Cushan-Rishathaim and Othniel son of Kenaz
The first servitude after Joshua and the first deliverance: eight years under the king of Aram-Naharaim, then forty years of quiet. The same Othniel, the Gemara says, restored what was forgotten in the mourning for Moses.
The book of Judges begins its cycle: the people forget, a foreign power comes, the people cry out, a deliverer rises, the land has quiet—and it starts again. Here is the first turn of that wheel.
"And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram-Naharaim; and the children of Israel served Cushan-Rishathaim eight years." Aram-Naharaim is Aram of the Two Rivers, beyond the upper Euphrates.
The deliverer was Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger kinsman—the same man who once took Kiriath-sepher and received Achsah, Caleb's daughter, as his wife. "And the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war." After the victory the land had quiet forty years—and within that term, by Seder Olam Rabbah, fall those eight years of servitude.
The Gemara knows something else about Othniel that the book of Judges does not tell: he did not only fight.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Shoftim 3:8–11 — eight years of servitude, the spirit of the Lord upon Othniel, forty years of quiet
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Temurah 16a — seventeen hundred laws were forgotten—and Othniel restored them by his dialectic
- Seder Olam Rabbah 12 — the eight years of servitude fall within Othniel's forty
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.