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.

The story of Gideon making an ephod from the gold earrings taken from the defeated Midianites has always bothered me.  Gideon made it right after defeating the Midianites.  He had unified the Israelites against the Midianites by calling for a rejection of idolatry.  Yet, here he is making an object which he should have been aware would become an object of worship.  And, sure enough, the writer tells us that the Israelites began to worship the ephod Gideon made.  Not only that the writer tells us that it became a trap for Gideon and his family.  We do not know if they worshiped the ephod, or merely took advantage of the desire of other Israelites to worship it.  In either case, it set the stage for what happened after Gideon died, both the turning back to worshiping Baal and the account in tomorrow’s passage.

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 story of Gideon in today’s passage contains a lot of things for us to learn from.  As a result, I generally write about that rather than about Deborah.  However, despite not containing as many inspirational points as the story of Gideon, the story of Deborah told here contains some very important things.  I love how the story of Deborah shows us that women can, and do, play just as critical of a role in God’s plans as men do.  In this story we have Jael.  Jael was called on to fill a critical role in this story because Barak was unwilling to lead the Israelite army against Sisera without Deborah there to hold his hand.  In fact, it seems likely that we may never have heard of either Jael or Deborah if Barak had been willing to assume a true leadership role when Deborah gave him God’s instructions.  That does not mean that Deborah would not have played an important role in that case.  What it means is that there are probably many other women who played a role similar to Deborah’s of whom we have never heard because the man she spoke to stepped up and fulfilled the leadership role for which God intended him.  I am sure there are also many men who filled a similar role to Deborah’s.  However, we are not as tempted to dismiss the role men play in important events.

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.

The Israelites were unable to drive all of the other peoples out of the land during Joshua’s lifetime, which was consistent with what God had promised through Moses.  God had promised that He would drive the peoples out of the land gradually as the Israelites grew to control the land.  Unfortunately, as soon as the generation of leaders who served with Joshua had died the Israelites started to assimilate with those who remained.  We often read this and imagine it took a few generations for things to go bad, but it must have been almost immediately.  The passage tells us that God allowed King Cushan-rishathaim to oppress the Israelites because of their sin.  Then, when they cried out to Him, He raised up Caleb’s nephew to rescue them.  Caleb’s nephew led them to follow the Lord for forty years.  After which they descended once more into idolatry and evil.  And once again God allowed them to fall under an oppressive foreign ruler.  It does not take long for people to turn away from God and to experience the suffering which follows.