• Chapter 6
• from sefaria.org
• Jodell Onstott (personal correspondence, 2023) relates the following:

  My treatment of Judges 6 understands the Midianites to have invaded due to famine. They specifically targeted agricultural products (6:3-4). Also telling is that the Midianites were immigrating, which I attribute to famine (v. 5). It also seems that Israel moved its grain stores to caves and other hidden places (v. 2). Israel being delivered into Midian’s hand for 7 years parallels the famine under Joseph¹ and could be the duration of the Hittite and Ruth famine as well.

  Footnotes

  Jodell Onstott (personal correspondence, 2023) clarified the famine under Joseph as follows:

  That famine occurred c. 1750 [BCE]. It is retold in Genesis 41. It specifically affected Egypt and Canaan (the reason Jacob migrated). ..and the reason the Hyksos/Asiatics migrated as well.

• Ruth 1:1 - In the days when the chieftains ruled, there was a famine in the land ...
• from sefaria.org

Title : Messy and wholly incomplete excerpt from Jodell Onstott's forthcoming book on Chronology

See Chart 11.5 on p. 570 of YHWH Exists vol. 1 for dating Merneptah.

I am not sure on my dating, below. It will fall between 1240-1210. It has been a few years since I’ve worked on this project. I do have some of the sources you recommend incorporated, below.

Jodell



Climate, Geology, and Chronology

The chronology supporting a 16th century Exodus-Conquest date is also supported by climate studies. Scripture records three major famines within the land of Canaan. The first during Abraham's days (Gen 12:10, 26:1), which a contextual approach places c. 2190. In one study, a group of scholars led by Yale University's H. Wiess, have argued that a "markedly dry event" occurred in this area c. 2300-2200 BCE. Another team led by Neil Roberts focus on the eastern Mediterranean and lowered the date to 2250-2300. What both studies confirm is that a drying period occurred in the surrounding Mediterranean territories during the same time that a 16th century Exodus allows. The second significant famine mentioned in Scripture occurs when Joseph is vizier in Egypt (). This event, according to a contextual reconstruction, dates to c. 1980 BCE. In another study Dafna Langgut, Israel Finkelstein, and Thomas Litt found pollen samples during this era indicate that this dry period continued from around 2000 BCE until about 1800 BCE in Canaan. This again supports the a 16th-century Exodus chronology. As the Middle Bronze Age passes into the Late Bronze Age, vegetation such as olive tree production, moisture and humidity continue to increase and reach their greatest fertility c. 1350 BCE. The authors observe that the "settlement crisis" during this period was "man-induced rather than a result of environmental change." This evidence accurately reflects the chronological model of a 16th century Exodus date where the judge Ehud's campaigns and the Hapiru's assaults on Canaan's villages are contemporary with the Amarna Tablets. The authors cite the Amarna tablets and note that no famines or droughts are mentioned in the hundreds of correspondences between Canaan and Egypt. Thus, the disruption of settlement, according to a 16th-century Exodus model is due to Israel's ongoing Conquest campaigns, not climate.

In the above mentioned climate study in which Finkelstein participated, the most striking feature of any point in Holocene history was the dry period that occurred between 1250-1100 BCE. Eric Cline has argued that this vast famine caused a collapse of the entire civilization. From northern Turkey to the Nile Delta, society fell prey to the ravages of famine. The Hittites vanish. ?????

During the reign of Merneptah, famine ravaged the Levant. The Hittites invoked their treaty with Egypt and Merneptah's records record that he shipped grain "to keep alive the land of Hatti." This famine provoked the Midianites and Amalekites raids on Israel's southern farmlands as recorded in the book of Judges. The chronology that I have reconstructed based on the contextual approach, places the Midian and Amalekite raids between 1234-1227 BCE. It is quite likely that famine had begun at least two to seven years before the tribes began to raid Judah and only after food stores had been exhausted. Thus, the context within the book of Judges places this famine beginning around 1240 BCE.

This chronology is supported by archaeological studies on the climate in the Levant c. 1250 BCE. Core soil samples drilled from the Sea of Galilee demonstrate famine of epic proportions from 1250-1100 BCE, at the end of the Late Bronze Age. In a recent article, Dafna Langgut, Israel Finkelstein, and Thomas Litt found pollen samples during this era indicated the driest event throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Archaeology indicates that the crisis in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age took place during the same period—from the mid-13th century to ca. 100 BCE. In the Levant the crisis years are represented by destruction of a large number of urban centers, shrinkage of other major sites, hording activities and changes in settlement patterns. Textual evidence from several places in the Ancient Near East attests to drought and famine starting in the mid-13th and continuing until the second half of the 12th century.

The Amalekite raids are not the only evidence in Scripture for this famine. In the book of Ruth, Elimelech emigrated from Judah to Moab due to this same famine.