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

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Today’s passage completes the account about Gibeah, which was the second of two accounts in yesterday’s passage.  I said yesterday that we do not know when either of these two passages occurred, except that the one involving Micah, the Levite, and the tribe of Dan must have occurred early because it happened before Dan claimed territory for its own.  In today’s passage we realize that this account must have taken place early in the time of the judges because the tribe of Benjamin was reduced to 600 warriors in this account and had restored its place among the tribes by the time of Saul.  What struck me was that the first place the other tribes went to find wives for the remaining warriors of Benjamin was Jabesh-Gilead.  That struck me because Jabesh-Gilead was the Israelite town threatened by the Ammonites which King Saul rallied to defend to establish his kingship.  I do not think that is a coincidence.

Now I want to look at a lesson on dealing with others we can learn from this passage.  When the tribes of Israel assembled at Mizpah to discuss what to do about what had happened in Gibeah, the people of Benjamin was aware that they were doing so, and why.  But the tribe of Benjamin did not send a representative to make their case.  However, the assembled Israelites also did not send to the tribe of Benjamin to ask them to join them.  Only after they had made a decision and gathered an army did they ask the people of Benjamin to surrender the men of Gibeah.  What should have happened?  The people of Benjamin should have joined the assembly at Mizpah and said, “The men of Gibeah are our brothers, we will hold them accountable for the sin they have done against Israel,” and then done so.  However, the assembled people of Israel should have, before they formed an army, sent a message to the people of Benjamin laying out the case against the men of Gibeah and asking the people of Benjamin to bring them to justice.  I am convinced that the writer also believed that both sides handled this poorly, and should have chosen a different path.  We need to seek a better path in our conflicts within the Church, but we all too often allow anger and pride to drive our actions when we should seek to allow the Holy Spirit to do so.

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

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

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Up until today’s passage all of the accounts contained in the Book of Judges were in chronological order.  The writer does not tell us when either of the two accounts in today’s passage occurred (although the first one clearly occurred relatively early in the timeline of the Book of Judges).  These two accounts are included here at the end of the Book of Judges to highlight the writer’s goal of explaining why Israel needed a king.*  Before today I never really thought about the fact that both stories have a connection to Bethlehem, David’s home town.  The Levite who is at the center of the first account comes from Bethlehem.  The ESV (English Standard Version) says that he was a “young man of Bethlehem in Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite”.  Considering that the writer makes clear in this passage that his purpose in writing this Book was  to show why Israel needed a king*, it seems likely that he is making a connection here with King David, who was also from Bethlehem.  I think the writer intends to suggest that while King David was of the tribe of Judah he had connections to the Levites, perhaps even implying he had a maternal ancestor who was a Levite.  Interestingly, the passage also says that this Levite was a descendant of Gershom, the son of Moses at the end.  I do not believe I have ever noticed that connection to Moses before.

In the second account, the Levite’s concubine was from Bethlehem and the story takes place while they were traveling from her home in Bethlehem back to his home.  As I was reading the passage today it occurred to me that the reason the writer was familiar with these two stories was because he was also from Bethlehem, or otherwise had connections with David.  Which brings me to the second interesting geographic connection to the monarchy of Israel.  Gibeah, where the central episode of this second account takes place, is the home town of King Saul.  If nothing else, this tells us that Bethlehem, where David grew up, was close to Gibeah, which was King Saul’s home town and capital.  According to this passage, Gibeah was significantly less than a day’s travel from Bethlehem.  Which explains the familiarity that Abner, the commander of King Saul’s army, with Joab, the commander of King David’s army, and his brothers.  I suspect that this account was included, at least partially, because it reflects badly on King Saul.

*At several points in this passage the writer makes reference to there being no king in Israel “in those days”, and that as a result everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

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

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

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We rarely talk about something very important about Samson: he did not follow God’s commands concerning sexual relations with women.  In fact, the writer tells us that God used Samson’s lack of discipline when it came to Philistine women to weaken the Philistine hold over Israel.  God used Samson’s weakness and unfaithfulness to further His plans.  This is an important lesson for us to learn.  Sometimes God uses the failures of those who calls to lead His people to save His people.  That does not mean that we should embrace our sins “because God is using them for His purposes.”  God had told the people of Israel not to take wives from the pagan people living around them, but Samson chose to marry a Philistine woman anyway.  He then made a wager with the Philistines who were his wedding companions using an unfair riddle.  There was no way anyone other than Samson could have answered his riddle, since he was the only one who knew either part of the riddle (not even his parents knew that he had killed the lion, nor did they know that later he got honey from the carcass of the lion).  The next thing we see is that the Philistines were an evil people.  They threatened to burn down his bride’s family home with her family inside if she did not get the answer to the riddle.  And we see later that this was not an idle threat.

