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.
The Book of Judges begins with a short recount of the ending of the Book of Joshua. This account sheds a different light on Joshua’s call to the people to choose what gods they would serve. What we learn here is that the Israelites had failed to drive all of the people out of the land. They had entered into agreements with some of them beyond the alliance with the Gibeonites they were tricked into. In particular, they did not destroy the altars in the lands they conquered. Joshua called the meeting of the Israelites in response to this situation. The context here suggests to me that if the people of the land had given up their idolatrous gods and begun worshiping only God, there would not have been a problem with the people of Israel making alliance with them. However, instead of this, while the people of Israel continued to worship God, as part of their alliances with the people of the land they also began to worship their gods. At the final convocation called by Joshua, the people of Israel rededicated themselves to worshiping God, but when Joshua died a short time later they returned to worshiping other gods alongside their worship of God.
As we read through the Book of Judges, and the other books of the Old Testament, we see that the failure to keep the command to only sacrifice to God at the central location contributed to their falling into idolatry. When they sacrificed locally, rather than going to the central location, they would blur the lines between worship of God and the worship of other gods. The Book of Judges shows us how easy it is to be drawn into idolatry because of our friendship with “good” people who worship other gods. That does not mean that we should not be friends with such people, just that we need to be on guard against allowing our love for them to draw us away from our love of God. We are called to draw people to love God, but as we strive to do that we can be drawn away from Him instead.