INTRODUCTION
I heard it preached from
the pulpit once that "Given the correct circumstances, there is no
depravity that any of us is not capable of." I have found that to be
an incredibly insightful statement and have seen it played out again and again
in my life and in the lives of others.
The book of Judges is an
essay describing what even God's people are capable of when they reject God and
refuse to obey Him. These lessons which were hard learned by the nation
of Israel are a typology of the life of every Christian as well as the entire
world as a whole.
I've seen many of the
scriptures in Judges quoted by atheists on various websites, in books, and in
social media posts attributing the actions of the Israelites in the book of
Judges as them following God's direction and then labeling God as evil.
This is anti-truth. Understanding the context of
the book makes this clear.
GOD AS
KING
Genesis 15 describes God's
covenant with Abram (later Abraham) and in Genesis 17:7, God promises to be
Abraham's God as well as that of his offspring (which he had previously
promised to make into a great nation – ultimately, the nation of Israel).
In 1 Samuel 8:7, God
explains that the Israelites have rejected Him as king and have served other
Gods:
"The Lord said
to Samuel[1], “Listen
to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they
have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. 8 Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I
brought them up from Egypt even to this day—in that they have forsaken Me and
served other gods—so they are doing to you also."
In Judges 8:23 we see that Gideon
understood that God was to be the king of Israel and he tells them in no
uncertain terms:
But Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over
you, nor shall my son rule over you; the Lord shall
rule over you.”
God's ultimate plan was that He would be the king of the Israelites
and His people would serve Him and govern themselves within the boundaries that
he set for them through Moses (the moral law) during their trek through the desert after He
freed them from bondage in Egypt.
We see Israel’s rejection of God as their king described over
and over in the book of Judges. For Example[2]:
Judges 17:6 - In those days there was no king
in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.
MORAL
AUTHORITY
This is really the crux of the issue. By saying there
was no king in Israel, the author is showing that Israel had rejected God's
kingship over them. With no moral authority to guide them, each person
"did what was right in his own eyes."
The is the place where much of the world finds itself
today. With a false God there is a false moral authority, with no God
there is no moral authority and everyone does whatever they choose without
regard to morality - each person defines their own morality.
I have heard or read many times people using the phrase
"my truth" or "your truth". Make no mistake - there
is only one truth. When people define their own truth society collapses
into evil. This is primary message of the book of Judges.
REBELLION
Joshua took the mantle of leadership of Israel after Moses
dies on Mount Nebo. In the beginning of the book of Judges, Joshua dies
and the Israelites find themselves in chaos.
Judges 3:1-2 tells us that God allowed Joshua to die before
fully driving out the inhabitants of the promised land because he wanted to
teach the next generation about warfare.
Now these are the nations which the Lord left,
to test Israel by them (that is, all who had not experienced any of
the wars of Canaan; only in order that the generations of the sons of
Israel might be taught war, [those who had not experienced it
formerly).
The Israelites needed to be able to defend the land they had
inherited as a result of God's covenant with Abraham and God left these
nations to be conquered after Joshua's death to teach them military tactics so
they could defend the land after it was conquered.
With no strong spiritual leader to remind them of their heritage
and admonish them to keep the law, the Israelites rebelled against God.
Their first act of rebellion is described in Judges
1:27-34. Not only did they not drive out the inhabitants of the land, but
they either intermarried with them, or took them as slaves[3] and
began to worship their idols and false gods.
JUDGES
In the book of Judges, the people do what is evil in God’s
sight and to help them back to the correct path, He appoints a series of Judges whose job it was to settle disputes and provide spiritual guidance to
the Israelites (including guidance from God as to how to conquer the rest of the land of their inheritance). They needed no king to serve and create laws for them and
tell them how to act because God had already provided that to them through
Moses in the Torah (aka "The Law").
Each Judge was appointed at a time of repentance and crying out
by the Israelites when they were being persecuted because God stopped
protecting them when they rebelled.
