Judges 3:31: the Judgeship of Shamgar

There are clearly some people in the Bible whose significance is belied by the fact that so little space is devoted to them in the Word of God. Melchizedek is mentioned very briefly in Genesis 14, yet according to the Letter to the Hebrews, without him our understanding of the person and work of Christ would be extremely impoverished.

Similarly, one chapter in each of the books of 1 Kings (10:1-13) and 2 Chronicles (9:1-12) is given over to the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon, yet Jesus Christ says that she will be a witness against all those who refuse to listen to the Gospel (see Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31). The amount of space devoted to a person in the Bible is no indication of their value or significance.

So when we read of a judge whose whole tenure of office is recorded in all of one verse, we should warn ourselves not to judge his importance on the basis of this one reference. After all, the verse includes the detail that Shamgar defeated 600 Philistines; by any standard, that was a remarkable achievement. Yet the Bible is sparse in the information it gives about him. What can we say about this man?

Appearance Is Everything

The first thing we want to say about him is that the fact that he appears in the Bible at all is testimony to his significance. He was not an Othniel, with 5 loaded verses devoted him; nor was he an Ehud, with 19 verses devoted to him; nor was he a Deborah, and who has two chapters devoted to her.

No; he is himself, and small though his appearance is, he makes his mark, and his work as judge, like the almsgiving of Cornelius, ascends as a memorial before God (see Acts 10:4). God did not pass him by; nor did he leave his people to the mercy of these marauding Philistine armies. There was a Shamgar, perhaps little known, yet who played his part in the series of cycles of deliverance which characterises the Book of Judges.

God has his people in every situation, for every eventuality, and in every place, ready to hear his call, to obey his will, and to do his bidding. Shamgar was ready; and because of it he is named in the Lamb's Book of Exploits. The 600 Philistines are not named; but the one man whom God chose, is.

The fact that Shamgar appears here at all is testimony to God's covenant faithfulness. This was an emergency for which no Gideon was equal, and to which no Samson was called. This was Shamgar's hour, and he appears as a small star in a dark sky, but as a star nonetheless.

The emergency was not over when Ehud subdued Moab. That victory was priceless; 10,000 Moabites were slaughtered, and for eighty years the land enjoyed a Sabbath rest. But the defeat of Moab could not halt the spread of sin. And what is implied in our text is the fact of further rebellion and further wickedness which required God to allow the Philistine threat to emerge once again. Shamgar's appearance is testimony to the continued need of God's people to have God intervene by grace for their salvation and their restoration. Appearance is everything: had Shamgar not appeared, sin would have swamped Israel once again.

God Knows -- and That's Enough

For all that Shamgar's contribution is related in one sentence, the reference to him here and in chapter 5 raise several issues.

First of all, was he actually a judge? The text implies that he was; but in most cases there is a formula used in the text: 'God raised up a deliverer'. That is said of Othniel in v9 and of Ehud in v15. Deborah is explicitly described as a judge in 4:4; and God's commission of Gideon in 6:14 could not be clearer.

But of Shamgar we cannot speak with certainty. He was certainly an instrument God used; and God is always free to act by means, without them, against them or above them, as the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches us. He was God's man, and that's enough.

Second, was he an Israelite? There seems to be some debate over his patronym; he is described as the 'son of Anath' in this verse and in 5:6. Joshua 15:59 mentions a city in southern Judah called 'Beth Anoth', and some take the descriptor to mean that Shamgar was a native of that city. Others interpret this in the light of the name of the Canaanite goddess Anath, and it has been suggested that perhaps he was a Canaanite, whose war with the Philistines was to the advantage of Israel.

This seems unlikely, but the debate rages on. All we know is that only God knows who he actually was. To us, his name, like the rest of his history, is shrouded in obscurity. But God has his people everywhere, and in Anath's home and city there was raised one who would do God's work in God's time.

Third, did he work alone? Or was he the leader of an uprising against the Philistines? Did he defeat these six hundred single-handedly, or was he only the captain of the band? These are things we will never know. But the God we worship is the God of all knowledge, as he is the God of all power. And woven into these short lines and succinct sentences is the fact that whether with one or many, God is able to empower and embolden his people to rise up and face every challenge.

God is the God of inverse proportion. He is the God who says that 'the least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation' (Isaiah 60:22). When Amos cries 'How can Jacob stand? He is so small!' (Amos 7:2,5), God's ultimate promise is that he will restore the fortunes of his people and rebuild their cities (Amos 9:14).

And when God comes to a man, even though he stand alone, 600 Philistines can be defeated. It is 'not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts' (Zechariah 4:6). That is the secret of real power and real victory -- to be emptied of ourselves so that the power of God can work through us, as Paul discovered:

I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Surely there is something extraordinarily encouraging here? All God knew of this man was commensurate with all he enabled him to do. He gave him power for his task and strength for his responsibility. That is what counts. Some men will go down in history with volumes written about them, and with generations of disciples venerating them. Others will hardly be mentioned at all. But the important thing is that when we know ourselves to be weak, then we will be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

Strange Weapons of Warfare

One thing that we do know about is the instrument Shamgar used to defeat the Philistines. He used his ox-goad. Some very interesting theories have appeared about this, including one scholar who suggested that 'The Ox-Goad' was the name of Shamgar's ship.

