In Judg 12:8-15, the author mentions three minor judges. There are six such judges in the book (3:31; 10:1-5). There are also six major judges. The major judges meet Israel’s enemies on the battlefield and win spectacular victories. That is not the case with these three minor judges. The author does not list any extraordinary things that they did.
It is difficult to see why the author includes these “minor” men. Some have suggested that the author wanted a total of twelve judges to match the number of tribes in Israel. In the book of Judges, the nation repeatedly rebels against God by worshiping idols. The number of judges may indicate that the whole nation was rebellious.
The author names these three minor judges in this short section. They are Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon. These are hardly well-known figures in the Bible! Is there a lesson or two we can learn from them?
The information about these men suggests a time of peace and prosperity. There is no mention of warfare, whereas with the major judges, conflict with Israel’s enemies plays a significant role. Two of these minor judges have very large families. Ibzan has thirty sons and thirty daughters. Abdon has forty sons and thirty grandsons. In the Bible, children are a sign of God’s blessings.
Abdon is also wealthy. His sons rode on donkeys, a sign of wealth and prestige in that society. We can certainly assume that Ibzan was rich as well. It would be difficult for a poor man to support sixty children!
Is that what these three men demonstrate? Do they indicate that God is blessing Israel? They are wealthy. They have large families. They are at peace.
Such a view does not fit the narrative of the book of Judges. The book shows the disintegration of Israel’s society and ends on a very dark note. As everybody in the nation does what is “right in his own eyes,” a woman is raped and murdered. Civil war breaks out. God’s chosen people abandon Him.
I think these three minor judges are actually showing us the calm before the storm. If we look at these men superficially, we’ll get the wrong impression.
Even in their short accounts, we see problems. Ibzan brings in women from other areas to marry his sons. He gave his daughters in marriage to men from other areas as well. He does this, no doubt, to cement alliances with the pagans who lived around him.
It is also clear that Izban and Abdon are polygamists. In shoring up alliances with pagans and gathering a large number of wives/concubines, they have become like the pagan rulers around them. With these mixed marriages, these minor judges are indistinguishable from men of power and influence outside the nation of Israel.
All these factors show that Israel was not obeying the Lord. He had told them not to be like the nations around them and not to intermarry with them.
In a time of peace and prosperity, if these three men thought about the Lord at all, they probably thought that He was pleased with them. As a result of all these mixed marriages, they probably worshiped the gods of the surrounding clans. This all fits with what happens in the rest of the book.
The lives of these men were calm. But the storm was coming. The rest of Judges makes that clear.
There is a lesson for us. As believers, we can be influenced by the world around us. We can become like the world. We should not evaluate our spiritual health by the size of our bank account or how the economy of our country is doing. We should not assume that God is pleased with us because all is well and our children are in stable relationships.
Our obedience determines our spiritual health. If we love Him, we will keep His commandments (John 14:15). These three judges did not do that. They did not love the Lord. All appeared well, but it wasn’t. They were a picture of the nation as a whole. Even if some of the Jews experienced periods of peace and wealth, a storm was coming. If we are not walking in obedience, problems are sure to come our way.