I also want to point out a relationship lesson we should take from this passage.  Two different women in Samson’s life used persistence to get him to reveal information to them to pass on to his enemies.  This says something about the women Samson chose to be in relationships with.  They were using him.  Both his wife and Delilah badgered him until he told them what they wanted to know.  They then revealed that information to his enemies.  Samson’s failure to recognize what was going on with his wife is understandable.  He had not had this happen to him before, and he did not know that she was going to use what he told her against him until it was too late.  Delilah on the other hand used the things he told her repeatedly and he still both stayed with her and eventually broke down and revealed his secret to her.  It would be easy to say that this is something which only women do to men, but that would not be true.  Men do the same thing to women.  We must be careful not to stay in relationships where the other person tries to wear down our resistance to doing something we do not wish to do. Of course, we should not be the person on the other side, the person using the relationship to wear down someone else’s resistance to doing something.

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

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

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I am always saddened by the account of Jephthah’s daughter.  When Jephthah went out to fight the Ammonites he made a foolish vow.  He vowed that, if God gave him victory against the Ammonites, he would offer up whatever came out of his house to meet him upon his return as a burnt offering.  The translators’ notes indicate that the Hebrew word they translate as “whatever” could also be translated as “whoever”.   Commentators differ on whether or not Jephthah actually made his daughter burnt offering.  My understanding is that, while the default reading of the Hebrew leads one to that conclusion, it could also be interpreted as dedicating someone to spend the rest of their life in service to God (such as the way that Roman Catholic nuns do).  If Jephthah did indeed offer his daughter as a burnt offering, he did something which was counter to all of God’s commands concerning sacrifice. The writer writes this as a warning against making ill-thought vows.  If Jephthah did not offer his daughter as a burnt offering, but only had her dedicated to a religious life, the writer intentionally created the allusion to human sacrifice to demonstrate the way in which Jephthah, and all of the other judges, himself fell short of fully obeying God’s commands.  This is a theme which we see throughout the Bible, God uses flawed men and women to accomplish His purposes.

Speaking of God using flawed men, today’s passage ends with the birth of Samson.  This part does not get into Samson’s flaws.  The writer tells us that “the angel of the Lord” appeared to Manoah’s wife and told her that even though she is barren she will conceive and bear a son.  We see here a theme which is repeated in the birth of John the Baptist.  Samson is to be a Nazirite from before birth.  First, I want to focus on the fact that this announcement was not made by “an angel of the Lord”, but rather by “the angel of the Lord.”  Manoah’s wife initially believed that the being who delivered this messenger to her was a man of God who looked like the angel of God.  Manoah prayed that God would send this man of God back to them in order to make sure they understood all that they were to do in raising this child which would be born to them.  The angel of God came again and Manoah offered Him a meal.  The angel of God declined the meal but suggested that Manoah offer a burnt offering to the Lord instead.  The angel of God declined to give Manoah His name and went up in the flame of the burnt offering.  At which point Manoah and his wife realized that the “man of God” they had been entertaining was “the angel of the Lord.”  When they realized that, Manoah thought that they would die because they had seen God.  I want to highlight how this passage uses “the angel of the Lord” in a way which foreshadows the Christian understanding of the Trinity.  In fact, we see a reference to the Spirit of God as well at then very end of the passage.

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

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

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Now that I read this passage every year, I have started to read what was happening in it a little deeper.  In yesterday’s passage we read that Gideon refused to be made king over Israel, telling the Israelites that God ruled over them.  He did not want to rule over Israel, and did not want for his son, or sons, to rule over Israel.  Today’s passage suggests that all seventy of Gideon’s sons exercised some authority over Israel.  Abimelech, one of Gideon’s sons, appealed to the people of Shechem, because his mother was one of them, suggesting that if they backed him over his brothers, they would benefit.  The leaders of Shechem liked his idea, so they gave him money to hire some mercenaries.  Abimelech took that money, hired some thugs, and led them to kill all of his brothers (although one of them escaped).  The leaders of Shechem who gave him the money knew that Abimelech intended to kill his brothers.  Once Abimelech established his authority, the leaders of Shechem turned to banditry.

