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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 1-3.

    There are some inconsistencies regarding the timeline and discrepancies regarding events. None of these bother me because it is clear that they are part of the writer’s attempt to create a transition from the end of Joshua to the beginning of the period he is chronicling, a period of time which was not well documented. It appears to me that the author relied on different sources for information on this time, sources which were written from different perspectives and no knowledge of each other. For example, it is likely that the Jerusalem referred to as destroyed by the tribe of Judah was a different city from the one which the tribe of Benjamin failed to conquer, and both cities were probably called something other than Jerusalem by the non-Israelites who lived in them. All in all the point of this beginning section was that the Israelites continued to conquer more of the land after Joshua’s death, but failed to completely conquer the peoples living in the land.
    One of the things we learn here is that neither Joshua nor the judges who came after him established an effective method of grooming a leader to take their place after they were gone. Time and again God raised up judges who rescued the people from oppression and led them back to following God, but as soon as these men died the people fell away and began worshiping the gods of those around them. The entire Book of Judges is a lesson that leaders in the Church must groom leaders to take their place after they are no longer able to lead.