Judges 2:11-23 gives us a good synopsis of what happens
throughout the book:
11 Then the sons
of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals,12 and they
forsook the Lord, the God of
their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed
other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around
them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger. 13 So they
forsook the Lord and served
Baal and the Ashtaroth.14 The anger of
the Lord burned against Israel,
and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He
sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they
could no longer stand before their enemies. 15 Wherever they
went, the hand of the Lord was
against them for evil, as the Lord had
spoken and as the Lord had
sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.
16 Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those
who plundered them. 17 Yet they did
not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and
bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in
which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers. 18 When the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their
enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those
who oppressed and afflicted them. 19 But it came
about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly
than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them;
they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. 20 So the anger
of the Lord burned against Israel,
and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I
commanded their fathers and has not listened to My voice, 21 I also will no
longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, 22 in order to test
Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not.” 23 So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and
He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.
As described in this passage,
the Israelites only remained faithful as long as the divinely appointed Judge
lived and then they quickly reverted to their evil ways and each time strayed
further and further from God’s plan. We
see in the pages of the book of Judges the ever increasing violence and
depravity perpetrated by “God’s chosen people” when they stop following God’s
plan.
When they were delivered
out of Egypt God admonished the Israelites to tell their offspring what He had
done for them so they would remember and follow Him in the future[4]:
Genesis 10:1-2: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh,
for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may
perform these signs of mine among them 2 that you may tell your
children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and
how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord.”
We see in the book of Judges
that many of them were not taught their history at all and even those who were
taught, ignored it:
Judges 2:10: All that generation also were gathered to their
fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know
the Lord, nor yet the work which
He had done for Israel.
Over time we see that not only
did Israel move further and further away from God, even his Judges were sinful.
ABIMELECH
(Judges 9)
After Gideon died, he had
70 sons by many wives and one by a concubine (identified later as a slave
girl). The son of the concubine was
named Abimelech and when his father died he decided he should lead Israel and
murdered all 70 of his half-brothers and set himself up as king – reigning as
king for 3 years. Since he was not chosen
by God, he was never considered king of Israel.
During his short self-appointed
kingship, God planned his demise. He
stirred up the hearts and minds of the people of a town named Shechem against
Abimelech. Abimelech attacked the city,
killed everyone in it, destroyed the city, and scattered salt over it so nothing
would grow there again.
Some of the people of the
town were hiding out and were not killed when the town was seiged and went into
a stronghold of the local temple. Abimelech commanded his men to take branches
from trees and put them around the stronghold and set them on fire burning
those inside to death – about 1000 men and women.
When he was done there he
moved on to a town named Thebez and laid siege to it. Inside that town, however, was a tower and a woman
on top of the tower threw a millstone off the tower and hit Abimelech in the head. He has one of his men run him through with a
sword so it couldn’t be said that a woman had killed him.
JEPHTHAH (Judges 11)
Jephthah was a Judge
appointed by God to free His people after they had rebelled for the eight time. Jephthah tragically made a vow to God that “if
you give the Ammonites in to my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my
house to meet me when I return in triumph… I will sacrifice it as a burnt
offering”
Importantly, this is not
a sacrifice that was demanded by God and God did not demand that he keep the
vow.
When Jephthah returns the
first thing that came out of his door is his only daughter. He gives her four months to morn and then sacrifices
here as a burnt offering.
DANNITES (Judges 18)
The tribe of Dan did not
trust in God and did not take the part of the land that was promised to them
leaving no place for them to go.
During their wanderings they
came to a town where a disgraced Levite priest was working for a man as his priest,
but to false gods which were idols fashioned by his employer. The priest told them about a town far to the North
which had no enemies, was not well fortified, and had no alliances with anyone
for protection.
The Dannites went and spied
it out and found the town just as the Levite said. They came back to the house where the Levite
was living and forced him to accompany them and become their priest and bring
along all the idols from the house where he was living.
They then went to the city
and destroyed it and killed everyone in it and rebuilt it and renamed it “Dan”
and then setup a temple to these idols with the Levite as their priest. They lived there and worshiped those idols
until they were taken into captivity.
