Othniel was a judge of a very different type. His contemporaries said,
that before the sun of Joshua went down, the sun of Othniel, his
successor in the leadership of the people , appeared on the horizon.
The new leader's real name was Judah; Othniel was one of his epithets,
as Jabez was another. (22)
Among the judges, Othniel represents the class of scholars. His acumen
was so great that he was able, by dint of dialect reasoning, to restore
the seventeen hundred traditions (23) which Moses had taught the
people, and which had been forgotten in the time of mourning for Moses.
Nor was his zeal for the promotion of the study of the Torah inferior
to his learning. The descendants of Jethro left Jericho, the district
assigned to them, and journeyed to Arad, only that thy might sit at the
feed to Othniel. (24) His wife, the daughter of his half-brother Caleb,
was not so well pleased with him. She complained to her father that her
husband's house was bare of all earthly goods, and his only possession
was knowledge of the Torah. (25)
The first event to be noted in Othniel's forty years' reign (26) is his
victory over Adoni-bezek. This chief did not occupy a prominent
position among the Canaanitish rulers. He was not even accounted a
king, nevertheless he had conquered seventy foreign kings. (27) The
next event was the capture of Luz by the Israelites. The only way to
gain entrance into Luz was by a cave, and the road to the cave lay
through a hollow almond tree. If the secret approach to the city had
not been betrayed by one of its residents, it would have been
impossible for the Israelites to reach it. God rewarded the informer
who put the Israelites in the way of capturing Luz. The city he founded
was left unmolested both by Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar, and not
event the Angel of Death has power over its inhabitants. They never
die, unless, weary of life, they leave the city. (28)
The same good fortune did not mark Othniel's reign throughout. For
eight years Israel suffered oppression at the hands of Cushan, the
evil-doer who in former days had threatened to destroy the patriarch
Jacob, as he was now endeavoring to destroy the descendants of Jacob,
for Cushan is only another name for Laban. (29)
Othniel, however, was held so little answerable for the causes that had
brought on the punishment of the people, that God granted him eternal
life; he is one of the few who reached Paradise alive. (30)