Chapter
21: The Roller Coaster of Judges
Chapter
21 Contents
21.1 Introduction
& a New Testament Insight
21.2 Introducing
the Roller Coaster: Judges, chapter 2
21.3 The
Roller Coaster: Judges, chapters 3 to 16
21.4 Some
Concluding Thoughts
21.1
Introduction & a New Testament Insight
Proposition:
The book of Judges reveals the approach of ‘God giving
over a people' as a most common form of disciplinary judgment revealed
in the Bible, seen as a roller coaster of events.
Looking
back
We
have already touched on some of the material in this chapter in earlier
chapters in Part 1 when we considered the form of judgment that appears
most commonly in the book of Judges, but which may also be implied
in many of the subsequent ‘historical books'.
Put
most simply we suggest it is seen in the process that is repeated
again and again throughout the book of Judges, that I will later refer
to as a roller coaster for obvious reasons:
- Israel are in a good place with
God, living at peace as His people and receiving His blessing.
- Time passes and they drift away
from him, often giving way to idol worship, often picked up from
their pagan neighbours.
- God lifts off His hand of protection
from them with the result that the pagan neighbours feel they can
take advantage of Israel and so invade the land and subjugate Israel.
- Again time passes and eventually
Israel cry out to the Lord for help.
- The Lord raises up new judges who
act as deliverers and deliver Israel out of the hands of their marauding
neighbours.
- Israel are in a good place with
God, living at peace as His people and receiving His blessing.
A
New Testament insight
In
Romans 1 the apostle Paul refers to this process in general terms
in respect of sin in Israel and three times uses the language of God
giving over people to things that will act as disciplinary judgments:
Rom
1:24,25 Therefore
God gave them over in the sinful desires of their
hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one
another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped
and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever
praised. Amen.
Rom
1:26,27 Because of
this, God gave them over t o shameful lusts. Even
their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the
same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were
inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with
other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Rom
1:28 Furthermore,
since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of
God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do
what ought not to be done.
We
might consider these things as simply expressions of sin but the sense
that is being conveyed is that God lifts off His hands of restraint
from sinful men and lets them go deeper into sin as a form of disciplinary
judgment, intended to bring them to their senses.
A
similar idea is behind something that occurs in 1 Corinthians when
the apostle Paul speaks of how to deal with a man caught having sex
with (probably) his stepmother:
1
Cor 5:5 hand this
man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and
his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
It
is as if, in putting the man out of the church, the protective hand
of God over and in the church will be removed from the man and he
will be vulnerable to the attacks of Satan until he comes to his senses
and repents. Although we may not be personally conscious of it, we
should see that the concept of the protective hand of God is clearly
implied within Scripture and when it is removed, it is done so as
a form of disciplinary punishment intended to bring the individual
or group of people to repentance. This process is what is seen so
clearly in Judges and should be a powerful indicator for us of how
God so often moves. It is always with the intention of bringing a
change of attitude which leads on to a restoration of relationship
with the Lord. Now let's see examples of this through Judges.
These Judgments in Judges
What
we are going to observe in the book of Judges are not so much one-off
judgments as we see in the Pentateuch, but rather a systematic approach,
it seems, by the Lord, to deal with the repetitious behaviour of Israel.
Individuals do come under the discipline of the Lord, but it is mostly
discipline of the whole of Israel, and it is clearly designed to draw
them back to the Lord. Again and again the form of the disciplinary
judgment is invasion by neighbours who seek to destroy Israel.
21.2
Introducing the Roller Coaster: Judges, chapter 2
We
have already noted in the previous chapter how in chapter 1 of Judges
we see the ongoing work of taking the land which then starts stumbling,
so that from verse 19 onwards we start finding a whole series of places
where they appeared unable to take the land from the Canaanites.
In
the beginning of chapter 2 the Lord chides them for their failure
and says He will no longer join in the driving-out project and so
the occupants will remain a thorn in the side of Israel (2:3) and,
as we saw previously, a means of challenging and testing Israel.
When
we come to verse 10, referring to what follows the eventual death
of Joshua we find:
Jud
2:10-12 another generation
grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel
. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and
served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their
fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt . They followed and worshiped
various gods of the peoples around them.
Now
if we knew nothing of what followed we might have expected at this
point God to express total exasperation over this nation for whom
He had done so much over the past four centuries. He had warned them
so many times to avoid the trap of getting sucked into the idolatrous
worship of surrounding pagan peoples. Instead we find the start of
this roller coaster:
Judg
2:14 In his
anger against Israel the LORD handed them over to raiders
who plundered them.
