Judges Chapter 1

Chopping off Thumbs

“Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders an the Elders to the prophets and the prophets to the Gedolim. They said three things: Be patient in justice, raise many disciples and make a fence around Torah.”

Pirke Avos 1:1

The conquest is winding down. Joshua is dead. The leadership fractures into tribes. The time of prophecy is on pause. There are prophets, but they don’t nearly have the power that they had in the desert. The elders have taken charge of the Torah. The tribes set out to finish the conquest.

Judah and Shimon conquer everything from Gaza to Jerusalem. Caleb, the leader of Judah, bestows the Negev to his daughter. He even gives her the springs. Ephraim and Manassah head north. They take over, but they don’t drive out the inhabitants. They use them for labor. The Amorites confine Dan to the hill country.

The Bronze Age is truly over. Iron has entered the world. Judah can drive out the hill country people, but not the valley residents. They have chariots of iron. Bronze cannot penetrate iron. The iron chariots were in Joshua, but they weren’t nearly as effective.

The House of Joseph invades Luz with the help of a spy. The spy goes on and founds another city, also calls it Luz. Beit Yosef renames Luz Bethel.

Then we get Adoni-Bezek.

In just three verses, he leaves an impression. He fights. He loses. He foreshadows the fall of the First Temple. Like Adoni-Bezek, the last reigning king will go into exile in chains and severely wounded. Adoni-Bezek loses his thumbs. The last king will lose his eyes. Jehoiachin comes into a state of grace, freed from prison and eating at the king’s table with a regular allowance from Nebuchadnezzar. Adoni-Bezek as the first individual to speak as an individual gives us a statement of acceptance.

“Seventy kings with their thumbs and toes cut off picked up scraps under my table. As I have done, G-d has done to me.”

It’s up there with “havel havelim” in its “oh well. Shit happens” energy. We don’t know what happened before Adoni-Bezek accepted his fate. He seems almost too casual. Surely, there must have been a period when he became Eric Robrts from The Pope of Greenwich Village. “They took my THUUUUUUMBBBBB CHAHHHH-LEEEE!!!” He might have cried. He might have cursed his fate. He could have given bad relationship advice. Seriously, watch The Pope of Greenwich Village. Eric Roberts is chewing the scenery and Mickey Rourke was in his “this guy is so fucking cool” phase.

Beyond the tone, the line hints at a history of serious scheming and conquering. Again, consider the Bronze Age and its millennia of empires and relative stability, undone in the space of a few decades. The early books of the Bible are in the shadow of the collapse. From the slaughter of Shechem to the collapse of the Egyptian slave economy, this period is Mad Max apocalypse with fewer cars and more family dynamics.

How much do we know about Adoni-Bezek? He was a king. He held a kingdom and he had so much power that he could cut off royal thumbs without the rest of the kings ganging up to destroy him. Did he start out small? Or did his father start the conquering? How many alliances did he break? How often did he break treaties to stab fellow kings in the back. What were the kings thinking about him when he cut off his first thumbs? His 10^th thumb? 40? 50? Were they worried or did they believe him a useful ally?

Perhaps Adoni-Bezek was the best player in a system based on family ties and corruption. He managed to position himself as everyone’s ally and no one’s friend. Think Iago or Littlefinger; everyone certain that he was really on their side. Maybe he targeted the less popular figures, toppling different kings that others feared. He might not have been the only figure playing these games, but he was the best. Slowly methodically he turned everyone against each other, until he sat at a throne with royal beggars struggling to pick up scraps.

Then came the Israelites. They didn’t play his games. They were like the White Walkers in Game of Thrones. Imagine George ever finishing the fucking books and Littlefinger manages to survive, only to face the ultimate ice zombie invasion. I bet he’ll be very disappointed that all of his scheming ended that way, finally facing an enemy that resisted mind games and seduction.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned

In a chapter that mostly sets the scene where the Israelites conquer the land and make the compromises that lead to G-d’s wrath, Adoni-Bezek stands out. He’s the character who refuses to go quietly. Oh he definitely goes but not before hinting at histories that the reader will never know or understand.

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Here’s a Jonathan Sacks article on Shoftim (Judges).

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