Judges

PREFACE

This book is called Judges, for this reason, that after the death of Jesus Nave God preserved his people, oppressed by the nations of the Chanaanites that were left, by means of judges; and the deeds of each of these and the time of their life are contained in this volume, etc. Now they were thirteen in number: and their years were four hundred and eleven. The history of the book of Judges points to no small mysteries of sacred things. For after Josue there succeed Judges, as after Christ the apostles and the rulers of the churches, to govern the faithful, whom he himself leads on to the hope of the eternal promise. And throughout this volume are contained the offences of the Jewish people, and their servitude and their cry and the compassion of God. For through many years they served for their sins, and being converted they were set free: because our sins furnish strength to our enemies; and when we do evil in the sight of the Lord, our adversaries, that is, the demons, are made strong. But when we are converted, God raises up judges and saviours, that is, princes and teachers, whom he sends to the aid of those who cry to God with their whole heart. At the end of the book of Jesus Nave the narrator briefly extended the history as far as the point at which the children of Israel turned aside to the worshipping of strange gods. But in this book there is a return to the order, how the things that followed were done after the death of Jesus Nave. The book therefore does not begin from that time in which the people slipped away to the worshipping of images: but from earlier things, the times being interposed in which those things were done, after it came to them.