Book of Judges
Image via Wikipedia Like a scratched record on which the stylus becomes stuck in a single groove, playing the same music over and over again, one refrain sounds repeatedly in the book of Judges : “And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD.” Judges covers a crucial period of Old Testament history. It is sandwiched between the books of Joshua and 1 Samuel (with the little book of Ruth squeezed in as well). Joshua records the history of the conquest of Canaan , the move of the Israelites from the wilderness into the Promised Land. Once the conquest was accomplished, Israel settled into the era of the judges, or what Biblical scholars call the period of the amphictyony. Historians date this period as being roughly between 1200 and 1050 B.C. The Egyptian Empire was waning and Assyria had been weakened. The newest Image via Wikipedia threat to the Israelites was the Philistines , who controlled the seacoast of Canaan and had a monopoly on the manufacture of i