LEVITE
and CONCUBINE (Judges
19)
Another Levite who lived in
a remote area took a concubine from Bethlehem, but she was unfaithful and left
him and went back to her father’s house.
The Levite then came back to get her.
After a number of delays the Levite left and came to a town named Gibeah
in the land of Benjamin.
Nobody in the town would
give him a place to stay so he and his servant and concubine were in the city
square when a man came into town and offered to give him a place to stay and food
for his animals.
While they were having some
dinner, some evil men from the town demanded the man send the Levite send the
man out so they could sodomize him. The
man begged them not to do that and offered his virgin daughters and the
concubine to him instead. But the men would not listen.
So the Levite took his
concubine and sent her outside to them and they raped and abused her throughout
the night. When they were done with her
she crawled back to the place where she was staying and when the Levite awoke
in the morning he found her dead on the threshold.
He then took her and
chopped her into 12 pieces and put each piece on a separate donkey and sent
each to each of the 12 tribes of Israel.
BENJAMITES
KILLED (Judges 20)
All of the other tribes of Israel
got the severed parts of the concubine and came to find out what had happened
because they said nothing so evil had ever happened since they left Egypt. When the heard the story from the Levite,
they decided to purge the evil from the land of the Benjamites.
The asked for the men who
did the act, but the Benjamites would not turn them over. The rest of the Israelites then, at the Lord’s
direction, attacked the Benjamites and killed 25,000 Benjamites and about 600
men fled into the desert.
The Israelites then went
back to the land of Benjamin and killed everyone in every town including all of
the animals.
WIVES FOR
REMAINING BENJAMITES (Judges 21)
Because they still needed
12 tribes of Israel, the rest of the Israelites allowed the 600 remaining Benjamites
to live, but they had all vowed to not give any of their daughters over to the
Benjamites to marry. The tribe of Benjamin could not continue without wives.
So, the Israelites looked
around for any town that was not with them when they made the vow to not let their
daughters marry the Benjamites. This is because,
when they made the oath to kill the Benjamites and not allow any of their
daughters to marry a Benjamite, they also made an oath that anyone tribe who
refused to send representation to the meeting would be killed.
Once again, this is not an
oath required by God, nor required to be honored by God. They found a region where nobody attended and
told the remaining Benjamites that they should go to the region and kill everyone
there who was not a virgin female and take all the virgin females as wives.
Unfortunately, there were
not enough women there for all of the men.
They then concocted a plan to let the remaining Benjamite survivors go
to a town near Shechem and lay in wait outside the town in the vinyards and
when the girls come out to celebrate the annual festival of the Lord, run down
and kidnap enough of the girls to make them all wives.
Then when the fathers of
these girls complains they will say they did not break their vow because they
didn’t give the girls to them, they came and took them.
After this everyone,
including the Benjamites went home. The
Benjamites rebuilt their towns and everyone continued to live in their own inheritance.
The final verse of Judges
provides an exclamation point on the entire period of the Judges:
Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel;
everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
CONCLUSION
Samuel is considered by
many to be the last of the judges. In
the first Biblical book named after him (1 Samuel 8) we find God’s lament at
the actions of the Israelites and their rejection of him as king and demand for
an earthly king.
As they have done from the day I brought them up
out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they
are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and
let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his
rights.”
And so Samuel, at God’s direction gives them a king named
Saul.
We think that perhaps things have gotten better in the world,
but a thousand hears later we find Paul in Romans 1:21-32 explaining the same
thing that God had said about the Israelites when they rejected God:
21 For although they knew God, they neither
glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile
and their foolish hearts were darkened.22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and
reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful
desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies
with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth
about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather
than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to
shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for
unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men
also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one
another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves
the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it
worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a
depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of
wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife,
deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and
boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no
love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such
things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but
also approve of those who practice them.