-
This was His form of disciplinary judgment. He uses marauding
neighbours.
-
Now on this occasion we aren't told they repented but we
are told, “They were in great distress.”
(v.15) and this seems sufficient to provoke the Lord
to act on their behalf:
Judg
2:16,18 Then the
LORD raised up judges , who saved them out of the hands of
these raiders… . . Whenever the LORD raised up a judge for them, he
was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies
as long as the judge lived; for the LORD had compassion on them as
they groaned under those who oppressed and afflicted them.
The
verses at the end of chapter 2 seem to summarise the general process:
Judg
2:19-23
19
But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even
more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other
gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their
evil practices and stubborn ways.
20
Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and
said, “Because this nation has violated the covenant that I laid down
for their forefathers and has not listened to me, 21 I will no longer
drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died.
22 I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the
way of the LORD and walk in it as their forefathers did.” 23 The LORD
had allowed those nations to remain; he did not drive them out at
once by giving them into the hands of Joshua.
- i.e.
when a God-given judge was there, it was all right
- as
soon as he died, Israel fell away
- as
soon as they did that, the Lord lifted off His hand of protection
and the disciplinary judgment started and often carried on for many
years
- it
ended when Israel cried out to the Lord and He then sent another
deliverer.
21.3
The Roller Coaster : Judges, chapters 3 to 16
Rather
than quote each verse going through Judges that is part of this roller
coaster, let's just summarise the references:
Reference
|
Action
|
Deliverer
|
Coaster
|
3:7
|
Israel
turn to idolatry yet again |
|
Down
|
3:8
|
The
Lord sells them into the hand of Aram |
|
|
3:9
|
Israel
cry out, the Lord sends a deliverer |
Othniel |
Up
|
3:12a
|
Israel
again do evil in the eyes of the Lord |
|
Down
|
3:12b
|
The
Lord gives them over to Moab |
|
|
3:15
|
Israel
cry out, the Lord sends a deliverer |
Ehud |
Up
|
4:1
|
Israel
again do evil in the eyes of the Lord |
|
Down
|
4:2
|
The
Lord gives them over to Jabin of Canaan |
|
|
4:3,4
|
Israel
cry out – a prophetess & warrior rise up |
Deborah /
Barak |
Up
|
6:1a
|
Israel
again do evil in the eyes of the Lord |
|
Down
|
6:1b
|
The
Lord gives them over to Midian |
|
|
6:6
|
Israel
cry out and the Lord sends a prophet |
|
|
6:11
|
The
Lord raises up another deliverer |
Gideon |
Up
|
8:33
|
Israel
worship idols again (after Gideon dies) |
|
Down
|
9:23
(& 56,57) |
The
Lord causes internal strife |
|
|
10:1
|
A
good judge rises to save Israel |
Tola |
Up
|
10:6
|
Israel
again do evil in the eyes of the Lord |
|
Down
|
10:7
|
The
Lord gives them to the Philistines/Ammonites |
|
|
10:10,15
|
Israel
cry out to the Lord in repentance |
|
|
11:29
|
The
Lord raises up a deliverer |
Jephthah |
Up
|
13:1a
|
Israel
again do evil in the eyes of the Lord |
|
Down
|
13:1b
|
The
Lord gives them to the Philistines |
|
|
13:5
|
The
Lord raises up a deliverer |
Samson |
Up?
|
After
the erratic life of Samson and his eventual death (16:30) the book
degenerates into the even more erratic goings on of people and groups
in the nation and we find “In those
days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”
(17:6).
21.4
Some Concluding Thoughts
Overview
If
you look at the “Introduction to the Books of the Bible” and ‘Judges'
elsewhere on this site, you will see that we summarise the book as
follows:
Ch.1-3
Prologue: Incomplete Conquest and Apostasy
Ch.3-16
Oppression and Deliverance Cycles
Ch.17-21
Epilogue: Religious and Moral Disorder
The
table above covers the “Oppression and Deliverance Cycles” main section
of the book, and you will see from the table that it records SEVEN
times when Israel turn away from the Lord and we go through the cycle
again with SEVEN DELIVERERS (although there are more judges but just
not mentioned specifically as deliverers).
God's
Character revealed
To
those who would mindlessly criticise the Lord, can we point out the
incredible patience and perseverance of the Lord seen in these chapters.
His objective is clearly to do all He can to support and encourage
and maintain this nation, as part of His long-term plan that we considered
in the previous chapter. If Israel were employees in a firm employed
by us, how many of us would not have sacked them and started all over
a long time back?
