Judges 1-3:6
Israel now enters a new phase of its history, the period of the Judges. It is a time that we might just as well call “the yo-yo years”. Lacking the strong godly leadership of Moses and Joshua, the people of Israel rapidly descend into idolatry, which sets off a series of up-and-down cycles that follow this pattern:
- The LORD gives the people over to their enemies to discipline them
- The people suffer and groan, and the LORD has compassion on them, so He raises up a new leader (aka a “judge”) to deliver Israel from its enemies
- Under that judge, life improves
- But then the people again abandon the LORD and serve false gods
- And the cycle starts all over again
All of this is laid out for us in today’s reading, perhaps most clearly in Judges 2:11-23. We could almost just skip the rest of Judges and move on to Ruth. But we won’t. Why? Because the lessons we need to learn are learned (and remembered) best through stories, not just lectures. We will read some encouraging stories and some horrendous ones. We will meet some true heroes of the faith along the way. We might even meet ourselves. Hopefully, we will also see anew the steadfast love and faithfulness of our God, who ever longs to give life to His people, despite their (our) unfaithfulness to Him.