Rejection of the
moral authority of the God of the Bible has one inevitable result. Society becomes more and more evil and the effects
increase over time. When those who
oppose God want to remove all reference to God in all aspects of society they
should not be surprise when people act godlessly.
There is no way to
legislate people into morality. You cannot
take away every tool a godless person may use to do evil. Evil people have been doing evil things since
humans have existed on the planet. An
evil person will do evil with whatever he has at his disposal.
We, as a world, have forgotten what the God of the Bible has done for us and we are experiencing the evil that is the inevitable result.
The cure for acting godlessly is God! The way for people to know God is for someone to tell them.
Appendix A – Slavery
Some read in the Bible where God tells the Israelites how to
treat their slaves and there are two kinds of slaves described in the Bible.
The first is really an indentured servitude in which a person
could not provide for their family and so they would sell themselves into
slavery for a period of time during which their master would take care of them
and they would serve the master. After a
period of time, after the slave had served the time agreed upon, he could choose
to be exonerated or, if he was treated well and liked the arrangement, could pledge
to remain a slave for live.
In other cases, such as is described here, the Israelites
would take slaves of the cities and nations they would conquer which was in
direct contradiction to God’s commands.
The people living in these lands prior to the coming of the Israelites
were exceeding evil. When God made the covenant
with Abraham, he told him that his offspring would not inherit the land for
four generations because the “sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its
full measure.”[6]
God was giving these nations the chance to repent (as he did
for Ninevah, who did repent and God did not destroy them – at least not at that
time) but God (being all-knowing) knew they would not.
Having become so unspeakably evil (performing child sacrifice
and a number of other abdominal acts), God had no choice but to remove them
from the Earth lest it return to the state it was in when God decided to
cleanse it with the flood.
Since God promised to never destroy humanity with a flood again,
He needed to purge the world of those who could lead it back to that state and replace
them with a nation that had pledged to serve him as their God – Israel.
Appendix B – The Angel of the Lord
Throughout the Bible there are places which refer to “The
Angel of the Lord” and others that refer to “an angel of the lord”. There is a big difference.
When we see “The angel of the Lord”, this is the
personification of the part of the triune Godhead that would later be born on
the Earth through Mary – Jesus, the Son.
In the book of Judges, we see this clearly when “The
angel of the Lord” comes to speak with Gideon in Judges 6. In verse 11 we see “The Angel of the
Lord came and sat down…” and as the conversation with Gideon continues
converses with Him in verse 14 we read “The Lord turned to him and said”.
We also see “The Angel of the Lord” referenced a number of
other times in scripture and in each place He speaks as, and accepts praise and
worship as God.[7]
Conversely, we see “an angel of the Lord” in other places
where the angel refuses to be worshiped as God or clearly cannot be Jesus – for
instance in Matthew 28 we see “an angel of the Lord” at the empty tomb telling
the women that Jesus is not there.
In Luke 1, when the birth of John the Baptist is foretold, “an
angel of the Lord” appears to Zechariah[8] he
later identifies himself as “Gabriel”[9].
When we see The Angel of the Lord referenced in Judges,
we can know that this is the personification of Jesus coming to save His
people, just as he does in the New Testament.
[1] Throughout
the Bible, God talks directly to prophets and the prophets give direction to
the people.
Moses and Joshua were both prophets and God spoke directly
to them giving them directions. In other
places where the Bible says “God spoke to the people of…”, God is speaking through
a prophet who then provides God’s words to the people. The Biblical books of prophesy are God’s
words spoken to the people through His prophets.
[2]
Also see Judges 18:1; 19:1, and 21:25.
[3] See Appendix A at the end of this text for more about slavery in the Bible
[4]
See also Exodus 12:12-14; 12:24-27; 13:14-16; and 15:25-26
[5]
Ecclesiastes 1:9
[6]
Genesis 15:16
[7]
Genesis 16:7-12, 19:1-21, 31:11-13; Exodus 3:2-4; Judges 2:1-5, 6:11-23,
13:1-22; Zechariah 3:1-6, 12:8
[8]
Luke 1:11
[9]
Luke 1:19
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