove out most of the Canaanites. (1:1-36)

b. The Israelites chose to disobey God and worship idols, so God became angry with them. (2:1-3:6)

II. The Judges (3:7-16:31)

a. Because of his anger towards Israel, God continually allowed the Israelites to be conquered by other nations. However, whenever they cried out to him he sent a judge to deliver them. (3:7-16:31)

III. Double Conclusion (17:1-21:25)

a. Israel struggled with idols. (17:1-18:31)

b. Israel struggled with a civil war. (19:1-21:25)

The genre of the book of Judges is history. The book is set in the early days of the nation of Israel; the first part of Judges is a summary of the Israelites' conquer of Canaan. The second part is about the judges for which the book is named. This is the central part of the book, and it focuses on Israel's inability to remain faithful to God. Despite this, however, the climax of the book starts in the third part, during the double conclusion, when Israel was struggling with idols and war. In Judges 19:25, a Levite's concubine is raped by a group of men in a city of Benjamin, and eventually she dies of her wounds. This is the point of the book that truly reveals how sinful Israel had become; when the Levite sent off pieces of his concubine's body, he asked if anything so terrible had ever happened before in the history of the nation of Israel. Because of that sinful act, a civil war erupted between the tribe of Benjamin and the other tribes, and Judges ends when the Benjaminites were forgiven and allowed to obtain wives. In this book God continually put the Israelites under oppression for worshiping idols, yet when the Israelites cried out to him he always forgave them and sent a judge to rescue them. Thus, the theme of the book of Judges is that God always forgives his people if they ask for forgiveness, no matter what sinful things they have done.