Civil War in Israel: The book of Judges begins with war and ends with war. We would be mistaken, however, if we assume that the book’s structure is cyclical, since we have apparently come full circle back to where we started. While Judges 1 and 20 do share some common features, the major difference is not to be ignored. Judges 1 portrays a holy war against foreign peoples, and Judges 20 deals with holy war against a tribe of Israelites, fellow members of the covenant community. The similarity between the two chapters, juxtaposed as they are at the beginning and ending of the book, serves to underscore the tragic irony of the entire story, that Israel never figured out who the real enemy was and thus expended a great deal of energy and many resources fighting the wrong battles. What would h…