But the implement itself is well attested in antiquity, and is described by one commentator as 'eight feet long and up to six inches in circumference at the larger end. The smaller end was armed with a sharp prick for driving the oxen, the other end with a small spade or iron paddle for cleaning out the plough' (Davis, p66).

That's what Shamgar had. That's all Shamgar had. There was no dagger, no sword, no conventional weapon of warfare. This was in the league of Jael's hammer (4:21) or the jawbone of the ass which Samson used (15:15); it was a strange weapon of warfare.

But God is able to use anything that is devoted to himself. Let us assume that Shamgar was a judge, that he was an Israelite, that he did believe in God, and that everything about him was devoted to the Lord of the covenant -- including his ox-goad. When we devote ourselves to the Lord in our entirety, then we will be fitting instruments in his hand.

Like the loaves and fishes given over to Jesus, which could never have fed the crowd any other way, this instrument could never have slain its hundreds unless it had been consecrated to the Lord. Perhaps the question for the modern evangelical church is not -- 'where is the power?' but -- 'where is the commitment?' Where is the consecration? Where is the devotion to the Lord and the submission of all that we are to him, that will enable him to take what is ours and use it for his glory? The secret of success in spiritual warfare is that we decrease and that he increases in his possession of everything we own.

And like the ox-goad of Shamgar, we too have to say that 'the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh' (2 Corinthians 10:4). Do you think Shamgar would have planned a war this way? Of course not! He has to learn that you do not fight God's battles with the weapons of the Philistines.

We know what the weapons of the Philistines were; all we need to do is refer to the great battle between David and Goliath. David says 'you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin' (1 Samuel 17:45). That's how wars are fought and battles are won, is it not?

Not in God's planning! Spears and swords and javelins do not suit the hand of God's Shamgars, for which the ox-goad is the best weapon. The enemy may still come to us with its arsenal of weapons and its methods of attack; but the church always needs to learn that in God's battles you do not meet like with like.

Yet the church does it constantly. We allow the world to dictate our response. We say 'the world has its pop songs, so we need to turn the gospel into a better kind of pop music'. We say, 'the world has its entertainments, so we need to turn the gospel into a better kind of entertainment'. We say, 'the world has its language, so we need to speak the gospel with the world's accent and in the world's language'.

Now don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating a lack of engagement or lack of sensitive apologetics. But I am advocating that we fight God's battles his way. We have the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. We have the shield of faith. We have the helmet of salvation. These are the weapons of our warfare. Let us make sure we use them.

Contextualised Salvation

I want also to refer to the fact that in her song in chapter 5, Deborah extols the act of deliverance of Shamgar. 'In the days of Shamgar,' she says, 'son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were abandoned, and travellers kept to the byways. The villagers ceased in Israel; they ceased to be until I arose; I, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel' (5:6-7).

There are two things I want to say about this.

First, Shamgar's act of deliverance was clearly significant in its own time. The song of Deborah seems to suggest that the Philistines were making such inroads into Judah that no place was safe. The main roads were empty, and people travelled by the side roads. Like the children in Africa who move about at night so that they will not be abducted, the people of God were always looking over their shoulder to see if Philistines were near.

Compared with what Ehud did, Shamgar's victory was small fry. But in its time it was enough. Problems change; the enemies facing the church change. The situations we face change. But how thankful we ought to be for those who stood against the enemy in their own day. So we do not idolise the Reformers, or the Puritans, or the nineteenth century conservatives, or the twentieth century evangelicals; we praise the One who raised them up, Esther-like, for such times as these. And we pray that in today's new world, with its new challenges, God will raise up a Shamgar to deliver us.

Second, Deborah's labours, which far outshone those of Shamgar, nonetheless built on his. She was the giant who stood on the shoulders of the dwarf, the one who entered into another's labours.Yes, she says, Shamgar arose, but the problem did not go away; the victory was incomplete until Deborah came along.

And so it is. We labour on the strength of those who laboured before us, and others will enter into our labours too.

He Too Saved Israel

The best epitaph, surely, for Shamgar is this: 'he too saved Israel'. The cycle of oppression was broken once again. 'He too'. Insignificant, a ploughman, more used perhaps to working with oxen than with people, 'he too' saved Israel. He did not get a big name for himself, but he too saved Israel.

At last, all that God does he does for his people. He loves his church; and one of our primary motivations should be a love for the same church that God loved, and for which he gave his Son.

But at last a greater than Shamgar is here. Along with the other judges, he is only a shadow, a type of the great deliverer, whom God raised up to deliver from sin, death and hell. Not with an ox-goad but with the blood of his cross. Not with an incomplete salvation, but with a finality and definiteness that no Old Testament judge ever experienced. And that is what makes Shamgar so great; that insignificant as the text makes him appear to be, he is a type of the One by whom God saves his people with an everlasting salvation.