The judges of Israel

Tola

The judge who defended Israel · After Abimelech · Delivered Israel from None named; a season of defence and rest · Judged Israel twenty-three years

Tola the son of Puah, of the tribe of Issachar, arose after the ruin of Abimelech to defend Israel, and he judged for twenty-three years. Scripture records no war, no oppressor, and no fault, only that he rose, judged, died, and was buried. His quiet mention is a mercy after the horror before it.

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.Judges 10:1 (KJV)

His story from Scripture

The whole account of Tola is two verses. 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. That is all we are told.

The word used of him, that he arose to defend or to save Israel, sets him gently against Abimelech, who had destroyed it. After a man who murdered his brothers and burned a city, God raised up a man who simply steadied and defended his people for a generation, and then rested.

His character, honestly

We know almost nothing of Tola beyond his name, his tribe, his town, and his years, and honesty requires us to leave it there rather than invent a portrait. What the silence itself suggests is a settled, undramatic faithfulness. There is no scandal attached to him, no recorded failure, only a long stretch of stable judging. In a book of loud and broken heroes, a quiet one is a gift.

How God used him

Tola is one of the judges the tradition calls minor, not because he mattered less but because so little is written. God used him to hold the nation together for twenty-three years after Abimelech nearly tore it apart. Not every servant of God gets a dramatic story. Some are given the harder, quieter work of steadying and defending, and heaven records their years even when it records little else.

Where he fits in the cycle

Tola is a pause in the downward spiral, a season of rest without a recorded war. But the pattern of the book guarantees that the calm will not last; after him the people will turn again. His brief mention is a reminder that even the quiet years of the judges were only a holding action. The land needed more than a defender for a generation. It needed a Saviour for all time.

How he points to Christ

Tola arose to defend Israel and gave his people rest for a season. He points to the greater Defender who arose to save not one nation for a few years but the whole people of God forever. The little that is written of Tola only sharpens the longing the book keeps stirring: for a Judge who will not merely hold back the darkness for a while, but drive it out for good. That Judge is Jesus.

A note on honesty: the book of Judges is one of the darkest and most candid books in the Bible, and it does not flatter its own heroes. The failures named above are the ones Scripture itself records. We do not whitewash them, because the point of the book is not how good the judges were, but how faithful God was to a people who could not save themselves, and how deeply they, and we, need the true Deliverer.

Related: Previous: Abimelech · Next: Jair · The Kings of Israel and Judah · All the judges of Israel