Judges 19

Dear RTB’ers,

If you are reading the book of Judges for the first time (or maybe the first time in a long time), rest assured that this “story” is not yet ended. We still have two more chapters to go. So, read ahead if you must, but don’t expect much of a happy ending.

Repeating myself here: If you are reading this incident for the first time (or maybe the first time in a long time), it might sound oddly familiar to you. If so, go back to the story of God delivering Lot from the men of Sodom: But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. ⁵ And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” ⁶ Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, ⁷ and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. ⁸ Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” ⁹ But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down. But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.  (Genesis 19:4-10)

Wicked. Evil. The men of Gibeah demand homosexual relations with the Levite. Instead, the man of the house offers his virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine. Not a good story. More tomorrow…

Blessings!

Fred

Judges 17-18

Dear RTB’ers,

Two chapters today, two independent sets of activities – neither of which is praiseworthy – that come together and leave us wondering where God is in these activities, or more correctly, why the characters in these activities are not seeking the Lord in what they do.

So first, Micah and his mother in Judges 17. Micah steals his mother’s silver, she utters a curse, he returns the silver, and she has the silversmith make two household idols. An itinerant Levite happens along and accepts Micah’s offer of a salary, clothing, and living expenses. Two verses summarize this whole chapter. First, In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (v. 17:6) Here in one sentence we get a sense of how far the Israelites have fallen during the period of the judges. They do as they wish, failing to seek the Lord as they move forward. The second verse is equally condemning, Then Micah said, “Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.” (v. 17:13) Micah sets up idols and hires a Levite as his priest and claims prosperity as his “reward” for this idolatry.

Then the Danites in Judges 18. The tribe of Dan is allotted an inheritance just west of Judah and south of Ephraim, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, with the Amorites as the original inhabitants of that land and the Philistines composing their southern border. Sadly the Danites are not able to occupy their inheritance. Their alternative to seeking the Lord is to appoint five men as “spies” (similar to the twelve spies in Numbers 13) and 600 warriors and they make a plan to move north. On their way they make a better offer to Micah’s Levite (backed up by their military force) and he becomes their priest, taking along the ephod and the household idols. They then destroy a peaceful people and settle as the most northern tribe in Israel.

So, where is the goodness, the righteousness in these two chapters? Admittedly the Danites ask the Levite to seek the Lord for them and the Levite gives them God’s blessing. (vv. 18:5-6, 10) Beyond that, I don’t find much to cheer about in today’s reading. The peoples’ intentions in these two chapters are well-stated in the verse quoted above: In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Blessings!

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See also: March 18 (2023) / Judges 17-18

Judges 16

Dear RTB’ers,

I am thankful for John’s comment yesterday (as always!), but I think he misunderstood me. I didn’t say that I did not believe the stories or the numbers written in Judges 14-15 (30, 300, 1000). Yes, our God, “the Creator of the entire universe” can do anything He wants. But how He does what He wants is often a mystery to me.

Samson had great strength and a certain level of invincibility, not unlike so many of our “superheroes” today. My issue comes from non-believers reading these stories and rejecting the possibility that these events could have happened as written. Taken to that logical extreme, they would easily reject Jesus’ Resurrection, the central event on which our faith hangs. But I don’t have my own explanations as to how these events unfolded. I suggested yesterday that conservative scholars probably had reasonable explanations for these events and these numbers. I did not disavow the possibility; I simply meant that I could not explain to a non-believer how Samson could have done what he did. But God can do what He chooses to do.

I have no problem with Samson slaying 30 men from Ashkelon, especially given my sense of his invincibility. The same goes for the thousand slain with the jawbone of a donkey. But the 300 paired foxes and the torches on their tales. My earthly mind has a problem envisioning that. However, the God who created those foxes could have tamed them to house-pet level and let the story run as written. The number 300 was not a problem for me, but even two foxes tied together and torching the grain field is difficult for me to comprehend. But as I said yesterday, our task is not to fully understand every sentence, but to use what we read to God’s glory.

