Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 20-21.

First, I want to comment on the fact that the passage tells us that the Israelites “assembled before the Lord in Mizpah.”  In fact, on multiple occasions throughout the book of Judges it says that the Israelites assembled at, or in, Mizpah.  For example, in Judges 10, in the account of Jephthah, it describes them as doing so.  However, on that occasion, Mizpah was clearly in the area east of the Jordan River (in fact, at one point later in the story of Jephthah it refers to Mizpah of Gilead).  While it is possible that the Mizpah referred to here was the same Mizpah, it seems more likely the Israelites assembled in the Mizpah which was in the territory of Bethlehem.  Considering that the Hebrew word transliterated as “mizpah” means “watchtower”, or “outlook”, I wonder if any of these were proper noun place names when the Israelites first gathered there.

So, the Israelites gathered, but the Benjamites did not join them, although the passage makes clear that the Benjamites were aware of the assembly.  Further, when the rest of Israel asked the Benjamites to bring these men to justice, the Benjamites rejected their request and mustered to defend the city of Gibeah.  We see here, and in the account of Jephthah which I mentioned earlier, that the tribes of Israel had been losing their unity.  So, while this event was devastating for the tribe of Benjamin, it did lead to the Israelites seeing themselves as one people once again.  At the end of the war, the Israelites realized that they had over reacted in the heat of battle and had almost wiped out the tribe of Benjamin.  They acted to preserve Benjamin.  Before this year, I never connected this account with the fact that Israel’s first king, King Saul, was a Benjamite, and from the very town which precipitated this war.  It is likely that the memory of this event, passed down through the generations, which caused King Saul, after the victory which established his authority, to refuse to kill those Israelites who had rejected him as king before that.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 17-19.

In today’s passage we have two accounts (the first one is a two part story) which provide us with almost no information about when they happened relative to the other events chronicled in this book.   Both of these accounts appear to be here in order to make the case for kingship.  First we have the account of the Levite who became Micah’s priest and then later the priest for the tribe of Dan.  There is a reference in Joshua which appears reference this event, but that doesn’t really narrow down when it happened by much.  This account suggests that the tribe of Dan set up a separate “cult” of worship of Jehovah from that which was centered around the Tabernacle, which would explain why King Jeroboam set up one of his idols in Dan after he rebelled from King Rehoboam.

The second account describes a Levite who was travelling.  He decided to not stop in Jerusalem for the night, but travelled on from there to Gibeah.  He chose to travel on to Gibeah because Jerusalem was inhabited by Jebusites at that time, while Gibeah was inhabited by Israelites of the tribe of Benjamin.  The implication being that he would be safer among his own people than among foreigners.  In fact, I believe that the offense which led to the war on Gibeah was exactly that, that the people of Gibeah treated their fellow Israelite worse than foreigners would have.  Another thing, before today I never made the connection that King Saul’s capital was the same Gibeah as related in this account.  Once I made that connection, I realized how close David grew up to where King Saul ruled from.  David’s family would have been known to Saul’s family, and vice versa.  Knowing that puts a whole new light on the relationships between those who served King Saul and those who served David.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 14-16.

I was going to write about Samson’s poor choices in women and then something else struck me.  Although before I get into that, I want to say that I feel sorry for the Philistine woman whom Samson married.  Yes, she betrayed Samson, but only because the men with whom Samson had bet threatened to burn her and her father’s household to death.  Then later, they did that very thing.  Any way, back to my main point today.  God’s Spirit was upon Samson up until Delilah cut his hair.  God’s Spirit did not depart from him when he slept with the Philistine prostitute, nor when he slept with Delilah on several occasions, not even when he revealed the true secret to his strength to Delilah.  No, it was only after she actually cut his hair that God departed from Samson.  And, even with that, God answered Samson when he called out to God as a prisoner of the Philistines.  So, despite his flaws, despite his sins, God stayed with Samson and even answered his prayers.  We can take comfort from that when we sin.  God will not abandon us.  Does that mean that it was not bad that Samson committed sexual sins?  Of course not, if Samson had not allowed himself to fall into sexual sins, he would never have revealed the secret of his strength to Delilah.  And who knows what other great things he might have done?  In the same way, while God will remain with us even when we sin, think how much greater works He would do through us if we resist the temptations which come our way?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 11-13.

By the way we write and talk today, reading this passage leads us to believe that Jephthah was the illegitimate son of a man named Gilead, who was in turn descended from the Gilead after whom the territory of Gilead was named.  By that reading, Gilead, the father of Jephthah, also had several legitimate sons, and those legitimate sons drove Jephthah away to avoid sharing their father’s inheritance with him.  However, it would be consistent with the way people sometimes wrote in the past for this to have a different meaning.  Perhaps, since Jephthah’s mother was a prostitute, when the writer says that his father was “Gilead” he meant that his father was an unknown man of the territory named Gilead.  Further, when the writer referred to “Gilead’s wife” having sons, he was referring to the legitimate sons of the citizens of Gilead.  By that reading, the elders of Gilead who asked Jephthah to command the defense of Gilead were the same people who had exiled him in the first place.  This second reading makes a lot more sense of Jephthah’s response to their request.  In either reading, we see that the people of Gilead were lucky that Jephthah did not hold a grudge against them for their earlier mistreatment.  Of course, on the other hand, Jephthah may not have developed the leadership skills which they needed if they had not done so.

The conflict between the Ephraimites and Jephthah after Jephthah’s victory can be hard to understand.  In order to understand what happened we need to go back to Chapter 10, where it tells us that the Ammonites oppressed the Israelites living in Gilead, east of the Jordan River, for 18 years, and then began raiding into Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim.  The Ammonites mustered their army in Gilead (it is not clear to me if this was in response to a religious revival among the Israelites which led to their unrest against the Ammonites, or if it was just an annual muster by the Ammonites to go raiding).  In response, the Israelites gathered at Mizpah, where the leaders of Gilead determined to call Jephthah to lead them.  This sets the stage for the battle.  Apparently, the Ephraimites gathered their forces somewhere else (or decided to wait to join the muster).  In any case, after Jephthah had won, the Ephraimites were angry because they did not get a share of the loot which the victorious Gileadites had acquired by defeating the Ammonites and threatened to kill Jephthah and his family.  This dispute illustrates that the warriors of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh were prescient when they built the altar as a monument as they returned home after Joshua’s wars.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.