Tola son of Puah תולע בן פואה

Tola stands in the book of Judges directly after Abimelech, and that order matters more than the details. It says: "and after Abimelech there rose to deliver Israel Tola son of Puah son of Dodo, of the tribe of Issachar." The word "deliver," after three years of slaughter at Shechem and Thebez, reads literally: what had to be delivered from was the aftermath of their own civil strife.

Nothing more is said of him: no war, no oppressor, no wonder. Twenty-three years without events — and in a book where every chapter opens with a disaster, that is itself a statement.

Judges of this kind — Tola, Jair, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon — are called the minor judges in the study of the Tanakh: they have no narrative, only a name, a tribe, a term and a place of burial. Together they cover seventy of the three hundred and fifty years.

The years here are computed by adding up the terms given in the book of Judges itself, counting from the death of Joshua; they are not stated as such in the source.