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

When the Israelites mustered to punish the men of Gibeah, who were part of the tribe of Benjamin, the Benjamites rallied to their defense.  The Israelite army initially only asked of God who should take the lead in their assault on the men of Benjamin defending Gibeah.  After a terrible loss on the first day, they asked God if they should continue their assault.  God answered that they should.  After terrible losses on the second day of battle, they once more requested direction from God.  After receiving support a positive answer once more, they returned to battle on the third day with a new tactic.  This time they were victorious.  The army of Israel, excluding the Benjamites, numbered approximately 400,000.  Of those, 10 percent were killed in the first two days of battle.  In the entire battle, over 25,000 Benjamites were killed.  This ended up being a tragedy for all of Israel.  The failure of the people of Israel to address the problem of Gibeah when it was a small issue led to this tragedy.  We need to hold people accountable before the problem gets out of hand.  We need to offer ourselves up for accountability before we get too far from doing the right thing.  Otherwise, tragedy will eventually ensue.

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.

These two stories come at the end of the Book of Judges, but it is clear that they did not occur at the end of the time period that the book covers.  The first story about Micah and the tribe of Dan would have taken place shortly after the death of Joshua.  All of the characters in the story seem  to have questionable morals (except possibly Micah’s mother).  Micah stole a sizable amount of money from his mother and only returned it when he heard her declare a curse on the thief.  Then when she gave him an image, he made it into an idol which he worshiped.  Initially, he had one of his sons act as priest to this idol, but when opportunity arose, he hired a Levite to be his family priest.  Neither he nor the Levite he hired recognized the need to be held accountable by the larger body of the people of God.  Later, when the Danites offered him a better position, the Levite left Micah and blessed the Danites theft from him.  The Danites thought they gained God’s favor by stealing Micah’s idol and acquiring his priest to serve them.  Again, they failed to see the benefit that came from being held accountable to the larger body of God’s people.  If we look closely at the story of settlement by the Israelites, the Danites were travelling through the area where Micah lived because they had been unable to conquer the area Joshua had chosen for them by lot, and the larger body of Israel failed to come to their aid.  In the same way, the larger body of Israel had ignored the misbehavior of the men of Gibeah from the second story in today’s passage, until an incident which was over the top came to their attention.  These two stories relay how we need to place ourselves in fellowship with our fellow members of the Body of Christ and how we need to both offer support for our fellows struggles and hold them accountable for misbehavior.

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 usually write about the lessons we can learn from Samson.  However, today I want to point out why God was so harsh in his judgements against the people of Canaan whom the Israelites displaced, as illustrated by the Philistines.  When Samson challenged the Philistine men chosen to be his companions at his wedding feast, they could have refused it.  However, they accepted it because they thought that he was not smart enough to come up with a riddle they couldn’t solve.  But that’s not the key thing about them from this story.  When they could not solve his riddle, rather than accept their loss and pay him their wager, they threatened his wife and her family.  Specifically, they threatened to burn her and her entire family to death.  Samson’s in-laws were Philistines from the same town as those who threatened them.  Further, we know it was not an empty threat because they later did just that after Samson burned their fields.  What kind of people burn their neighbors to death?  The answer is, very evil people.  The way the story presents it, Samson’s wife fully believed the men chosen as Samson’s wedding companions would have burned her entire family to death if she did not tell them the answer to Samson’s riddle.  That suggests that they had done something like that before.  These were the type of people whom God commanded the Israelites to drive out of the land or destroy.  They considered burning a family to death over the answer to a riddle to be routine.

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.

OK, I’m not sure what I am going to write today, but I’m starting here.  I have been looking at various articles which talk about dating when Exodus, and the subsequent events in the Bible up until the time of King Solomon building the temple happened.  Many of them refer to the story of Jephthah happening 340 years after the Exodus (300 years from the defeat of Sihon plus 40 years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness).  I have a problem with this, a problem which I run into elsewhere in interpretation of Scripture.  I will start by saying that I am not taking a position on whether or not it was 300 years from the defeat of Sihon until Jephthah.  No, the point which I think it is important to note here is that the passage does not actually SAY that it was 300 years from the defeat of Sihon until Jephthah confronted the Ammonites.  The passage says that Jephthah sent a message to the king of the Ammonites saying that it had been 300 years.  It is important that we learn to distinguish between where the Bible says “Such and such happened” and where it says “Person A said that such and such happened.”  Where the Bible says that a particular thing happened I am inclined to believe that it did indeed happen when and where the Bible says that it did.  On the other hand, where the Bible says that a particular person said that a particular thing happened, I consider how likely it was that the person being quoted knew what they were talking about, and, even if they likely knew what they were talking about, how interested were they in being accurate about what they were saying.

