Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on poor judges and famine through the lens of the book of Ruth.
‘And it was in the days the judges judged … ’
This is how the Megillah of Ruth starts, which is read this Shabbat (May 23) on the Festival of Shavuot.
The rabbis comment: “Woe to the generation who judged their judges. And woe to the generation whose judges need to be judged. As it states (Judges 2:17): ‘And they didn’t even listen to their judges.’ And who were these judges? Rav said: ‘They were Barak and Deborah.’ Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi said: ‘They were Shamgar and Ehud’. Rabbi Huna said: ‘They were Deborah, Barak and Yael ...’”
“Gideon worshipped idols, as it states (Judges 8:27): ‘Gideon made it into an ephod.’ Woe to a judge who shows partiality in judgement. Rabbi Hiyya taught (Leviticus 19:15): ‘You shall not do injustice in judgement.’
“This teaches that a judge who corrupts judgement is called by five names: unjust, hated, detestable, proscribed, abomination. The Holy One, Blessed be He, calls him five names: wicked, blasphemer, violator of the covenant, one who infuriates and defiant.
“He causes five results in the world: he defiles the land; desecrates the Name, expels the Divine Presence, causes Israel to fall by the sword and exiles them from their land. Woe to the generation that is corrupted in this way.”
All this commentary is based on one little phrase: ‘And it was in the days the judges judged … ’
The concept of law and judges is of supreme importance to a just society, leading this Midrash on Ruth to explore reasons why that generation of judges were so culpable that they were punished by exile and further negative outcomes.
We now come to the second part of that original sentence at the start of the Book of Ruth: ‘ … that there was a famine in the land.’ The famine took place ‘in the days the judges judged’, or in fact ‘were themselves judged.’ When judges are corrupted and don’t judge properly, then there is ‘famine in the land.’
The Midrash enumerates the 10 famines that came to the world.
In the time of Adam, ‘Accursed is the ground because of you’ (Genesis 3:17)
Lemech: ‘From the ground that the Lord had cursed’ (Genesis 5:29).
Abraham: ‘There was famine in the land and Abram descended to Egypt’ (Genesis 12:10).
Isaac: ‘There was a famine in the land beside the first famine’ (Genesis 26:1).
Jacob: ‘For these two years there has been famine in the land’ (Genesis 45:6).
Elijah: ‘There will not be dew or rain these years, except by my word’ (1 Kings 17:1).
Elisha: ‘There was a great famine in Samaria’ (II Kings 6:25).
David: ‘There was a famine during the days of David, three years’ (II Samuel 21:1).
Ruth: ‘When the judges judged’ and ‘There was a famine in the land’ (Ruth 1:1).
‘A future famine that is advancing upon the world, as it is written: ‘I will send famine in the land, not famine for bread, nor thirst for water’ (Amos 8:11).’
So there are different famines enumerated here starting from the Book of Genesis, some stressing land issues and others a variety of moral failures.
From our point of view the most interesting are the present famine in the Book of Ruth which leads to her father-in-law Elimelech, the judge, leaving the land, though he should have stayed and led his people.
In addition there is the famine of the future, which is ‘advancing’ in the sense of (in the Hebrew), as with Ol’ Man River, ‘it just keeps rolling along.’ So we cannot escape this inevitable large rolling wave of a famine which threatens to engulf us all.
This is the famine which never leaves us, for as it states later in the commentary, we basically cannot live by bread alone. If we learn Torah, we will become less ignorant, judge less unfavorably and therefore receive the bread and water of life, with its plentiful ‘food’.
There is a great deal of wisdom in this 6th-century Midrash on Ruth and the above is just a small flavour. But partial judges and famine for justice are still with us. The Torah given on Shavuot as the culmination of the Pesach story, together with intermediary 49 days of counting the Omer, is just as relevant today as it always was.
Judges are still often found wanting, bringing in their wake consequences similar to the terrible repercussions that afflicted Elimelech and his immediate family, until Ruth proved her worth and saved both her mother-in-law and herself from certain disaster.
Let’s hope that future generations of judges take heed and spare their people from different kinds of ‘famine’, through following the lead of Ruth and behaving in a way that is judicious, modest, loyal, steadfast and kind.
