Chronology of the Book of Judges

Chronology of the Book of Judges
Rick Aschmann

Last updated:

22-Apr-2019 at 16:59

(biblechronology.net/Judges.html)

The chronology of the book of Judges is difficult, since if we add together all of the time periods provided in the book, they take up quite a bit more time than there is available between the Exodus and the founding of the temple, which was 480 years as indicated in Exodus 12:51. (See this page for some of these calculations, though I’m not sure I agree with their conclusion, especially the 40 year cycle of covenant renewal.)
Therefore some of the events must have occurred simultaneously, and some of the oppressions and judges appear to have been only regional, not national. Also, no absolute dates at all can be established for this period, except for the general figure of 300 years mentioned in Judges 11:26, which helps to anchor a point close to the end of the period.

There are a number of places in the book where one of the “judges” clearly follows the preceding one, because it says, “After him came X,” giving us a clear sequence. All such places are highlighted in the chart with a yellow box.

Another indication of time sequence is Judges 5:6-7, which says:

6 “In the days of Shamgar son of Anath,
in the days of Jael, the roads were abandoned;
travelers took to winding paths.

7 Village life in Israel ceased,
ceased until I, Deborah, arose,
arose a mother in Israel.”

This shows that the time of Shamgar must predate that of Deborah at least a little bit. However, he is evidently her near contemporary as well, since Jael is one of the important characters of the war in which Deborah takes the leadership (Judges 4:17-22).

However, in many other places in the book of Judges it simply uses the formula “Again the Israelites did evil”, or “Again the Israelites cried out to the Lord”, as in 3:12, 3:15, 6:1, 10:6, and 13:1. In these cases no sequential chronology is implied, leaving the chronology unclear.

Naturally different conservative Bible scholars have come up with different arrangements, and in fact I have found many such arrangements, no two of which agree in very much at all! This is not surprising, given the lack of anchors for the chronology. I have given 2 of these arrangements in my Bible chronology chart. For this period I find that the chronology provided in The Narrated Bible really doesn’t make sense, so instead I have very tentatively followed M. A. Cragg’s chronology, though I have also included the chronology from The Narrated Bible in a second column for comparison.

In both cases I have divided the chart into various regions. These divisions are mine, trying to make sense of the logic behind each chronology. However, placing an oppression or a judge into a particular region does not mean that they might not have covered other regions, only that this is the obvious place that they occurred.

Another chronology quite similar to Cragg’s is found on this page, showing some of the logic behind this arrangement.

A quite different third arrangement can be seen in the timeline on this page, which I have not included in my chart. This arrangement also seems to be divided up into regions.

All of the dates in my chart are followed by a question mark to indicate that they are uncertain. (Dates followed by 2 question marks are ones I have added to fill out the chronology, and are even more uncertain than the others!)

Not all of the deliverers are referred to as judges, and in any case the term “judge” in Hebrew is broader than the English term, since judges had authority in more than just settling disputes, so they were really also leaders or rulers, and a few came close to functioning as kings, though they were definitely not kings.

Leading up to Judges:
Joshua, Caleb, the Elders, and Othniel

Caleb’s birth year is known precisely from Joshua 14:6-12, but Joshua’s is not. This link (see note 28)* makes a good argument that he was about 10 years older than Caleb, as opposed to The Narrated Bible’s estimate of 15, which would put his death at about 1385. Even with the lower estimate, Joshua was described as young in Exodus 33:11 and Numbers 11:28 when he first became Moses’ assistant, even though he would have been about 50 at the time! But compared to Moses, who was 80, that was young!

The oldest of the “elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel” (Joshua 24:31, Judges 2:7) would have been born in 1465 in order to be 20 in 1445 (see Num. 14:29-38). The youngest would have to have been old enough to experience personally the Exodus and all of the events of 1446-1445, so would be perhaps 10. So the oldest would have been around 80 at Joshua’s death if he died around 1385, and the youngest was perhaps 70. Joshua 24:31 and Judges 2:7 make it clear that these all died before the first oppression in Judges (Judges 3:7-8), and this group obviously included Caleb (who evidently outlived Joshua according to Judges 1) as well.

Othniel, the first “judge”, nephew of Caleb, was not in this group, since he lived for 48 years after the start of the first oppression, which would have been about 115 years after the Exodus. So he was younger, and was probably born after the Exodus. He married Caleb’s daughter Achsah (Joshua 15:17, Judges 1:13) after 1400, and probably after the death of Joshua according to Judges 1:13, and had children (1 Chronicles 4:13). If he had been born at the Exodus, he would have been at least 60 when he married, so he was probably born well after the Exodus, so either his father Kenaz was much younger than his older brother Caleb, or he fathered Othniel in his old age!