Judges 12

Judges 12 is the twelfth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans in the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformist Judean king Josiah in 7th century BCE. This chapter records the activities of Biblical judges Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon. belonging to a section comprising Judges 6:1 to 16:31.

Text

This chapter was originally written in Biblical Hebrew. It is divided into 15 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, Aleppo Codex, and Codex Leningradensis.
Extant ancient manuscripts of a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint include Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus.

Analysis

A linguistic study by Robert B. Chisholm reveals that the central part in the Book of Judges can be divided into two panels based on the six refrains that state that the Israelites did evil in Yahweh's eyes:
Panel One
Panel Two
Furthermore from the linguistic evidence, the verbs used to describe the Lord's response to Israel's sin have chiastic patterns and can be grouped to fit the division above:
Panel One
Panel Two
This chapter contains the Jephthah's Narrative, which can be divided into 5 episodes, each with a distinct dialogue, as follows:

Episode	Verses	Dialogue	Verses
A.	10:6–16	Israel and Yahweh	10–15
B. The Ammonite threat	10:17–11:11	The elders and Jephthah	5–11
C.	11:12–28	Jephthah and the Ammonite king	12–28
B'. The Ammonite defeat	11:29–40	Jephthah and his daughter	34–38
A'.	12:1–7	Jephthah and the Ephraimites	1–4a

Jephthah and the Ephraimites (12:1–7)

This section contains the fifth episode in the Jephthah Narrative. As with Gideon in Judges 8:1–3, the Ephraimites complained that they had not been asked to join in the battle, but this time it ended in a civil war, which the Gileadites, unified by Jephthah, had upperhand. The Gileadites used the pronunciation of the Hebrew word "Shibboleth" to distinguish the Ephraimites, so they could kill them.

Ibzan (12:8–10)

succeeded Jephthah as judge for seven years. He had thirty sons and thirty daughters, and when he died, he was buried in his native town, Bethlehem, which is not followed by "Ephratah" or by "Judah" so it could be the Bethlehem of Galilee in the territory of Zebulun.

Elon (12:11–12)

The tenth judge succeeded Ibzan, Elon, who was given very few statistics and with no historical exploits, other than he was from the tribe of Zebulun, succeeded Ibzan to judge Israel for ten years. When he died, he was buried in Aijalon in the territory of Zebulun.

Abdon (12:13–15)

succeeded Elon, the son of Hillel of Pirathon of the tribe of Ephraim, who had forty sons and thirty grandsons, and judged Israel for eight years, restoring order in the central area of Israel in the aftermath of the civil war involving Jephthah and the Gileadites.