Unit 5 · Into the Land

The Torah ends with the death of Moses. The next book in the Tanakh is Joshua. It is the first book of the Nevi'im, the Prophets. Jewish tradition calls Joshua and Judges the Former Prophets. They tell the story of the people after Moses.

The book of Joshua says Joshua had been Moses’ helper for many years. Now he became the leader. The text says God spoke to him. God told him to cross the Jordan River into the land. God told him three times to be strong and have courage.

The people crossed the Jordan. The book says the water stopped, like at the sea in Exodus. They set up twelve stones to remember it, one for each tribe. Then they were in the land the Torah had promised to Abraham.

The first city in the land was Jericho. It had a high wall all around it. Before the people crossed the river, Joshua sent two spies. A woman in Jericho named Rahab hid them on her roof. She asked them to keep her family safe. They promised.

The book of Joshua tells what happened next. The people marched around the city once a day for six days. Priests carried the ark of the covenant. Seven priests blew ram’s horns, called shofarot. No one spoke. On the seventh day they marched seven times.

Then the priests blew, and all the people shouted. The text says the wall fell down flat. The people took the city. Rahab and her family were kept safe, as promised. Jewish readers have long told this story. The Talmud even remembers Rahab as a person who joined the people of Israel.

The people of Israel were made of twelve tribes. A tribe is a big family group. Each tribe came from one of Jacob’s sons. The book of Joshua says the land was divided among them. Each tribe got its own part to live in and farm.

One tribe was different. The tribe of Levi did not get a big piece of land. The text says the Levites helped with worship instead. They got towns spread all over the land. Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, each got a part of their own.

At the end of the book, Joshua is old. He gathers the people at a place called Shechem. He tells the story of Abraham, Egypt and the crossing. He asks the people to choose to serve God. The text says the people answer that they will.

After Joshua died, there was no one leader. The book of Judges says the people lived tribe by tribe. Again and again, trouble came. An enemy would attack. The text says the people would cry out. Then a leader would step up. That leader was called a judge.

A judge in this book is not a person in a courtroom. A judge was a rescuer. Some led armies. Some settled arguments. Some did both. When the crisis was over, the judge did not become king. There was no palace and no crown.

The book of Judges has a pattern. It says the people turned away from God. Trouble came. The people cried out. A judge saved them. There was peace for a while. Then it happened again. Readers call this the cycle of Judges.

The book of Judges says Deborah was a prophetess. That means the text says she spoke for God. She was also a judge. She sat under a palm tree in the hills of Ephraim. People came to her to settle their arguments.

An enemy king named Jabin ruled over the people. His general was Sisera, who had nine hundred iron chariots. Deborah sent for Barak. She told him to gather ten thousand men. Barak said he would go only if Deborah went with him. She said she would.

The text says a big rain came and the chariots got stuck in the mud. Barak’s men won. Sisera ran away on foot to a tent. A woman named Jael was there, and the text says she killed him. Judges 5 is a long song of Deborah. Many scholars think it is one of the oldest poems in the Tanakh.

The book of Judges says a people called the Midianites came every year. They took the crops. A man named Gideon was hiding wheat from them. The text says a messenger from God called him a mighty man of valor. Gideon did not feel mighty. He asked for signs first.

Gideon gathered an army of thirty-two thousand men. The text says God told him the army was too big. If they won, they would say they did it by themselves. Gideon sent home everyone who was afraid. Twenty-two thousand left. Ten thousand stayed.

That was still too many. The text says God had Gideon watch the men drink from a stream. Only three hundred lapped water from their hands. Gideon kept those three hundred. At night they blew horns, broke jars and held up torches. The Midianite camp panicked and ran.

The book of Judges tells about Samson. Before he was born, the text says a messenger came to his mother. Her child would be a Nazirite. A Nazirite made special promises. He did not drink wine. He did not cut his hair. Samson was set apart from birth.

Samson grew up very strong. The text says he tore a lion apart with his hands. He fought the Philistines, a people who lived by the sea. Once he caught three hundred foxes and tied torches to their tails to burn the Philistines’ fields.

The Philistines tried to tie him up. The text says he broke the ropes like burned string. He fought a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. The book says Samson judged Israel for twenty years. But he was not wise like Deborah. He acted first and thought later.

