Judges: What I Learned
See also the outline of Judges.
In Exodus 23, God promised the people of Israel, “Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared….For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them. You shall not worship their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their deeds; but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillars in pieces….I will not drive them out before you in a single year, that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land….You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against Me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
The book of the Judges is the story of the people of Israel failing to do as God directed them and suffering the consequences about which He had warned them.
The first chapter of Judges ends with many ominous statements about the different tribes of Israel not driving out the inhabitants of the land. There are also interesting details in this first chapter that make sense as the story of the nation of Israel unfolds. There is a lot of detail about Othniel, Caleb’s nephew (Judges 1:11-15), that turns out to be relevant when he becomes the first “Judge” (Judges 3:10a) who delivers Israel from the first enemy the LORD turns them over to for their disobedience. Then there’s Judges 1:16: “The descendants of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, went up from the city of palms with the sons of Judah, to the wilderness of Judah which is in the south of Arad; and they went and lived with the people.” This tells us Moses’ father-in-law accepted Moses’ invitation to travel with them to land of Canaan (Numbers 10:29-32), and it turns out to be important for the later story of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, killing Sisera, the commander of the army of Jabin, king of Canaan, (Judges 4:17-22), another enemy to whom the LORD turned Israel over.
The second chapter of Judges sets up what happens in the rest of the book: “But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done? Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you….Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals, and they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers….When the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways….‘Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers and has not listened to My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the LORD to walk in it as their fathers did, or not.’”
The rest of the book of Judges is Israel failing God’s test. He left the Canaanite nations among them in the Promised Land to test if they would keep the way of the LORD (and, interestingly, to learn war [Judges 3:1b-2]), and they failed to keep the way of the Lord. They would sin, God would deliver them into the hands of their enemies, they would cry out for mercy, God would give them a judge to deliver them, they would have a period of peace, but then they would return to disobedience and the cycle would repeat.
The song (Judges 5, Day 90) that the prophetess and judge Deborah (note that a woman can fulfill these roles) and deliverer Barak sing after their victory over Jabin, king of Canaan, and Sisera, commander of his army is worthy reading for reflection. It praises the LORD and those who helped Him gain victory for the nation of Israel, but it shames those who did not fight, including even a curse from the angel of the LORD.
After this celebrated victory, the nation has rest for 40 years, but then the sons of Israel do evil in the sight of the Lord and He gives them into the hand of Midian for seven years. When they cry out to the Lord, He sends a prophet who explains their disobedience in fearing other gods (Judges 6:10). When the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and he asks why the nation is suffering and where are God’s miracles. That answer had already been provided by the prophet. The angel does not answer Gideon’s questions, but says, “Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?” (Judges 6:14). There might be a lesson in the not answering of questions for which the answers have already bee provided, and instead the calling of a concerned individual into action.
The Lord is quite gracious to Gideon, providing signs and reassurance and assistance in his defeat of Midian (the damp fleece on dry ground and the dry fleece on wet ground is a favorite story, from which comes the expression about putting a fleece before God [Judges 6]). When he killed the kings of Midian, he “took the crescent ornaments which were on their camels’ necks” (Judges 8:21b). The Midianites were Ishamaelites (Judges 8:24b). Note the crescent symbol, which has come to represent Islam, present before the time of founding of this religion.
The land was undisturbed for forty years under Gideon, but, true to the cycle, “as soon as Gideon was dead…the sons of Israel played the harlot with the Baals, and made Baal-berith their god” (Judges 8:33). They neither remembered the Lord, nor showed kindness to the household of Gideon (Judges 8:34-35).
Gideon had many wives and seventy sons, and a son, Abimelech, from his concubine in Shechem. His relatives in Shechem were Canaanites (it was there that the son of Hamor took Jacob’s daughter Dinah, and Jacob’s sons then tricked and slew the men of Shechem [Genesis 34)]). He went to them and gained their support in his ruling over them instead of his seventy brothers. He then killed all but one of his brothers. This brother, Jotham, cursed him and Shechem, and, after three years, this curse came to pass, with God repaying the wickedness of both Abimelech and Shechem (Judges 9:56-57).
There are a couple of intervening Judges about whom we know little, but then the sons of Israel do not hold back in their worship of all sorts of gods, “the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines” (Judges 10:6). They are afflicted for eighteen years by the Philistines and the sons of Ammon, and they ask Jepthah to fight for them. When Jephthah asks the king of Ammon why he is fighting against Israel, he gives a distorted history which Jephthah is able to correct (Judges 11:12-28). Jephthah makes a tragic vow to the Lord, offering to sacrifice to him whatever comes out of his house to greet him if the Lord gives him victory over Ammon. The Lord does, and Jephthah fulfills his vow to sacrifice his daughter, with her agreement, demonstrating the importance of fulfilling vows to the Lord (Numbers 30:2).
Jephthah had victory over the sons of Ammon, but not over the Philistines, who seem to become a perpetual enemy of Israel. After 40 years of their rule, the angel of the Lord appears to Manoah’s wife, of the tribe of Dan, telling her that she will have a son who will be a Nazirite from the womb and “will begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5). The story of Samson is well known. Both Jephthah and Samson are confusing, conflicted characters, but the Spirit of God acted mightily on them and they are credited in Hebrews 11:39 of “having gained approval through their faith.”
The end of the book of Judges, after Samson dies, ends with them not even having a judge. The last chapters talk about Micah, who sets up his own graven image and hires a Levite to be priest, but the sons of Dan steal both the graven image and priest, attack a peaceful city outside their allotted territory, and set up idol worship there. Then the book ends with a concubine being raped and killed in a town of Benjamin, the rest of the tribes making war on Benjamin, and then the sons of Israel coming up with a means to provide virgin wives to the few men of Benjamin left.
When we’re really left wondering what to do with all these evil stories, we realize God predicted the people of Israel would go from bad to worse, and He was right. And then He explains it: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). God had specifically warned against that through Moses in Deuteronomy 12:8, “You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes.”
We knew this was coming. The previous book of Joshua ended with this ominous statement, “Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, and had known all the deeds of the LORD which He had done for Israel” (Joshua 24:31). They lacked a strong leader who knew the Lord, and they failed to know the Lord and His Word themselves.
We don’t need the strong leader. We have the Word. We have the Holy Spirit. We have advantages over the sons of Israel that leave us without excuse. May we be willing to submit to our Judge and King.