This article is from the Spring 2020 issue of Bible and Spade.
In the book of Judges, we encounter the stories of Israel’s “judges,” from the root spt, meaning “to deliver” or “to save” in this particular context. But the general meaning of the word is multifaceted and encompasses many functions obscured by the simple rendering. They include the actions of “govern,” “decide,” “rule,” “vindicate,” and “deliver.” With cognates in both Akkadian and the Mari archives, it is often used in the Old Testament in parallel with dyn, implying a predominately legal function of the word “judgment.” Whereas the root dyn is used only 25 times, the use of spt is attested in 180 references.1…
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See the endnotes here.