And this is where I start getting lost in the weeds about what actually happened.  I was going to try to decipher exactly how it turned out that Abimelech went to war against Shechem, but realized that just distracts from the point.  Abimelech went to war against Shechem and killed the leaders of Shechem as God’s judgement on Shechem for supporting Abimelech’s fratricide (killing of his brothers).  Abimelech was then killed while using the same strategy against the next city he tried to subjugate as judgement for killing his brothers.  The leaders of Shechem supported Abimelech’s treachery, they then treacherously opposed him and paid for their treachery.  Abimelech ruled by violence and that violence led to his death.

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

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

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Some time back a speaker at one event or another said something I think makes a lot of sense.  I have written and spoken about this several times.  The speaker said that if we think we are capable of doing the task to which we feel that God is calling us, that is NOT the task to which God is calling us.  He expanded by telling us that God calls us to tasks and missions which will display His power.  So, God calls us to tasks and missions that we know we can only accomplish because of His power.  Today’s passage illustrates this idea.  Gideon had sent out a call to the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali to join him in going to war against the Midianites.  Thirty-two thousand men answered Gibeon’s call.  God told Gideon this was too many, if God gave them victory over Midian they might think they had accomplished out of their own might.  Gideon sent home everyone who was afraid.  These men were not cowards.  They were afraid, but they had answered the call anyway.  After doing this, Gideon still had ten thousand men in his army.  God told him that this was still too many.  So Gideon reduced the company even more until he had only three hundred men (actually, as I read this, Gideon had the men he did not select stay in a camp, and took only the 300 to go to battle).

Depending on how you read it, Gideon took on a camp of either 120,000 or 145,000 men with a force of 300.  Gideon had a clever plan, but no one would say that a force of 300 had defeated that many without divine intervention.  God calls us today in the same way.  Whatever battle He calls us to today, we will not be victorious because we are strong enough, or smart enough, or rich enough.  We will be victorious because God is with us.  That does not absolve us of making the best use of the strength, intelligence, wisdom, or whatever other resources God has given us.  We just need to remember that we will not accomplish God’s tasks without the power of God.

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

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

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The account of Deborah, Jael, and Barak shows us that women play often play key roles in how God works in this world.  The impression I have is that this account is often told as if Barak was a weak man who failed to put sufficient faith in the word of God which came to him through Deborah.  I am not convinced that the writer intended to convey this message.  I think the message the writer intends to convey is that if Barak had led his army out without Deborah, Barak would have been remembered as the judge, the ruler of Israel, at this time.  Instead we learn that Deborah, a woman, was the one who judged over Israel at that time.  I also want to note that there appears to be more to Jael’s story than we are told here.  First, the writer tells us that Heber the Kenite had separated himself from the rest of the Kenites, who were allies of the Israelites from the time of Moses.  Then after the battle, he tells us that Sisera came upon the tent of Jael the wife of Heber and the Heber was allied with Sisera’s boss, the king of Hazor.  It was Jael who invited him into her tent to hide from the pursuing Israelites, gave him milk instead of the water for which he asked, then killed him in a rather gruesome manner once he fell asleep.  As I read this it felt like Jael had some personal animosity towards Sisera, as if she held Sisera responsible for mistreatment either she or someone she loved had suffered in the past.

Now I want to look at the account of how God dealt with the oppression of Israel by the Midianites.  The people of Israel did evil in God’s sight and He turned them over to oppression by the Midianites.  When Israel cried out to God for help, he first sent them a prophet.  We don’t know the prophet’s name.  All we know about him is the message God gave him.  Through this unnamed prophet God told the people who were asking for His help, “I delivered you from Egypt and from all who oppressed you.  Then I told you that I am your God and that you should not fear or serve the gods of the Amorites.  But you did not obey me.”  This sets up what happens with Gideon.  When God appears to Gideon, Gideon asks “If God is with us, why are we being oppressed? What happened to all of the mighty deeds God did in the past?  Why isn’t He doing something like that now?”  To which God replied, “Go and save Israel. I am sending you.”  Gideon then asked for a sign that God was sending him, which God provided (this is before the fleece).  Gideon built an altar and worshiped God, but was not yet ready to take on Midian.  The first thing Gideon was called to do was to tear down his father’s altar to Baal, cut down the Asherah that was beside it, and build an altar to God in place of the altar to Baal.  It was only after Gideon had turned the people of his town back to worshiping God that God sent him to take on the Midianites and rescue all of Israel from them.

In the same way, we need to first turn ourselves from worshiping idols to worshiping God.  Then we need to turn the people closest to us from idol worship.  Only when we have made ourselves right with God, and gotten those closest to us to make themselves right with God, that we can take on the oppressors around us.

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