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AnonymousBible: Old Testament: English Standard Version
Nonfiction | Scripture | Adult | Published in 1611A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Historical Books Part 1 (Joshua-Ruth)Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Joshua Summary
The book of Joshua continues the story of the Israelites as they cross the Jordan River and move into the land of Canaan. The Israelites are now led by Joshua, Moses’s appointed successor. Joshua was one of the only spies who encouraged Israel to enter the promised land when they first had the opportunity (Numbers 13-14). Joshua sends spies into the city of Jericho; a woman, Rahab, tells them that the Canaanites fear the Israelites because of their miraculous survival. She believes in their God, and asks for their protection. As the Israelites cross the Jordan River, God repeats his miracle from the Red Sea and makes the river stand still so that a dry pathway appears across it. The Israelites celebrate the miracle, eat from the land again, and perform ritual circumcision. When the people of Israel approach the city of Jericho to lay siege, God tells Joshua that, rather than bringing any weaponry to bear on the city, Joshua is to march around the city while carrying the Ark of the Covenant. After the Israelites march around the city every day for a week, the outer walls fall down, enabling their army to scramble over the rubble and seize the city.
The book of Joshua then recounts other campaigns in Canaan. Most of these go as the conquest of Jericho did: complete victories, with God often providing miraculous interventions. On a few occasions, the failure of the Israelite people to precisely follow the commands of God means that some of the Canaanite cities remain. Still, the book of Joshua recounts an optimistic view of the conquest, claiming that Joshua and his armies delivered dozens of Canaanite city-states into the power of Israel. Before Joshua passes away, he provides a challenge to the Israelites:
[Choose] this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD (Joshua 24:15).
The rest of the Israelites agree and reaffirm their commitment to God’s covenant.
Judges Summary
The book of Judges follows on Joshua’s events, but a different, less optimistic picture prevails. Many powerful adversaries remain, both inside Canaan and across its borders. These groups exercise great power within Israelite territory, such that the Israelites are depicted as living mostly in small villages in the hinterlands, without much power or unity amongst themselves. In this precarious political condition, God raises up judges for the people of Israel, officers appointed to exercise authority for the accomplishment of certain tasks, like leading a military campaign against an enemy. Some of these judges, like Gideon, are successful in their initial attacks. Gideon leads an army of Israelite recruits against a much larger army of Midianites, who had been raiding Israelite settlements and causing great damage. Gideon and his army are encouraged to put their trust in God rather than in their own strength, so Gideon sends the greater portion of his soldiers home and routs the Midianite camp with just a small group of men (Judges 6-8).
The book tells tales of 12 judges in all, including Othniel, Deborah, Jephthah, and Samson. Deborah and Samson have found a particularly significant place in Christian storytelling. A prophet and a priestess, Deborah instructed the general Barak to raise 10,000 troops to defeat the Canaanite king Jabin; Barak only agrees when Deborah agrees to accompany him into battle. The victory results in a period of peace. Samson is characterized by his supernaturally endowed strength, and despite his own shortcomings, God uses him to stall the advance of a new and dangerous group, the Philistines, in the coastal plains of Canaan. According to Samson’s vow, his strength would vanish if he ever cut his hair. Samson’s lover Delilah, a Philistine agent, deceives him and cuts his hair one night as he sleeps, allowing him to be captured, blinded, and enslaved. After some time, his hair begins to grow back; one day, Samson asks to rest against a temple pillar. He prays for the return of his strength, then pulls the pillar down when God grants his prayer, killing himself and all the Philistines in the temple’s ensuing collapse. By the end of Judges, Israel is still repeatedly oppressed by other groups, and the Israelites are guided by their own inclinations rather than by the law of God. This is summed up by a repeated saying in the book of Judges, which stands as a judgment against the moral ambiguity of the time: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25).
Ruth Summary
Ruth is the shortest of the historical books, just four chapters long. Ruth’s story is set within the period of the judges, but is a romantic tale with an optimistic perspective. It tells of an Israelite family from Bethlehem that moves to Moab to escape a famine. This family has two sons who marry Moabite women, one of whom is named Ruth. When the men of the family all die, Ruth decides to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi, accompanying her back into Bethlehem, in Israel, where the two women try to survive their dire economic position. Ruth begins collecting stray grain on the edges of farmland, and there she is observed by a landowner named Boaz. Boaz, who is actually a relative of the family, is in a position under Israelite customs to take Ruth as his wife. The two wed and have a child, thus carrying on Naomi’s family line. This happy ending is compounded by the reveal that Ruth is an ancestor in King David’s line. The book of Ruth thus offers a picture of the welcoming grace of God, accepting a Moabite foreigner into the people of Israel, and the gracious nature of his providence.
Historical Books Part 1 (Joshua-Ruth) Analysis
The first three books in the larger section of historical books all relate to the early period of Israelite settlement, between the exodus from Egypt and the establishment of the Israelite monarchy. The title “historical books” refers to the narrative scope of Joshua to Esther, which describe major events and figures in Israel’s history. These early historical books—Joshua, Judges, and Ruth—are similar in the context they describe, but varied on the perspectives they take.
All three books share a depiction of Israel in an unsettled, vulnerable state. Joshua shows the early progression of the conquest and paints a picture of overall success, but even within that success there are notes of danger. The Israelites stumble into several mistakes due to their own sin and the cleverness of their opponents (see Joshua Chapters 7 and 9), so although the Israelites have a long list of victories by the end of Joshua’s life, it is still an open question whether they will continue to abide by God’s covenant. In Judges, the Israelites’ vulnerable position is the main thread of the narrative, and while there are numerous stories of the Israelites’ successes, the tone and content suggest that these successes are barely enough to keep the Israelites hanging on in the face of many hostile threats. Ruth also highlights the vulnerable position of Israel, but does it through the narrative of a single family’s journey through famine, grief, and poverty, mimicking earlier narrative shifts between civilizational-scale storytelling and intimate narratives about individuals.
Another interesting feature of these historical books is the way that they include a subversive thread of inclusivism in the middle of their largely exclusivist perspective. During this period, Israel was required to hold an exclusivist position, keeping themselves separate from all the other peoples around them in order to prevent other religious rites from influencing their practice of God’s covenant. Despite the firmness of these injunctions to keep themselves separate, the books show several clear examples of God’s mercy extending to members of the outside groups, leading to their ultimate inclusion in the people of Israel. This is most clearly seen in the case of Rahab, a Canaanite from Jericho, and Ruth, a Moabite. From a Christian perspective, their inclusion is pivotal, because not only do they represent The Steadfast Love of God toward all people, but these two women become direct ancestors of Jesus, thus entering into the heart of God’s plan for the world.
Of the major Old Testament themes, The Problem of Sin and Faithfulness to God’s Law become particularly important in these early historical books. In Joshua, these two themes are linked to one another, such that Israel’s sin is defined by its failures to keep God’s covenant-law. In Judges, the law does not receive as much attention as in Joshua, but that very lack of attention is instructive. The disapproving refrain of the book’s narrator, saying that “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25), expresses the idea that people were using their own expedient sense of morality in lieu of submitting to a defining moral code like God’s law.
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