Samuel anointed Saul to be the first king, and from that point forward, kings ruled Israel in place of judges. All of these judges are found in the book of Judges except for Eli and Samuel, who are found in 1st Samuel. Skip to content Q: How many judges were there in Israel, and how long did each rule? By: Steve Shirley. Share this: Tweet. Samuel listened to God and anointed the first king of Israel, a tall, handsome Benjaminite named Saul.
In his farewell speech, the aged Samuel warned the people to give up idols and serve the true God. He told them if they and King Saul disobeyed, God would sweep them away. But Saul did disobey, offering a sacrifice himself instead of waiting for God's priest, Samuel, to do it. Again Saul disobeyed God in a battle with the Amalekites, sparing the enemy's king and the best of their livestock when Samuel had ordered Saul to destroy everything.
God was so grieved that he rejected Saul and chose another king. Samuel went to Bethlehem and anointed the young shepherd David , son of Jesse.
Thus began a years-long ordeal as the jealous Saul chased David through the hills, trying to kill him. Samuel made yet another appearance to Saul--after Samuel had died! Saul visited a medium, the witch of Endor , ordering her to bring up the spirit of Samuel, on the eve of a great battle. In 1 Samuel , that apparition told Saul he would lose the battle, along with his life and the lives of his two sons.
In all of the Old Testament , few people were as obedient to God as Samuel. He was honored as an uncompromising servant in the " Hall of Faith " in Hebrews Samuel was an honest and fair judge, dispensing God's law impartially.
As a prophet, he exhorted Israel to turn from idolatry and serve God alone. Despite his personal misgivings, he led Israel from the system of judges to its first monarchy. Samuel loved God and obeyed without question. His integrity prevented him from taking advantage of his authority. His first loyalty was to God, regardless of what the people or king thought of him. When we are faithful in the same way His blessings are not withheld from us! Your email address will not be published.
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Jean Gillen. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. When and how did the Twelve Apostles die? This puts the right bookend at BC at the death of Saul. Figure 1: Total Years vs. Available Time. As shown above in Figure 1, this math gives us years in which to fit Joshua, years of judges, Samuel, and Saul. If making everything fit were not enough of a puzzle, we have one other requirement: In all of scripture, there is only one reference that allows us to fix a date for any of the events found in Judges relative to any other point in history.
That reference is found in Judges and quotes a letter sent by Jephthah to the king of Ammon:. While Israel dwelt in Heshbon and its villages, in Aroer and its villages, and in all the cities along the banks of the Arnon, for three hundred years, why did you not recover them within that time?
This area was conquered in the last year of the wilderness period, just months before the entry into the land. We thus date the conquest of this area to late BC and years later would be BC. At this point, we have a choice of how to interpret this. But is a round number, and as such may not be precise. Similarly, the years given by Jephthah may not be exact.
So, we should also consider the possibility that Jephthah is reasonably close to that year mark but perhaps somewhat later. Before we can begin to figure out how to compress everything into the available time, we first need to get a complete picture of what it is that we have to compress. So far, we have a total of years from Judges, and 40 years for Eli, for a total of years [2]. However, we still have some missing pieces.
Our first, or left-hand bookmark rests on the crossing of the Jordan river by Joshua and the armies of Israel to begin the conquest of Canaan.
The first number given in Judges is the 8-year oppression by Cushan-Rishathaim recorded in Judges But how much time had elapsed from the beginning of the conquest to the start of that oppression? Judges tells us:. So we need to allow adequate time for conquest of Canaan to be completed, and for Joshua and the other elders of Israel to die out.
In the middle of the Early Period, we have one judge that does not have a number of years associated with him, namely Shamgar. We will need to find those missing years or otherwise understand why no years are assigned to him. Finally, our right-hand bookend rests on the death of Saul.
At this point we are beyond the scope of the book of Judges, but we need to assign a reign length to Saul and, before that, to Samuel for the period between the death of Eli and the coronation of Saul. Paul assigns Saul a year reign in his speech at Pisidian Antioch in Acts That number may have been given in I Samuel , but the text there is fragmentary. Perhaps we can verify this number or at least understand where it comes from. Fortunately, we have another witness to consult to try and fill in these gaps.
Josephus was a first century AD Jew who wrote several works on Jewish history and religion for his Roman benefactor, most importantly his Antiquities of the Jews , a history of the people of Israel from creation to the time of the Jewish Revolt 69 AD. Of particular interest to us are Antiquities Book 5 covering the period from the death of Moses to the death of Eli and Book 6 covering the period from the death of Eli to the death of Saul. Table 1 below shows the full set of references from both the Old Testament books of Joshua, Judges, and I Samuel as well as the corresponding information given by Josephus.
