Judges 1 · a question people ask
"They… cut off his thumbs and his big toes" (1:6). Was that right?
The chapter doesn't say. It records what Judah did (1:6) and what Adoni-Bezek said: "As I have done, so God has done to me" (1:7). Nothing in the verse approves it or condemns it. Both readings below agree that the LORD gave Judah the victory, "the LORD delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand" (1:4), and that Adoni-Bezek names what he had done to seventy kings (1:7). Christians read the act in two main ways.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
A just repayment
Those who hold this view take Adoni-Bezek's own words as the verdict: "As I have done, so God has done to me" (1:7). They set it beside the law, "If anyone injures his neighbor, it shall be done to him as he has done" (Leviticus 24:19), and read Judah's act as measure for measure, done to a man who, by his own words, had done the same to seventy kings.
Judges 1:7 · Leviticus 24:19-20
Recorded, not approved
Those who hold this view note that the command Moses gave for the peoples of the land was "you shall utterly destroy them" (Deuteronomy 7:2), not this, and that the chapter gives no command for what was done to Adoni-Bezek. They note that the verdict in 1:7 is spoken by Adoni-Bezek, not by the narrator, and that Judges often records what people did without approving it; twice it says, "Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes" (17:6, 21:25).
Deuteronomy 7:2 · Judges 1:7 · Judges 17:6 · Judges 21:25
The verses
“Judah went up, and the LORD delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand. They struck ten thousand men in Bezek. They found Adoni-Bezek in Bezek, and they fought against him. They struck the Canaanites and the Perizzites. But Adoni-Bezek fled. They pursued him, caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings, having their thumbs and their big toes cut off, scavenged under my table. As I have done, so God has done to me.” They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.”