Perhaps
we might suggest that one of the reasons the Lord perseveres like
this is to reveal His persevering grace and mercy in the face
of the ongoing sin and stupidity of the human race as seen in Israel.
We
will need to wait until we get to the reigns of David and Solomon
to see the height of the Lord's blessing on this nation, but the fact
that it takes so long to get to them and the blessing that is observed
there, is simply down to this sin and stupidity of Israel; it is NOT
down to the Lord.
We
might have expected Him to come with utter destructive power again
and again on this foolish nation but instead He deals with them in
a way that life without His protective presence is clearly
seen and we are made to realise that without Him
Israel were simply vulnerable to
•
outside enemy marauders
(chapters 3 to 16)
•
and their own internal wrangling
(chapters 17 to 21)
The
changing structure of the book of Judges
We
would be remiss if we finished this chapter without pointing out that
again and again we find the idea that the Lord provided a deliverer
for Israel :
Jdg
2:16 Then the LORD raised
up judges, who saved them Jdg 2:18
Whenever the LORD raised
up a judge for them,
Jdg
3:9 But when they cried
out to the LORD, he raised up for them a deliverer
Judg
3:15 he gave them a deliverer
It
is interesting to note that chapters 2 and 3 start
out generalising about the cycle but conclude giving a longer account
of Ehud's activity.
In
chapter 4 as the cycle is spelled out, it quickly
develops into the activity of Deborah the prophetess and her protégé,
Barak, and the victories they achieve. Going on in chapter
5 we find Deborah's song of praise. Neither of them are
specifically mentioned as being provided by the Lord, but the fact
that she is a prophetess, clearly suggests that she at least was.
The end result is the same!
Again
in chapter 6 the cycle takes on more of a story
approach and although Gideon is not spoken of specifically as God's
deliverer, it is very clear from the context of the account with the
angel that that is what is happening. Chapter 7
continues the story of how He does this with Gideon and chapter
8 continues on in his lifetime. Tragically the chapter ends
with Gideon dying and Israel immediately turning away from the Lord,
yet again!
Chapter
9 moves on from Gideon's death and to the upheaval caused
by one of his sons which eventually incurred the Lord's wrath. It
is also more a story of one people group in Israel rather than the
nation. As it concludes and moves into chapter 10
he is succeeded by two good judges but then yet again the cycle starts
off again with Israel turning from the Lord, the Lord disciplining
them and them eventually coming to repentance.
Chapter
11 moves on to tell the story of Jephthah who the Lord eventually
uses to overcome the Ammonites, but causing the wrath of some from
Ephraim who in chapter 12 challenge him, showing
something of the lack of unity in the land.
Chapter
13 opens with the cycle starting yet again with Israel turning
from God and Him disciplining them with the Philistines. The chapter
quickly develops into the story of Samson, Gods next deliverer, but
it is clear that he is a man with a mind of his own and not necessarily
all for God. It is a chaotic story that leads us to conclude that
sometimes the Lord will take whoever is available even if, despite
His help and encouragement, they are utterly self centred. It is yet
another display of the sinful facets of mankind, and his story continues
on until the end of chapter 16 when he dies in catastrophic
circumstances. The reality is that Samson is also a form of God's
judgment on the Philistines and so perhaps that is the reason He chose
Samson, knowing what he would be like and what he would do in respect
of them.
The Pictures of People and of God
This
main part of Judges that we have referred to as the
“Oppression and Deliverance Cycles” is not uniform in style but starts
with brief, almost summary style and then moves into individual stories
to illustrate how the roller coaster was being worked out and so we
find:
•
Deborah and Barak have 2 chapters (4 & 5)
•
Samson has 4 chapters (13 to 16)
Virtually
none of these figures come over as real men of God, although Deborah
perhaps scores more highly than the rest! It really is a case of God
using who is available and the wonder of this dark book is that God
tolerated what He did and did not wipe them out.
It
remains for us an illustration of the sinfulness of even a nation
with God in their midst, and the graciousness, mercy, patience and
perseverance of the Lord in their midst. Amazing!
Before
we finish, we should include a warning. Judges is indeed a dark book,
recounting the ongoing failures of Israel to stick with God, but before
we cast the first stone and stand aloof as righteous onlookers, perhaps
we should be honest enough to wonder if, in the circumstances, we
might have been similar. This is not to excuse Israel for they clearly
come under the disciplinary judgment of God for their behaviour, but
I wonder how many of us live lives less than those the Lord would
wish for us, and without realising it, experience the discipline of
the Lord that the New Testament reveals is still here, even for believers?
It is worth thinking about.