Samson loved a woman named Delilah. The Philistine leaders paid her to find the secret of his strength. Three times Samson told her a false answer. Three times the Philistines tried and failed. Delilah kept asking, day after day.

At last Samson told her the truth. He was a Nazirite. His hair had never been cut. The text says Delilah had his hair cut while he slept. His strength left him. The Philistines caught him and blinded him. They made him grind grain in a prison in Gaza.

The Philistines held a big feast for their god Dagon. They brought Samson out to laugh at him. The text says his hair had begun to grow. He asked to lean on the two middle pillars. He pushed, and the building fell on everyone, including him. The book calls this his last act.

The last line of the book of Judges is famous. It says that in those days there was no king in Israel. Every person did what was right in their own eyes. The book says this line four times near the end. It is a kind of sad sigh.

Readers have long asked what the line means. Some say it is a wish for a king who would bring order. The next books, Samuel and Kings, are about kings. Other readers say the line is a warning. When everyone decides alone, things can go wrong.

The stories at the end of Judges are hard. There is fighting between tribes. People do cruel things. The text does not cheer for them. It tells them plainly. Jewish tradition reads these chapters as a lesson about what happens when a people loses its way.

The stories in this chapter show different kinds of courage. Joshua is told to be strong and brave. Rahab risks her life to hide the spies. Deborah goes to battle when Barak asks. Gideon is afraid at first, but he goes. Courage in these books does not mean having no fear.

The stories also show trust. Gideon’s army is made small so the people will trust God, not their numbers. The book of Judges says trouble came when the people forgot. Jewish tradition reads these stories on some Shabbat mornings as a haftarah, a reading from the Prophets after the Torah portion.

The rabbis had a saying about strength. In Pirkei Avot, a book of rabbis’ sayings, Ben Zoma asks who is strong. His answer is the person who controls their own urges. Many Jewish readers think of Samson here. He could lift a city gate, but he could not control himself. That is the choice the stories ask about.

The book of Ruth is short. It has only four chapters. It begins in the days when the judges judged. There was a famine, a time with no food. A man from Bethlehem took his wife Naomi and two sons to the land of Moab. Moab was across the Dead Sea, to the east.

In Moab, Naomi’s husband died. Her sons married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Then both sons died too. Naomi heard that there was food again in Bethlehem. She decided to go home. Her sons’ wives started out with her.

On the road, Naomi told them to go back. Orpah went back. Ruth stayed. When they reached Bethlehem, the women of the town were surprised. Naomi told them not to call her Naomi, which means pleasant. She said to call her Mara, which means bitter. Her life had been very hard.

On the road, Ruth made a promise. She said she would go where Naomi went. She would live where Naomi lived. Naomi’s people would be her people. Naomi’s God would be her God. She would die where Naomi died. Only death would part them.

Ruth was a Moabite. She was not born into the people of Israel. Jewish tradition reads her words as a choice to join them. The rabbis of the Talmud and the midrash saw Ruth as a model of a person who becomes Jewish by choice. In Hebrew, such a person is called a ger.

Many readers notice what Ruth puts first. She does not say she will get a better life. She says she will stay with Naomi. Loyalty comes before anything else. The book of Ruth never uses the word love for the two women. It shows it instead.

Ruth and Naomi came to Bethlehem at the start of the barley harvest. They had no food. Ruth said she would go glean. To glean is to pick up grain that the harvesters drop or leave behind. The Torah says farmers must leave some grain for the poor and the stranger.

Ruth went to a field. It belonged to a man named Boaz. He was a relative of Naomi’s husband. Boaz noticed Ruth. He had heard how she stayed with Naomi. He told his workers to let her glean safely. He told them to drop extra grain on purpose.

Ruth worked all day. She came home with a big load of barley. Naomi asked whose field it was. When she heard the name Boaz, she was glad. Boaz was family. In the book, gleaning is not just about food. It shows how the Torah’s laws about the poor worked in a real field.

In the Torah, a close relative could help a family that lost its land or its men. Such a helper was called a go'el, a redeemer. Naomi knew Boaz was a relative. She sent Ruth to ask him to be their redeemer. Ruth went at night to the threshing floor, where grain was beaten out.

Boaz said he was willing. But there was a closer relative. Boaz went to the town gate, where business was done. He asked the other man in front of ten elders. The man said no. So Boaz took off his sandal, an old sign of a deal, and agreed to redeem the family.

