Қазыналық кітап – Төрелер кітабының бірінші тарауы

First chapter of the Book of Judges

Judges 1 is the first chapter of the Book of Judges, the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, a sacred text in Judaism and Christianity. With the exception of the first verse, scholars have long recognised and studied the parallels between chapter 1 of Judges and chapters 13 to 19 in the preceding Book of Joshua. Both provide similar accounts of the purported conquest of Canaan by the ancient Israelites. Judges 1 and Joshua 15–19 present two accounts of a slow, gradual, and only partial conquest by individual Israelite tribes, marred by defeats, in stark contrast with the 10th and 11th chapters of the Book of Joshua, which portray a swift and complete victory of a united Israelite army under the command of Joshua.

This chapter was originally written in the Hebrew language. It is divided into 36 verses.

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis (895), Aleppo Codex (10th century), and Codex Leningradensis (1008). Fragments containing parts of this chapter in Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls including XJudges (XJudg, X6, 4QJudg? ; 50 BCE) with extant verses 10–12. Extant ancient manuscripts of a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint (originally was made in the last few centuries BCE) include Codex Vaticanus (B; B; 4th century) and Codex Alexandrinus (A; A; 5th century).

Judges 1 narrates how the Tribe of Judah, which would later establish the southern Kingdom of Judah, took the initiative and was most successful in conquering lands from the Canaanites, while especially those tribes who later formed the northern Kingdom of Israel experienced several failures, with the Canaanites repelling Israelite attacks on their cities.

Another unusual feature is the conquest of Jerusalem as described in Judges 1:7–8: the Judahites capture Adoni Bezek and take him to Jerusalem, everyone there was killed and the city burnt to the ground. In contrast, Judges 1:21 reports Jerusalem as having not been conquered and containing Jebusites to this day (confirmed by Joshua 15:63). Judges 19:11–12 again claims it is a city of Jebusites, with no Israelites. Later on in 2 Samuel 5:6–10, David even had to capture Jerusalem from the Jebusites in order to make it his capital.

According to the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) of Judges 1:18, "Also Judah took Gaza with the coast thereof, and Askelon with the coast thereof, and Ekron with the coast thereof." (King James Version). However, the Greek Septuagint (LXX) renders Judges 1:18 as: "But Judas did not inherit Gaza nor her coasts, nor Ascalon nor her coasts, nor Accaron nor her coasts, nor Azotus nor the lands around it.' (Brenton's Septuagint Translation). This contradiction has puzzled scholars, as not only does the Greek text add Ashdod (Azotus) to the list of cities, but it specifically denies that the Judahites conquered (literally "inherited") these cities, while the Hebrew text asserts that they did. Although English Bible translations have generally followed the Masoretic Text in saying the Judahites took the three cities, some scholars claim that the Greek version should be regarded as superior if the inhabitants of these four coastal cities are to be equated with "the people of the plains" in the next verse, who repelled the Judahites thanks to their iron chariots. The Septuagint may therefore 'correct' the Hebrew text, as other textual evidence also seems to indicate the towns did not fall to the Israelites until much later. Charles Ellicott noted that Josephus had a different solution, claiming in Antiquities of the Jews (volume 2, paragraph 4) that 'Askelon and Ashdod were taken in the war, but that Gaza and Ekron escaped, because their situation in the plains enabled them to use their chariots; yet in 3, § 1, he says that the Canaanites re conquered Askelon and Ekron.' While Joshua 10–11 portrayed Joshua's united Israelites as completely annihilating all Canaanites and capturing or destroying all their cities, Judges 1 shows many of these cities as still standing and being inhabited by Canaanites who often successfully repelled various Israelite tribes. Similarly, K. Lawson Younger (1995) made the case that the composition of Judges 1 was dependent on text taken from Joshua 13–19 and reused for the author's own purposes: 'Judges 1 recapitulates, recasts and extends the story of the process of Israel's taking possession of the land of Canaan. It utilizes materials from the book of Joshua (esp. Joshua 13–19) with some expansions to explicitly reflect the general success of Judah and the increasing failure of the other Israelite tribes, especially Dan.'

This is not a list of archaeological remains in the modern day Middle East. This discusses a specific list present in the Bible.