I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 20-21.

    When news spread about the gang rape in Gibeah, the men of Israel were outraged. They vowed to punish the wrongdoers. So, they massed as an army, without inviting the tribe of Benjamin (of which the men of Gibeah were a part). This is where things went wrong. Rather than assemble a group to discover the facts in order to call to account those responsible for this terrible crime, they gathered an army in the heat of the moment. Having gathered an army, they sent word to Benjamin demanding that they surrender the accused parties (we know from the account that those accused were, at least for the most part, guilty, but that would have been less clear to a rational person at the time). While the warriors of the rest of Israel were guilty of a rush to judgement, the warriors of Benjamin were guilty of the opposite. They reflexively defended their fellow tribesmen. The failure of either side to avoid reacting emotionally led to a tragedy of near irreversible proportions. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out.
    When they realized what they had done, the other tribes of Israel sought, and found, solutions to the problem they had created. I had mentioned earlier that throughout the time of the judges Israel did not act as a unified group. Each of the judges led just a few of the tribes. None of them exerted authority over all of Israel. This event seems to represent a change in that because we see in First Samuel that Israel has begun to act as a unified nation once more. Which shows us that even our mistakes serve to advance God’s plan.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 17-19.

    Today’s passage tracks what happens when each person determines what is right for themselves with no accountability to anyone else. The passage recounts gradually escalating sins, until it culminates in the gang-rape death of a woman in violation of laws of hospitality (as in the story of Lot’s escape from Sodom, the crime seems to be the combination of sexual violation and violating the laws of hospitality). First, Micah steals from his own mother, apparently thinking she will not notice. Then, his mother makes an idol out of the stolen silver. Micah first appoints his own son as priest, then hires a Levite to be his family priest. Some warriors from Dan steal both the idol and the Levite for the tribe of Dan. Finally, the concubine of a traveling Levite is gang-raped while he is a guest in a town in the territory of Benjamin. It is worth noting that this Levite traveled a couple extra hours to stay among his fellow Israelites rather than in a non-Israelite town.
    I keep trying to sum up the words I used in the title in a different way, but cannot find words that say it as clearly as that quote from this passage. Any time a society becomes one where everyone does whatever seems right in their own eyes and rejects the idea that anyone else can say that what they want to do is wrong, something like the incident in Gibeah will occur. Usually a lot of incidents like Gibeah. No one can truly do what is right if they do not find others to hold them to account.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 14-16.

    I struggle with how to write my thoughts about Samson. His parents apparently raised him to keep the vows of a Nazirite (at the least, he did not cut his hair), but they did not teach him to have good judgment when dealing with women. I am hesitant to lay this blame fully at his parent’s feet. There may have been nothing they could do differently, but every time I read this I think that Samson seems to have the attitude of a spoiled child. First, he demanded that his parents arrange for him to marry a Philistine woman, who immediately wheedled information out of him to use to his disadvantage. Later, he consorted with a prostitute putting himself at risk. Finally, he took up with Delilah, who did the same thing to him that his first wife did, but on a more serious level. I would like to say that I do not understand what Samson was thinking with Delilah, but that would not be true. However, he should have known better. She repeatedly tried to get him to tell her the source of his strength. Samson repeatedly made up lies which he told her, which she then promptly tested.
    The fact of the matter is that most men will give in to the tactics used by Samson’s first wife and by Delilah. That is why it is so important for a man to choose to marry a woman who loves God. Otherwise her interests are likely to diverge from his.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 11-13.

    There is a lesson in the story of Jephthah that I have not heard anyone speak about (although that is not surprising since he is rarely the topic of sermons). In yesterday’s passage we had Abimelech, the illegitimate son of Gideon, who was a bad ruler. In today’s passage we have Jephthah, the illegitimate son of Gilead, who was a good leader (or, at least, not a bad ruler). We could easily make the mistake of thinking that Abimelech should not have been trusted because of who his mother was. Yet, if the Israelites had done the same with Jephthah, they would never have trusted him (and to be perfectly honest, that is exactly what they initially did). We should judge people on the basis of what they do, not on the basis of who their parents were.

