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

After the death of Ehud, while Deborah was the judge of final appeal over all of Israel, the Israelites once again turned away from God.  Which tells us that even with a leader over the people, they sometimes refused to hold one another accountable.  One might conjecture that this happened because Deborah was a woman, and thus not a strong enough leader.  However, the context of the passage does not support that conclusion.  When Deborah told Barak to gather men and attack Sisera, he agreed to do so only on the condition that she accompany him.  If she was a strong enough leader that Barak wanted her presence when he went to war, her “weakness” as a woman was not the reason for Israel falling away from God.  In fact, despite the writers of the books of the Old Testament which record the history of Israel focusing on the importance of the righteousness, or lack thereof, among Israel’s leaders, reading those books leads one to conclude that the presence of good leaders reflected the desire of the people to serve God rather than the other way around.  I would also like to note that Deborah’s response to Barak’s condition suggests that if Barak had been willing to do what Deborah told him without her going with him we would not know who Deborah was and Barak would be one of the judges recorded in this book.

The Song of Deborah which is recorded here as being the victory song which Deborah and Barak sang after the death of Sisera puts a somewhat different light on events than the account given before that.  The first thing I want to note is that the song mentions Shamgar, who was mentioned in passing at the end of Chapter 3 as someone who had saved Israel.  The song suggests that Deborah and Barak lived at about the same time as Shamgar.  Perhaps, the king of Hazor, to whom Sisera owed fealty, was oppressing the Israelites from the Northeast while the Philistines were doing so from the Southwest.  But I wanted to focus on from the song is the repeated references to the Israelites not being willing to defend themselves until Deborah arose.  Then comes the line which I want to highlight, “until I arose, a mother in Israel.”  Deborah was a mother who had had enough.  As I read this song, she shamed the men of Israel into standing up for their countryfolk.  Perhaps “shamed” is the wrong word, she motivated them to do so.  The point I want to make here is that although God usually calls a man to fill the leadership role when He calls His people back to Him, He will use a woman in that role when it suits His purposes.  Or to put it another way, just because God usually calls a certain type of person for a particular role does not mean that He has not called you for that role.

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

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

I am unsure how the timing of what is described in today’s passage matches up with that described in the Book of Joshua.  The Book of Judges starts by saying “After the death of Joshua,…”, then goes on to talk about the tribe of Judah taking their territory.  In particular, this passage describes how Othniel earned Caleb’s daughter as his wife, an account which was also in the Book of Joshua.  I believe that this story is here to explain how Othniel, the first of the judges, rose to a position of prominence in Israel.  Actually, I want to backtrack a little bit.  I believe that Chapters 1 and 2 are intended to set the stage and explain how Israel went from Joshua’s conquest of the land to the situation which existed shortly before the Book of Judges was compiled (I believe that the Book of Judges was compiled either during the reign of King Saul or early in the reign of King David).  We can conclude from what we find written here, and in the Book of Joshua, that, as he approached his death, Joshua saw no reason to appoint a successor as individual leader over the Israelites.  The Israelites had no enemies in the land who could threaten them and were settling into the land.  However, without a leader to keep them focused on being faithful to God, they began to adopt the worship practices of the people remaining in the land.  Also, without a leader to make them into a unified political force, a neighboring power (the king of Aram) saw an opportunity to take control (a theme which gets repeated throughout this book).  When the Israelites started to turn back to God, Othniel used his connection to Caleb to unite them under him and drove the invaders out of the land.  Through the rest of his life Othniel led the people to remain faithful to the Lord.