Today I have no problem with Samson taking down the pillars and having some 3,000 Philistines killed. But for me, there’s a warning in this story about moral decisions, about temptation and the seeming attractiveness of sinful pleasures, of disobedience and my mis-use of the gifts with which God has gifted me. A phrase comes to me from my childhood Catholic catechism instruction, “to avoid the near-occasion of sin”. Samson could have benefited greatly from this simple childhood wisdom!

Blessings!

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See also: March 17 (2023) / Judges 13-16

Judges 14-15

Dear RTB’ers,

And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the LORD … And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, … And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years. (vv. 15:18-20) The ending paragraph of chapter 15 tells of a good and righteous, spirit-filled man. How to reconcile these few verses with all that went before?

What to make of the earlier 37 verses? And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town… (v. 14:19a) He, thirty men? Or So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines… (vv. 15:4-5a) 300 foxes tied tail-to-tail, bearing lit torches into the grain fields? And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men.. (v. 15:15) 1,000 men, single-handedly, with a donkey jawbone?

30, 300, 1000. What do we do with numbers like that? Let’s not immediately discount them; I’m sure conservative scholars have worked around these numbers with reasonable explanations. Our task is maybe not to fully understand, to comprehend every sentence, but to use what we read to God’s glory. All Scripture is God-breathed [inspired] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (II Timothy 3:16-17, slightly edited)

And we’re not finished with Samson yet…!!

Blessings!

Judges 13

Dear RTB’ers,

Today we begin the story of Samson, the final judge in this book of Judges, the sixth major judge. We’ll spend three days and read four chapters for this one character. Fundamentally Samson is setting the stage for what comes next in the history of Israel – Samuel, Saul, and finally King David.

The wife of Manoah… We never learn her name. We know of three other barren women for whom divine intervention resulted in their motherhood: Sarai (Sarah, Abram/Abraham’s wife and mother of Isaac), Rebekah (Isaac’s wife and Jacob’s mother), and Elizabeth (Zechariah’s wife and John the Baptist’s mother), but we never learn Samson’s mother’s name. Interesting. She is clearly the hero of today’s reading. The angel appears to her twice (not to her husband) with the same instructions each time; she has wisdom that her husband is lacking (“If the LORD had meant to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things…”, v. 23a); and (left unsaid) she delivers her child in due time. And we never learn her name.

Maybe it’s OK if I have done something “substantial” (in my own estimation), and not received the credit that I thought I deserved. Maybe that’s OK. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory… (Ephesians 3:20-21a)

Blessings!

Judges 11:29-12:15

Dear RTB’ers,

Today we close the book on Jephthah – unless you read ahead yesterday! What a tragic ending to an otherwise redemptive story. Here we have a man, the son of a harlot and a noble father, driven from his homeland by his own half-kin and surrounded by “worthless fellows”, then recalled to be their leader. He then (with the Lord, see Jg. 11:29) brings about their “salvation”, but in the process sadly making a horrible promise to the Lord and sacrificing his own daughter. Then his long-distance kin, the Ephraimites trouble him with a complaint that points to their own failure to respond when called. (NOTE: Jephthah was from east-Manasseh; recall that Manasseh and Ephraim were brothers, Joseph’s two sons.) Jephthah tries to reason with them, accuses them rightly of their failure to come to his aid, then defeats them in battle. He then judges Israel (Gilead?) a few more years and dies peacefully.

Yes, Jephthah is a story of redemption, and possibly one close to home for a lot of us. How many of us have been mistreated or misjudged by our own family or by our nearby kin or by very dear friends? How did we react? Or maybe that mistreatment has been made right. Have we then moved on, or do we live with smoldering resentment? I believe we could write a good Sunday School story about Jephthah – but how would we deal with his vow and that tragic result? A good challenge for us! What are your thoughts?

Blessings!

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See also: March 16 (2023) / Judges 11-12

Judges 10:6-11:28

Dear RTB’ers,

Today we meet another of the major judges, Jephthah, one who is less well known than Deborah, Gideon and Samson, probably because Jephthah does not show up in Sunday School stories. We’ll find out tomorrow why that’s the case!

