After the death of Abimelech, Tola became Judge of Israel:
And after Abimelech there arose to defend Israel Tola the son of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar; and he dwelt in Shamir in mount Ephraim. And he judged Israel twenty and three years, and died, and was buried in Shamir. And after him arose Jair, a Gileadite, and judged Israel twenty and two years. (Judges 10:1-3)
In Genesis, we read:
And these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons ... And the sons of Issachar; Tola, and Phuvah, and Job, and Shimron. (Genesis 46:8 ... 13)
In I Chronicles, Phuvah and Job are given as Puah and Jashub:
Now the sons of Issachar were, Tola, and Puah, Jashub, and Shimrom, four. And the sons of Tola; Uzzi, and Rephaiah, and Jeriel, and Jahmai, and Jibsam, and Shemuel, heads of their father’s house, to wit, of Tola: they were valiant men of might in their generations; whose number was in the days of David two and twenty thousand and six hundred. (I Chronicles 7:1-2)
Tola and Puah, therefore, are names associated with the Tribe of Issachar. In the census taken by Moses and Aaron after the plague that afflicts the Israelites in the Plains of Moab, the same names recur:
Of the sons of Issachar after their families: of Tola, the family of the Tolaites: of Pua, the family of the Punites: Of Jashub, the family of the Jashubites: of Shimron, the family of the Shimronites. These are the families of Issachar according to those that were numbered of them, threescore and four thousand and three hundred. (Numbers 26:23-25)
The name Dodo is not mentioned among the descendants of Issachar until Judges 10. In Hebrew, dod [דוד] means father’s brother, paternal uncle. It is possible, therefore, that Dodo in Judges 10 is an appellative rather than a personal name, meaning that Puah was Abimelech’s uncle. And, in fact, this interpretation is made explicit in the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate:
Και ἀνέστη μετὰ Ἀβιμέλεχ τοῦ σῶσαι τὸν Ἰσραὴλ Θωλὰ υἱὸς Φουά, υἱὸς πατραδέλφου αὐτοῦ, ἀνὴρ Ἰσσάχαρ, καὶ αὐτὸς ᾤκει ἐν Σαμὶρ ἐν ὄρει Ἐφραίμ. [And there arose after Abimelech to save Israel Thola son of Phoua, son of his father’s brother, a man of Issachar, and he dwelt in Samir in Mount Ephraim.] (Septuagint Judges 10:1)
Post Abimelech surrexit dux in Israel Thola filius Phua patrui Abimelech, vir de Issachar, qui habitavit in Samir montis Ephraim: [After Abimelech there arose in Israel Thola son of Phua the paternal uncle of Abimelech, a man of Issachar, who dwelt in Samir in Mount Ephraim.] (Vulgate: Judges 10:1)
The name Tola has been variously interpreted as meaning worm and crimson or scarlet (Orr 2994, McClintock & Strong 10:452). Perhaps the latter refers to Tyrian purple, a famous and expensive dye manufactured by the Canaanite city of Tyre, and the former to the sea snails from which this dye was obtained. Curiously, one rabbinical scholar associated the name Puah with the madder, the plant from which another red dye has been obtained since ancient times (Moskowitz 20).
Tola’s home town of Shamir has not been identified. Some commentators have linked its name to that of Shimrom, one of the four sons of Issachar and the founder of one of the tribal clans. The traditional territory of the Tribe of Issachar lay in the Plain of Esdraelon, or Jezreel Valley, between the Jordan River and Mount Carmel. Mount Ephraim refers to the hill country between Bethel (16 km north of Jerusalem) and Jezreel (16 km south of Nazareth):
Some Anomalies
Tola and his story are beset by a number of anomalies and contradictions:
In The Legends of the Jews, Tola is passed over in silence: Abimelech is succeeded immediately by Jair (Ginzberg 4:42). This could be cited as evidence that he was not an historical figure.
It is also anomalous that Tola, a man of Issachar, should dwell in Mount Ephraim (McClintock & Strong 9:615).
We are told that Tola arose to defend Israel, but we are never told from whom or from what danger (Freedman 8986, Berlin & Brettler 534). Many translations even translate the Hebrew לְהוֹשִׁ֣יעַ [lehoshia] as save Israel rather than defend Israel. The primitive root from which this word is derived, Strong’s 3467, has the causative sense to free or to succor (Strong 53). Perhaps Judges 10:1 simply says that Tola arose to keep Israel safe, meaning that his judgeship was a time of peace.
On the other hand, the length of Tola’s rule—twenty-three years—is rather specific, which suggests that this figure is based on a legitimate source:
Tola exercised leadership (“judged Israel”) for 23 years. The different location of the length of service within the minor judge pericopes, as well as the fact that these are not “round numbers,” indicates that such numbers derive from a source or process other than mere editorial approximation. (Freedman 8986)
The simplest way of reconciling these anomalies is to reject the notion of Tola as a judge of Israel, while accepting his historicity as a local judge or hero, who defended a small territory in Ephraim or Issachar at some remote time in the past:
The interpretation which sees the minor judge notices as wholly unhistorical, creations by an editor who needed to fill some chronological gaps, is far too severe. But neither is the opposite view faring well, which sees these units as historically accurate in every detail, snippets from an early archive. The “minor judges” appear to have functioned locally, for the most part, during periods which generated no warfare stories to be connected with them. (Freedman 8986)
And that’s a good place to stop.
References
- Adele Berlin & Marc Zvi Brettler (editors), The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1999)
- David Freedman (editor-in-chief), The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, Doubleday, New York (1992)
- Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Volume 4, Translated from the German by Henrietta Szold, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia (1913)
- John McClintock, James Strong, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Volume 9, Harper & Brothers, New York (1880)
- John McClintock, James Strong, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, Volume 10, Harper & Brothers, New York (1881)
- Nathan Moskowitz, Tola the Judge: A New Midrashic Analysis, Jewish Bible Quarterly, Volume 43, Issue 1, Jewish Bible Association, Jerusalem (2015)
- James Orr (General Editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 5, The Howard-Severance Company, Chicago (1915)
- James Strong, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, in The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
Image Credits
- Tola: Bartholomaeus Gaius, Epitome Historico-Chronologica Gestorum Omnium Patriarcharum, etc, Number 43, Giovanni Generoso Salomoni, Rome (1751)
- Canaan in the Time of the Judges: © Logos Bible Software, Fair Use
- Map of Issachar: Palestine or the Holy Land according to Its Ancient Divisions and Tribes, George Philip & Sons, Liverpool (1852), Public Domain