After the death of Othniel, once again the people of Israel drifted away from following God.  The way I see it, they began to take the attitude of, “Who are you to tell me what I should, or should not, do?”  Without a defined leader, the Israelites stopped holding each other accountable to serving God, and to not worshiping idols.  The result was that they lost their unity and became susceptible to outside powers.  In this case, the king of Moab formed an alliance to impose his will on the land (basically demanding tribute and perhaps raiding).  Eventually, the Israelites once again turned back to God and Ehud rose up to lead them.  Ehud overthrew the Moabite king and united the people of Israel in obedience to God.  Throughout the Book of Judges we see this pattern repeated: the faithful leader dies, the people stop allowing themselves to be held accountable for their actions and drift away from God, the people no longer unite for their own defense, an oppressor takes advantage of their division, the people cry out to God, God raises up a faithful servant to unite them and free them from their oppressor.  If we refuse to be held accountable for our actions as individuals we will fall into sin.  If we refuse to be held accountable for our actions as a people, unity will disappear.

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

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

So, the account of the Levite, his concubine, and war of Israel against Benjamin is the last account in the Book of Judges.  It immediately follows the account of Micah, his idol, and the Danites.  Both of these accounts contain some variation on the phrase, “In those days Israel had no king, everyone did as they saw fit.”  This clearly suggests that they were included where they were as justification for Israel selecting a king.  If you do not read the passage carefully, the placing of the account of the Israel-Benjamin war at the end of the Book of Judges might lead you to conclude that it happened after the other accounts in the book.  However, we are told in the account that it took place while Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, was ministering before the ark of the covenant.  Along with that I want to mention that the story of Micah and his idol occurred before the Danites conquered their own territory.  Which leads me to conclude that that story also occurred early in the Israelite occupation of Canaan.  Yet both stories are presented as arguments for Israel to crown a king.

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.

Several times in today’s passage the writer tells us that “Israel had no king”.  A couple of times he adds “everyone did as they saw fit.”  He blames the transgressions which he describes in today’s passage on the lack of a king, the lack of a central government in Israel.  I have gone back and forth three or four times about how I want to approach this.  The account starts with Micah returning money he had stolen from his mother because she had cursed the thief.  His mother was so grateful to God for the return of her money that she had an idol created for Micah to worship.  Micah then installed one of his sons as priest to this idol, but when the opportunity arose he hired a Levite to take over that role.  Later, when some members of the tribe of Dan were coming through the area to conquer territory for themselves, they stole Micah’s idol and hired the Levite away from him in an underhanded manner.  When Micah pursued them to recover his lost goods, they threatened him.  The Danites then set up the idol with the Levite as its priest in the town which they conquered.  Throughout all of this, everyone involved thought that what they were doing was pleasing to God.  Then we come to the story about the Levite and his concubine.  The writer clearly connects the story of Micah, his idol, and the Danites with what happened to the Levite and his concubine.

I want to look a little closer at what happened here.  In the first story, we have a Levite travelling to “make his fortune”.  When Micah offers him the position of priest to his household gods, the Levite does not point out that Micah’s idols are a violation of God’s commands about images.  He accepts the opportunity to make a place for himself and allows Micah to feel righteous while worshiping an idol.  Then, when the Danites arrive, the Levite takes the opportunity to improve his position and indirectly blesses the Danites theft of Micah’s goods, theft from a fellow Israelites.  Then we come to the other Levite.  He was travelling and chose to stay in an Israelite town because he thought such would be safer than staying among foreigners.  Further, what happened in Gibeah bears a remarkable resemblance to what happened when God’s messengers visited Lot in Sodom.  Certainly, the resemblance to what happened in Sodom partly explains the reaction of the rest of Israel to this incident which we see in tomorrow’s passage.  However, I want to point out the way in which what the Danites did to Micah is a sort of precursor to what happened in Gibeah.  The Danites betrayed the hospitality which Micah, their fellow Israelite, had given them by using the knowledge they had gained as his guest to rob him later.  The men of Gibeah failed to honor the hospitality they owed their fellow Israelite.

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.

