Noa, at sixteen, sets out with the twelve tribes of the Exodus, dreaming of a life of freedom and the Promised Land that her father says will be theirs. When religious fanatics kill her father, Noa and her four sisters are in danger of being sold into bondage. Noa vows to win women's rights of inheritance to protect her sisters and herself. Pleading her case before ever-higher courts, Noa encounters a malicious judge and the dark side of power. Gaining strength and complexity as she approaches the highest judge, Noa and her pursuit causes turmoil among the tribes: she is a notorious troublemaker, accused of witchery. And she is heroic. Based on a few biblical verses, the turbulence of Noa's life is set against the sweeping turbulence of the Exodus. In Judging Noa, her quest for justice is a journey that has as much meaning today as it did then.

Visited by a high-powered attorney who has initiated a clemency petition on her behalf and who is also the mother of her victim, death-row inmate Noa is slowly persuaded to share the events surrounding the murder in spite of her reluctance to reveal the whole story or have her life extended.

Much of the content of Judges can be understood only when read together with other parts of the Hebrew Bible. Narratives in Judges comment, criticize, and reinterpret other texts from across what became the canon, often by troubling gender, disrupting stereotypical binaries, and creating a kind of gender chaos. This volume brings together gender criticism and intertextuality, methods that logically align with intersectional lenses, to draw attention to how race, ethnicity, class, religion, ability, sex, and sexuality all play a role in how one is gendered in the book of Judges. Contributors Elizabeth H. P. Backfish, Shelley L. Birdsong, Zev Farber, Serge Frolov, Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher, Susan E. Haddox, Hyun Chul Paul Kim, Richard D. Nelson, Pamela J. W. Nourse, Tammi J. Schneider, Joy A. Schroeder, Soo Kim Sweeney, Rannfrid I. Lasine Thelle, J. Cornelis de Vos, Jennifer J. Williams, and Gregory T. K. Wong provide substantial new and significant contributions to the study of gender, the book of Judges, and biblical hermeneutics in general. This volume illustrates why biblical scholars and students need to take the intersectional identities of characters and their intertextual environments seriously.