This week's Office of Readings: Judges

I've had an idea for a new blog series for a while, and figured I'd try it out today: look at the week's coming readings in Office of Readings, and provide an interpretive crux for them.  How can reading these readings be prayer?  Here are some thoughts about Judges, a book easily written off as fun but not particularly spiritual.



Judges, picking up from where Joshua left off, is a book about living through liminality: with Joshua’s death, the age of Moses is coming to a pass, but the age of Saul and the kings has not yet begun.  It presents Israel living without a great leader, and the incumbent problems, such as the people’s inability to drive out all the foreign inhabitants of the Land.  Thresholds are a motif in the book, especially the threshold between the people and their God.  This threshold is crossed by divine messengers, prophecy and dreams, representing God to humanity, and judges who play the opposite role.

There is a cyclical conception of history of sin – punishment – crying out – deliverance.  However, there is also progression in the book, or rather, deterioration: the judges get worse.  1 Sam will address the question: how can Israel get out of this cyclical mess?