Commuter Bible John Ross

At this point in the narrative of Judges, the Lord is surprisingly absent from the life of Israel. It seems like nobody knows how any of this covenant stuff works, even in the slightest. It becomes so bad that a Levite is involved in a scenario almost identical to that of Sodom & Gomorrah, only this time, those who are intent on sexually assaulting the town’s visitors are successful because the Levite betrays his concubine. Though he is not supposed to touch a dead body, he then mutilates her corpse just to make a point. Time and again the author captures this darkness by stating that there was “no king in Israel” for Israel had rejected their Lord.

In short, Samson is a picture of Israel in one person. Meant to be set apart and holy, he instead takes his vows and his God lightly, defiling himself over and over. A Nazirite was supposed avoid dead bodies, yet he eats honey from a lion’s carcass and uses a jawbone for a weapon. A Nazirite was supposed to abstain from wine, yet Samson threw a drinking party for the Philistines. The last vow to go is that of not cutting his hair, which he hands over to a Delilah, a woman of the very nation that Israel had been tasked with destroying for their perpetual evil.

Two judges of Israel follow the death of Abimelech, and we know little about them, except that they each judged Israel for over 20 years with no ruckus to speak of. When Israel turns to idols yet again, they suffer under the Philistines & Ammonites. They cry out to the Lord, but he rejects their pleas. When they confess sin and burn their idols, God begins to become weary of their misery. Later, God appoints a ne’er-do-well named Jephthah to deliver Israel from the Ammonites. Sadly, Jephthah doesn’t truly know the Lord or His commands, and he makes a vow to the Lord that is abominable in the Lord’s sight, standing in direct conflict with the statutes handed down through Moses. Thinking that he is being faithful to the Lord, he makes a heartbreaking decision.

When we last left Gideon and his army, he had attacked the forces of Midian with 300 hundred men. Though he and his small band had already killed 120,000 men, there are still 15,000 left. We begin with a discussion between Gideon and the men of Ephraim who have just killed the two princes of Midian as Gideon’s men routed them from battle. They’re upset that they weren’t called to fight, but Gideon basically tells them their leftovers are better than the full harvest of what his men have reaped. After securing victory, Israel tries to make Gideon their leader, but he refuses and says that the Lord should lead them. Then, strangely he makes an ephod out of gold, which becomes a snare of idolatry.

Our reading today begins by wrapping up the account of Deborah and Barak after Sisera’s defeat. It’s not long, however, before Israel turns, once again, to worship idols. The false gods of Baal and Asherah were meant to bring fertile crops and prosperity, but they only bring despair and a fractured relationship with the One True God. During a period of oppression by the Midianites, the Lord speaks to a young man named Gideon and calls upon him to destroy his father’s idolatrous altars. Later, the spirit of the Lord envelops Gideon as he gathers troops for battle. The Lord then reduces the number of men who will go to battle to just 300 so that Israel will not forget the power of God and His merciful deliverance.

Under the rule of Joshua, Israel was doing well and was off to a good start in obeying the Lord’s commands. Not long afterward, however, they begin to intermarry with the Canaanites, signaling, not only an apathy toward God’s commands, but an acceptance of the gods that the Canaanites worshiped. God declares that he will no longer drive out the Canaanites before Israel, and he leaves them in the land to test Israel’s faithfulness to His commands. When their foes rise to power and they cry to the Lord for help, he raises up judges to fight for them.