The differences between the two are highlighted. In general, Josephus is in very close agreement with the Biblical sources, and he provides numbers to fill in the gaps that we have identified. On the downside, he leaves out one judge Tola entirely and fails to provide a number for another Abdon.
All together, Josephus gives us a total of 60 additional years: 28 between the conquest of Canaan and the first judge, and 32 for Samuel and Saul. That gives us more to compress, but at last we have a full set of numbers to work with. The political situation in the Levant during this period is largely one of Egyptian control.
In the generally accepted, orthodox chronology, the area of Canaan is ruled by Egypt throughout the Judges period, specifically the 18 th through 21 st dynasties of the Egyptian New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period. There is a period where Egyptian control loosens in the late 18 th dynasty, particularly from Akenaten until early in the 19 th dynasty. Regardless of the timeline used, after the conquest by Thutmose I the other major political powers in the Near East the Hittites, Mittani, Assyrians and Babylonians do not make incursions into the area of Israel until much later.
In the Judges narrative and into the time of Saul and David, the Philistines are the primary oppressor of Israel. The Philistines were, however, vassals of the Egyptian Pharoah. Thus, when we read about the actions of the Philistines we should see an Egyptian hand pulling the strings.
As vassals, the cities of the Philistine pentapolis would have been required to send tribute to Pharoah and their oppression of Israel may be seen simply as a way to acquire resources to meet their Pharaonic obligations. During this period, the archaeological evidence for Israel is scant. This might be expected given that the people of Israel at this time were largely farmers and herdsmen. In particular, they were not carving monuments in stone, and it seems that their material culture pottery, jewelry, idols, and the like was little different from their Canaanite neighbors.
Thus, there is little for the archaeologist to find that denotes the presence of Israel or confirms any of these events. That does not mean, however, that this period is completely devoid of archaeological evidence. Israel is laid waste and his seed is not;. This is the first datable mention of the name Israel in recorded history, and the only one from the period of the judges.
It has been dated to c BC in the orthodox chronology. You are probably expecting me to start with Joshua and work forward in time. However, given the apparently more complete records for the Late Period, I believe it will be more valuable to start at the end — the death of Saul — and work backward to Abimilech.
This will give us a good idea of how much compression is still needed in the Early Period. The key question for the Late Period is, what judges or events, if any, should be placed in parallel? Recall that we have Jephthah at the year mark or perhaps a bit later.
This year mark is a mere 97 years before the death of Saul. However, the sum total of the years given from Jephthah to Saul is and so we are looking for at least a year reduction.
Josephus gives a period of 32 years for Samuel and Saul combined in the heading to Antiquities Book 6. Josephus has already addressed the overlap between Samuel and Saul, and no further overlaps are possible in the context of the events of I Samuel. Thus, I will use 32 years as the correct number for this period.
However, before we move on, we need to consider how to best allocate the years between Samuel and Saul. This verse occurs right after the ark has been returned after its capture by the Philistines. Thus, it appears that we have a year period where Samuel is the sole judge before Saul is anointed as king. My sense here is that Josephus got it backward and that we should give 20 years to Samuel and 12 to Saul. Note that this solution also gives Samuel a total of 30 years but as 20 alone plus ten overlapping with Saul as opposed to 12 and As noted above, Paul gives Saul a year reign length in Acts If Saul actually reigned for only 12 years, or even 20 years, where does this year number come from?
I see two possible sources for this number. It is also possible that the 40 year number comes from rounding up the 32 year combined reigns of Samuel and Saul. If you are keeping score, the 32 years for Samuel and Saul means that we have a mere 65 years remaining to the year mark for Jephthah and years to fit in there. I Samuel states that Eli had judged Israel for 40 years.
We know that his death occurred at the time of the loss of the ark to the Philistines and immediately preceded the judgeship of Samuel. With Eli then firmly slotted we can at last begin to address the information provided in Judges.
Figure 2 shows what we have so far. Figure 2: Dates from I Samuel and Josephus. We are now prepared to dig into the information in Judges, beginning with Samson. The relevant chronological information is as follows. First, a year period of oppression under the Philistines begins Judges Finally, we learn that Samson judges Israel for 20 years Judges Putting these pieces together, Samson was born, grew to adulthood, judged for 20 years, and died within the year period of Philistine oppression.
The overlap here is clear, and this is the first step in solving our time compression problem. What is not immediately clear is where to place Samson relative to Samuel and Eli. However, I do not think it is appropriate to overlap Samson with Samuel. The capture of the ark was an event of significant importance and had it occurred during the Judges period it would have been recorded there.
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