    There is another thing we begin to see here, or, at least, that I begin to see every year at about this point in the Book of Judges. During the time of the Judges the Israelites were not a unified people. Abimelech ruled over Schechem and the surrounding areas, but not over all of Israel. Jephthah ruled over Gilead, the land the Israelites controlled east of the Jordan River. As you look through the other judges, they also seemed to only rule over several tribes and not all of them. Here under Jephthah and earlier under Gideon we even see conflict between the tribes.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 9-10.

    Once again we see how the failure of a leader to groom his successor leads to problems. Fortunately, the problems are usually not as bad as what is described in this passage. There is also a lesson here for those choosing a new leader. In this case, the leading citizens of Schechem chose to appoint Abimelech as their king because he was related to them on his mother’s side. However, it is even worse than that. Once they had chosen him as their leader, they gave him money to hire men to kill his half-brothers, sons of his father Gideon. The people of Schechem had knowingly chosen a leader without honor because they believed his interests would align with their own. They believed that they would profit from his lack of honor. It was not long before they learned their mistake, but by then it was too late. The people of Schechem chose poorly, and for bad reasons, when they chose to lend their support to Abimelech. They paid a high price for this mistake. It is important to carefully consider the character of those we choose to follow.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 7-8.

    Gideon’s preparations for his victory over the Midianites is a lesson for us. Gideon’s preparation was designed to make sure that God received credit for his victory. God calls us to tasks where we will bring glory to His name. This means that we will need His aid in order to succeed. God told Gideon to send some of his men home because if he went into battle with that many men, Gideon and his men would have thought they won because of their own skill and power. When we look at the job which God has set before us, do we think that we have the skill and strength to accomplish it? Or do we feel completely overwhelmed by the task ahead of us acknowledging that it is only by the grace of God that we can succeed? If it is the former we are not aiming high enough.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 4-6.

    The Canaanite king Jabin was able to oppress the Israelites because of the military ability of his commander Sisera and the technological advantage of his chariots. Reading this story we see that there was one other factor which was key to their success, the lack of leadership among the Israelites. When God sent a message to Barak through Deborah to gather an army and fight against Sisera, Barak was unwilling to do so unless Deborah went with him to battle. We do not know why Barak insisted on Deborah accompanying him, but with her present to bolster his confidence and with God on their side the Israelites won an overwhelming victory. When we look at the battle, Sisera’s key force was his 900 chariots, Barak’s was 10,000 warriors. We do not have a record of how many more warriors Sisera had beside those on the chariots (although I suspect that he had two for each chariot, a driver and a fighter, and that was all he had). Barak maneuvered Sisera into a place where he was able to use his numerical advantage to neutralize the mobility which the chariots gave Sisera. This victory was one which the Israelites could have had at any time during the 20 years which Sisera helped his king oppress them. They just needed a leader to lead them.

    When God called Gideon to take leadership and rescue the Israelites the first thing He called Gideon to do was take spiritual leadership. The situation also illustrates the problem the Israelites had. They had not followed Joshua’s advice that they needed to choose a moral tradition to follow as a people. Some of the Israelites worshiped Baal and Asherah, some worshiped God. Gideon’s first step in leading the Israelites to freedom from their oppressors was to lead them to a renewed commitment to worshiping God. He did this by destroying those things which they were worshiping in place of God. Any of us called to lead God’s people are called to a similar mission. We must identify those things which God’s people are allowing to distract from doing God’s will and destroy them.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 1-3.

    There are some inconsistencies regarding the timeline and discrepancies regarding events. None of these bother me because it is clear that they are part of the writer’s attempt to create a transition from the end of Joshua to the beginning of the period he is chronicling, a period of time which was not well documented. It appears to me that the author relied on different sources for information on this time, sources which were written from different perspectives and no knowledge of each other. For example, it is likely that the Jerusalem referred to as destroyed by the tribe of Judah was a different city from the one which the tribe of Benjamin failed to conquer, and both cities were probably called something other than Jerusalem by the non-Israelites who lived in them. All in all the point of this beginning section was that the Israelites continued to conquer more of the land after Joshua’s death, but failed to completely conquer the peoples living in the land.
    One of the things we learn here is that neither Joshua nor the judges who came after him established an effective method of grooming a leader to take their place after they were gone. Time and again God raised up judges who rescued the people from oppression and led them back to following God, but as soon as these men died the people fell away and began worshiping the gods of those around them. The entire Book of Judges is a lesson that leaders in the Church must groom leaders to take their place after they are no longer able to lead.