This book has been very difficult to get started with. Mainly because I am traveling at the moment for the holidays, but also for the struggle of starting a new book. The author is different, and there are all kinds of new words and stories I’m trying to figure out. I’m hoping it will get better and be easier to understand the more I continue reading…
Today started the book of Judges. The title describes the leaders Israel had from the time of the elders who outlived Joshua until the time of the monarchy. According to tradition, it is said that Samuel wrote the book; but the authorship is actually uncertain.
In this time of national decline, despite their promise to keep the covenant, the people turned from the Lord and began worshiping other gods. “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
A pattern repeats throughout the book:
1.) the people abandoned the Lord
2.) God punished them by raising up a foreign power to oppress them
3.) the people cried out to God for deliverance
4.) God raised up a deliverer, or judge for them.
The beginning part of this assignment started with the continuing conquest of Canaan. Since the people of Israel failed to lay claim completely to the promised land as the Lord had directed, and as a rebuke of their disloyalty; they were to go in to fight the remaining Canaanites.
After the death of Joshua, Judah was assigned leadership in occupying the land and would go first. The men of Judah told their Simeonite brothers to go with them into the territory and fight the Canaanites with them.
They went and fought, and the Lord gave the Canaanites and Perizzites into their hands and they struck down 10,000 men at Bezek. Some of them fled, but they chased after them and when they caught them, they cut off their thumbs and big toes. Physically mutilating prisoners of war was a common practice in the ancient Near East. It rendered them unfit for military service.
They continued fighting and went on to attack Jerusalem. Although the city was defeated, it was not occupied by the Israelites at this time, and did not control the city.
They kept fighting and attacking cities along the way and were trying to completely destroy them. It went through each of the tribes of Israel and explained the Canaanites that remained in the different cities and locations per tribe.
Then the angel of the Lord appeared and spoke to them. He said how they were brought out of the land of Egypt and into the land that was promised to their fathers. He said he would not break the covenant with them as long as they made no covenant with the inhabitants of the land; and they were to break down their altars.
Except they clearly did not obey the Lord’s voice as there were still inhabitants in the land that they did not destroy. So, the Lord would no longer be with them and would not drive them out of the land. They would remain there and be thorns in their sides and their gods would be a snare to them.
As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words, the people of Israel lifted up their voices and wept. They named the city Bochim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord.
When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel each went to their inheritance to take possession of the land. The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and the elders that outlived Joshua who had seen all the work the Lord had done for Israel.
Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord died at the age of 110 years. They buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in the hill country. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, or the work that he had done for Israel.
The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served other gods. They bowed down to them and abandoned the Lord. The Lord was provoked to anger and sent plunderers to them, and sold them into the hand of their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had previously warned and sworn to them. The people of Israel were in terrible distress.
Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. However, they did not listen to their judges and continued to worship other gods. They had turned away from the ways of their fathers and did not follow the commandments of the Lord.
The Lord was merciful to his people in times of distress, sending deliverers to save them from oppression. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge.
But Israel continually forgot these saving acts; and whenever the judge died, they returned to their corrupt ways by serving other gods. The Lord decided to leave the remaining nations to test Israel’s loyalty.
It then started to list the nations that the Lord left to test, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
It started with the account of Othniel’s judgeship. With each of the judges, the author provides the basic literary form he uses in his accounts of the major judges: beginning statement, cycle of apostasy, oppression, distress, deliverance, recognizable conclusion; adding only the brief details necessary to complete the report.
Othniel was the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother. The spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the Lord gave their enemies into their hands. His hand prevailed, and the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel died.
Again, the people of Israel went to their evil ways. Then the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they were corrupt. Israel was defeated, and they served Eglon for eighteen years.
Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, and the Lord raised up another deliverer for them named Ehud. He was the son of Gera, the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. He made a sword for himself with two edges, and he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes.
He went to visit and make tribute to Eglon the king. The king was a very fat man. He got him alone and told him he had a message for him from God. At that moment, he rose from his seat and thrust the sword into the man’s belly. The hilt went in after the blade, and the fat closed around the blade, and he did not pull it out. Then Ehud went out and locked the door behind him.
After he had left, the servants came and saw that the door was locked. They assumed he was going to the bathroom and left him alone for a while. When he never came out, they took the key and opened the door where they saw their lord laying dead on the floor.
Ehud escaped and returned where he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim. The people of Israel went down with him, and he was their leader. The people went and seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites and didn’t let anyone cross it. They killed about 10,000 men and Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. The land had rest for eighty years.
After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who was the first of the minor judges. He killed over 600 of the Philistines and saved Israel.