July/Aug 2006

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

And after Abimelech there arose to defend Israel Tola the son of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar, and he dwelt in Shamir in mount Ephraim.
And he judged Israel twenty and three years, and died, and was buried in Shamir.
And after him arose Jair, a Gileadite, and judged Israel twenty and two years.
And he had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass colts and had thirty cities, which are called Havoth-jair unto this day, which are in the land of Gilead.
And Jair died, and was buried in Camon.
And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the Lord, and served not him.
And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon.
—Judges 10:1–7 (KJV)

If the mention of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar, elicits a glimmer of recognition; if you remember being tantalized by the enigmatic sons of Jair, who rode on thirty ass colts and had thirty cities—then you should award yourself a gold star such as our Sunday school teachers gave us fifty years ago when we had successfully completed our memory work for the week.

Chances are, though, that you haven't read the Book of Judges in a very long time—maybe never. America may be a religious nation, America may even be, in some sense, a predominantly Christian nation, but as Boston University religion scholar Stephen Prothero and a number of others have observed, America today is also a nation of biblical illiterates. And that's especially true when it comes to ...