The land of Gilead becomes important in today’s reading. Gilead is often associated with east-Manasseh, but Reuben and Gad are also part of a larger “Gilead”. Today’s reading begins in Gilead (see Jg. 10:8), but other tribes are also oppressed by the Ammonites (see Jg. 10:9), so the regional battle becomes more national in scope.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “God does not call the equipped, but rather He equips the called”. We certainly see that in Jephthah! He is the son of a harlot (and a father of nobility). He is driven from his home and surrounds himself with “worthless fellows” (Jg. 11:3). Then he is called back home to lead people who have no one else to whom they can turn. His past and his future are certainly bleak, but as noted above, “…God equips the called”.

Jephthah knows his Israeli history. It’s interesting for us to recall the stories from the book of Numbers as Jephthah dialogues with the king of the Amorites (Jg. 11:12-26). I see Putin and Russia playing the same game as the Amorite king, now more than three millennia later, with Putin wanting to bring Ukraine back into “his fold” after they’ve enjoyed their independence for more than thirty years.

Today’s reading leaves us hanging! We’ll forgive you if you read ahead. And while you’re at it, imagine the Sunday School lesson that you would put together for Jephthah!

Blessings!

Judges 9:1-10:5

Dear RTB’ers,

I read through today’s reading twice in two different translations, then sat and pondered the readings and asked myself for any goodness in what we read. Then I looked at the STS questions and #1 includes the word “sin” three times. So it looks like STS agrees with me – not much goodness in today’s reading, other than Jotham (Jg. 9:5b, 7-21), where we see his curse upon Shechem fulfilled in Judges 9:57.

But, a couple of items for clarification… STS points out that Shechem was a Canaanite city, established by Hamor, a Hivite (Jg. 9:28) many years prior. Abimelech was Gideon’s son, but his mother was Canaanite and he was only a half-brother to the rest of Gideon’s sons, whom he killed. So any battles between Abimelech and other leaders can be read as Canaanites against true Israelites.

A few days ago I posted about national versus regional stories in the book of Judges. It seems as if all three judges in today’s reading are more regional than national. Shechem (mentioned often today) was in Ephraim, right on the border with west-Manasseh, land which later became Samaria in Jesus’ time. All of Abimelech’s conspiracy seems to be regional. Both of the judges in chapter 10 also seem to be regional, Tola in the northern part of the Promised Land and Jair from Gilead (east-Manasseh), a trans-Jordan tribe. Contrast today’s readings with yesterday’s, where Gideon was drawing warriors from a number of tribes to fight against the Midianites.

Blessings!

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See also: March 15 (2023) / Judges 9-10

Judges 7:24-8:35

Dear RTB’ers,

Yesterday we read the Lord’s promise to Gideon: With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand … (v. 7:7a), and we saw that, in fact, the battle was the Lord’s. Today the end of that battle continues, with the Midianites fleeing and Gideon pursuing. Today we see Gideon as a strong leader, seeking help from Ephraim and then turning away their wrath with praise for their accomplishments. Then he continues his pursuit of the kings of Midian, in spite of resistance from the men of Succoth and Penuel. He kills the kings and deals with the earlier resistance.

Then he makes an unusual request of his men, that they surrender some of the spoil that they have taken from their victory. With that spoil Gideon then makes an ephod. While that activity might seem simple enough, creating a thing of beauty from the spoils of war, Gideon’s good intention is not a decision that is God-directed. We saw the making of a God-directed ephod back in Exodus 28:6-35, a holy ephod to be worn by the high priest. Gideon’s ephod, however, leads Israel astray: And Gideon made an ephod … And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family. (v. 8:27) That whoring continues: As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals and made Baal-berith their god. And the people of Israel did not remember the LORD their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side… (vv. 8:33-34)

My own moral to this sad ending – seek the Lord always, over and over again, in the little things and the big things. Seek Him first.

Blessings!

Judges 7:1-23

Dear RTB’ers,

And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will work for you today. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

Exodus 14:13-14

Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, … For the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give you into our hand.”

I Samuel 17:45-47

And the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jeiel, son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the LORD to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.’”

II Chronicles 20:14-15

Blessings!