We have four stories about Samson and tend to think of them as happening one shortly after the other.   However, the passage tells us that Samson led Israel for 20 years.  Which puts the incident with Delilah quite a few years after the incidents surrounding his wedding.  That leads me to a different understanding of Samson’s life.  Essentially, there were twenty years between Samson’s victory over the Philistines with the donkey’s jawbone and his betrayal by Delilah.  This led me to look again at the story of the woman Samson married.  It looks to me like Samson truly loved her and perhaps she loved him, but she was afraid of those to whom Samson had told the riddle.  They threatened to kill her family if she could not give them the answer to his riddle and she believed them, for good reason.  Let’s think about what this reveals about the Philistines.  They credibly threatened an entire family in order to win a bet, an expensive bet, but a bet nonetheless.  Then, after Samson vandalized their fields they burned them to death.  The family they killed were their fellow Philistines.  Actually, now that I write that it suggests to me that Samson had already demonstrated his prowess before his marriage, and the Philistines chose to avenge his vandalism against his wife’s family because they were afraid to go after him directly.

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.

Whenever I read today’s passage I cannot help but compare and contrast Jepthah with Amelek, Gideon’s son.  Both of them left their father’s house and gathered followers whom the writer records as “scoundrels”.  What is interesting is that despite both being followed by scoundrels their following indicates opposite things about what kind of leader they would make.  Amelek sought out scoundrels and hired them.  Jepthah was outcast and the scoundrels sought him out.  Amelek’s followers followed him because he paid them while Jepthah’s followers followed him because he was a good leader.  Further, the different ways in which each became leader of more than their small band called for different types of leaders.  Amelek sought out the role by approaching the people of Shechem.  On the other hand, the people of Gilead sought out Jepthah to lead them at a time when they were under threat.  I want to note that this difference does not mean that Amelek would have been a good leader in different circumstances.  Rather, it means that Jepthah, who was a good leader, would never have become a leader in different circumstances.

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.

A month or so back I had trouble reaching the “The Bible.net” website to get my passage for the day, so I started copying it from last year’s post.  Which means that I see the “headline” I gave the post and that influences my thinking about the passage.  I have yet to decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

I love the story of Gideon because there is so much there.  As a result, we rarely pay attention to the beginning of his story.  Gideon’s story begins with the preaching of a prophet who is never named.  That prophet called the Israelites to put aside their idols and return to worship of the Lord.  The context of the story leads me to believe that it was this prophet who made Gideon open to the message from the angel.  Before I write my next thoughts I want to point out that the Hebrew word translated as “angel” means “messenger”.  So, I sometimes wonder if Gideon had felt called by that prophet and began talking about how if the Israelites would only turn back to God, God would perform mighty deeds for them.  Then, one time when he was going on one of his rants, a friend of his, presented here as a “messenger of God”, challenged him to act on what he claimed to believe.  Or maybe his friend was the one who was inspired by the prophet and went on rants, telling Gideon he should act.  Perhaps the “angel” was indeed a supernatural messenger as one would conclude with a casual reading of this passage.  I created that scenario because, while I believe that sometimes God sends supernatural messengers to deliver His messages, I know that sometimes God’s messengers are ordinary people (well, OK, not ordinary in that moment, but not supernatural, or necessarily someone who stands out as righteous).

That last paragraph concluded with an important point, but that’s not where I was going.  When Gideon felt God’s call, he started out local.  He did not start out by raising an army to drive the foreign oppressors out of the land.  He started out by calling his family, friends, and neighbors to stop worshiping Baal and return to worshiping God.  Gideon started in his backyard with the people who knew him best and called Israel to give up its idolatry and return to worshiping God.  It was only after they did so, that God called Gideon to drive out those oppressing the people.  Today people are crying out because of the terrible things going on.  The answer is not to mount a political movement to change our government, although that may come later.  Step one is to mount a spiritual movement by tearing down the altars at which we worship “gods” other than God.  For most of us those altars are in our hearts, not physical manifestations, but there are physical manifestations as well.