Boaz married Ruth. They had a son named Obed. The women of the town said a son had been born to Naomi. The book ends with a family list. Obed was the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of David. So Ruth, the stranger from Moab, was the great-grandmother of Israel’s most famous king.

In the Tanakh, the book of Ruth is not next to Judges. It is in Ketuvim, the Writings, the third part. It is one of five short books called the Megillot, or scrolls. Each of the five is read on a different holiday. Ruth is read on Shavuot.

Shavuot comes seven weeks after Passover. Its name means weeks. It was a harvest holiday for wheat and the first fruits. Jewish tradition also says the Torah was given at Mount Sinai on Shavuot. Many Jewish families eat dairy foods, like cheese blintzes, on this day.

Why read Ruth on Shavuot? Readers give a few reasons. The story happens during the harvest. Ruth chose to accept the Torah, just as the people did at Sinai. And Jewish tradition says King David, Ruth’s great-grandson, was born and died on Shavuot. In Chicago and around the world, synagogues read this scroll each spring.

The book of 1 Samuel begins with a woman named Hannah. She was married to Elkanah. She had no children. This made her very sad. Every year the family went to the holy place at Shiloh. One year, Hannah went to the door of the sanctuary and prayed.

Hannah made a promise. If God gave her a son, she would give him back to serve God all his life. She prayed with her lips moving, but no sound came out. The priest Eli saw her. He thought she was drunk. Hannah said no. She was pouring out her heart.

Eli blessed her. The text says Hannah had a son. She named him Samuel. When he was a small boy, she brought him to Shiloh to live with Eli, as she had promised. The rabbis of the Talmud pointed to Hannah. They said prayer should be like hers: quiet, from the heart, with the lips moving.

Samuel grew up at Shiloh. He helped Eli, who was old and could not see well. One night Samuel was lying down near the ark, the holy box that held the tablets. He heard a voice call his name. He ran to Eli and said, here I am. Eli said he had not called.

This happened three times. The third time, Eli understood. He told Samuel to lie down again. If the voice came, Samuel should say: speak, for your servant is listening. The voice came a fourth time. Samuel answered as Eli had said.

The text says the message was hard. Eli’s sons had done wrong, and Eli had not stopped them. Samuel was afraid to tell Eli. In the morning, Eli made him tell everything. Eli accepted it. From then on, the book says, all Israel knew Samuel was a prophet, a person who speaks for God.

Samuel grew up to be a judge, like Deborah and Gideon. But he was also a prophet. The book says he traveled in a circle each year. He went to Bethel, Gilgal and Mizpah. In each place he judged the people. Then he went home to Ramah.

The Philistines were still a danger. The text says they once captured the ark in battle. Eli died when he heard the news. Later, Samuel gathered the people at Mizpah. He prayed for them. The text says the Philistines were driven back.

Samuel set up a stone to remember that day. He called it Eben-ezer, which means stone of help. Readers often call Samuel the last judge. After him, the book turns to kings. Jewish tradition counts 1 and 2 Samuel as two parts of one book, named for him.

Samuel grew old. His sons were judges, but the text says they were not honest. The elders of Israel came to Samuel at Ramah. They said: give us a king to judge us, like all the nations. Samuel did not like this. He prayed about it.

The text says God told Samuel to listen to the people. But Samuel should warn them first. So Samuel told them what a king would do. A king would take their sons for his army. He would take their daughters as workers. He would take the best of their fields and a tenth of their crops.

The people still said they wanted a king. They wanted someone to lead them in battle. Samuel agreed. Later, the text says, he poured oil on the head of a tall young man named Saul. This was called anointing. Saul became the first king. The next chapter tells his story.

There is a Hebrew word that runs through this chapter. The word is chesed. It is hard to say in one English word. It means kindness, but more than that. It means kindness that keeps a promise. It means loyalty. The JPS 1917 translation often says kindness or mercy.

The book of Ruth uses the word three times. Naomi hopes God will show chesed to Ruth and Orpah. Naomi says Boaz has shown chesed to the living and the dead. Boaz tells Ruth her chesed is great. Ruth stayed when she did not have to. That is chesed.

Hannah kept her promise and gave up her son. Eli accepted hard news with grace. Samuel served the people all his life. Jewish tradition calls chesed one of the things the world stands on, in Pirkei Avot 1:2. Readers say the book of Ruth is a story of chesed from start to end.