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

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

It is not clear to me from the passage if the tribe of Benjamin was invited to to conclave intended to address what had happened at Gibeah, and chose not to attend.  Or, if they had not been invited and only heard about the army of the rest of Israel gathering because of this incident.  My inclination is that it was the former, but that part of their decision to not attend was fear that they would be attacked by the rest while unable to defend themselves.  In any case, the tribe of Benjamin took the stance that the rest of Israel had no right to enforce their laws on the people of Gibeah, and were willing to fight to enforce this.  Once again I find myself getting lost in the weeds.

The important thing is that rather than recognizing that what happened at Gibeah was merely the logical conclusion of the idolatry going on in much of the rest of Israel and repenting of their sins, the Israelites merely chose to address this incident where people had gone too far.  I am not saying that the attack on Gibeah should not have happened.  What I am saying is that the people of Israel should have first confessed their own sins and sought out God’s will for how they could make their own sins right.  Then, once they had addressed their own sins, they could have brought retribution on Gibeah for its sins.  Or, perhaps, God would have shown them another, better, way to bring the men of Gibeah to justice.

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.

We have three stories in today’s passage, which the writer uses to illustrate the problems which occur when a nation has no central government to enforce the laws.  I would argue that it instead illustrates what happens when a society ceases to honor God.  First, we have the story of Micah, who stole money from his own mother and only returned it out of fear of her curse. She then took some of the money and had an idol made; for which Micah then set up a shrine and worshiped it in place of God.  Some time later, members of the tribe of Dan stole the idol which Micah worshiped (and all of his accoutrements for worshiping it),  setting it up as their tribal god in the lands which they conquered.  I will note that both Micah and the Danites appear to have viewed the idol as a representation of God.

Finally, we have the story of the Levite traveling with his concubine.  He chose to stay in Gibeah rather than a city of the Jebusites because Gibeah was an Israelite town.  I am not going to spend time examining what happened in this story.  The key thing about all three of these stories is that we have a steady worsening of the social fabric of Israel because people did not honor God’s Law.  What Micah did was no one’s business but his.  Which led to what the Danites did being no one’s business but theirs.  Which led to Gibeah.  What happened in Gibeah was no worse than what Micah had done, but it represented a breaking point for Israel.  Unfortunately, as is often the case, the lesson learned does not appear to have been complete, and possibly not even correct.

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.

The thing which always strikes me about Samson is his absolutely terrible judgement when it came to women.  I could spend some time considering why Samson was enamored of Philistine women, but I want to look closer at the fact that God used it to further His ends.  I am not sure what led Samson to propose his riddle to the Philistine young men who were chosen as his companions for his wedding, but we often forget just how expensive a set of clothing was before the Industrial Revolution.  Some time ago someone calculated the labor that would go in to making just a shirt in Medieval times and concluded that it would cost about $3,000.  So, 30 sets of clothing would have been rather expensive.  Even one set of clothing from each of Samson’s companions would have cost each of them a large sum of money.  Nevertheless, they accepted Samson’s bet, probably thinking that this Israelite hick could not be bright enough to have a riddle which they could not solve.

As is often the case, I kind of got lost in the weeds on that last paragraph.  We can really learn lessons from both sides of the stories about Samson.  First, Samson sought acceptance among those who looked down on him because of his background.  The Philistines looked down on him because he was an Israelite.  Note: this was not the equivalent of modern Antisemitism.  It is much more like the contempt which the elites in modern society have for the working class (and those who remain faithful to Christ). The Philistines thought they could take advantage of Samson because he was an unsophisticated rube.  When they failed, they used their social position to do so.  Samson suffered for his desire to be accepted, but the Philistines suffered more.

So, two lessons: Don’t allow your desire for social acceptance cause you to compromise your beliefs (Samson revealed that cutting his hair would end his vow to someone he knew did not respect it).  Do not take advantage of a social outcast’s desire for acceptance in order to ridicule them.  Both will end badly.

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