Let’s look at this case where Jephthah said it had been 300 years since the Israelites defeated King Sihon.  It is certainly possible that Jephthah knew how long it had been since the Israelites defeated King Sihon.  It even seems likely that he knew approximately how long it had been.  The key being “approximately”.  I think it probable that Jephthah had only general idea of how long it had been: as in he would have known that it happened “300 years ago, give or take 50 years.”  The second question is, how important was it to Jephthah that he got how long ago it was exactly right?  Here, it seems to me that Jephthah would have thought it important to be approximately correct.  That is, he would have wanted to quote a time which was within the margin of error of any records kept by the Ammonite king with whom he was communicating.  Which, to my way of thinking means he would have wanted to be accurate to within about 50 years, plus or minus.  Actually, as I think about it, he may have wished to be off by enough for the Ammonite king to question his claim.  If the Ammonite king came back with, “You lie.  Israel only defeated King Sihon 225 years ago.” it would have nevertheless meant that the Ammonite king was acknowledging Jephthah’s claim that Israel had taken the land by conquering people who were not Ammonites.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 9-10.

The story of Abimelek, one of Gideon’s sons, is interesting.  Abimelek convinced the people of Shechem to support him as king over Israel.  In particular, he convinced them that it was better for them to have just him, whose mother was one of them, as ruler than to have Gideon’s seventy other sons all exercising some level of authority.  They agreed with his argument and gave him money to hire a fighting force.  Abimelek used that force to kill all of his brothers, although one of them escaped.  Previously reading this I thought that he did this without the people of Shechem realizing what he planned. but today I realized that his argument was that they should give him money to hire men to kill his brothers.  The people of Shechem knew what they were paying for when they gave money to Abimelek and proclaimed him their ruler.  The other thing I had not noticed has to do with Shechem’s rebellion against Abimelek.  I did not make the connection between the people of Shechem robbing travelers nearby with Gaal son of Ebed gaining the confidence of the people.  I always thought that Abimelek was a bad ruler and that was why Shechem rebelled against him.  Instead, it appears that the people of Shechem were not particularly good people and chose banditry as a shortcut to wealth.  God used Abimelek to punish the people of Shechem for their sins, and he used Abimelek’s campaign against the bandits associated with Shechem to punish Abimelek for murdering his brothers.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 7-8.

I debated on writing my initial thoughts about today’s passage because they are about the obvious lessons from this passage.  However, they are important lessons.  The first lesson relates to something I heard someone say when talking about a New Testament passage (I no longer remember either who said it, or what passage they were talking about), but it’s related to today’s passage.  The person said, “If you look at what you feel called by God to do and think, ‘I can do that.’  That isn’t what God is calling you to do.”  He went on to say that God calls us to tasks which we can only accomplish through the grace of God.  God calls us to tasks where we must give credit to Him.  When Gideon saw the army which had assembled in response to his call-to-arms, God told him that if he went into battle with that many men, the people of Israel would think they had won because of their prowess in battle and would not give credit to God for delivering them.

Now, I do not think that the quote I gave above is necessarily accurate…I think that sometimes God does call us to tasks about which we will say, “I can do that.”  In fact, I think to some degree He does so in ways which relate to the second lesson from today’s passage.  After God had reduced Gideon’s army to a mere 300 men, He gave Gideon a sign to reassure him that God would deliver the Midianites into his hands.  When we think about this, it is important to remember that Gideon had only summoned the Israelites to fight because God had given him a sign (actually, multiple signs) that He was calling him.  So, before going into battle, God gave Gideon a sign that God was going to use his plan to defeat the Midianites.  When God calls us, He will give us signs that we are doing His will, and that we are still on track.

As an example of this, almost 25 years ago when my fiancé, now wife, were planning our wedding we received such a sign.  For reasons, we had put our wedding planning on hold.  Then we resumed planning just a few months out and my wife had decided that she wanted a particular venue for our reception.  We spoke with the proprietor, who told us, “I am sorry.  I have no openings for the next two years, except for this specific date.  The couple that had reserved that date just cancelled yesterday.”  The specific date he had open, which had just opened up the day before we spoke to him, was the day which we had chosen for our wedding.  We locked in the date immediately.  As soon as we left, I told my now wife that this was God giving us a sign, that there would be times in our marriage when we would wonder if we had done the right thing in getting married.  God had him say that as a reminder to us that He had blessed our marriage.  If you have any question in your mind that you are doing God’s will, ask Him and He will provide you with a sign.  In this case we had not asked for a sign, just as in today’s passage Gideon had not asked for a sign, but God knew that we, like Gideon here, needed a sign.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 4-6.

Today’s passage begins with, “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord,” a sentiment with which this book begins the account of each of the judges (with maybe one or two exceptions).  The lesson being that again and again we fall away from the Lord and suffer the consequences.  And time after time, God raises up leaders to bring us back to Him.  The song of Deborah and Barak contains some lines about what happens as people turn back to God.
“When the princes in Israel take the lead,
    when the people willingly offer themselves—
    praise the Lord!”
When I read that in the song, it seemed to me to be talking about when those who have been blessed with skills and resources which give them prominence using that prominence to lead people to do God’s will.  It follows that up by commending people in general following their lead and sacrificing their own self-interest to further God’s plans.  Then a little later in the song comes this line:
“When the princes in Israel take the lead,
    when the people willingly offer themselves—
    praise the Lord!”
I am reminded of what happened to bring peace in Northern Ireland, what will have to happen to bring peace between Israel and the Arabs.  Peace came in Northern Ireland when mothers tired of seeing their children die to advance the interests of selfish people who fanned the flames of hate rose up and said, “enough is enough.”  When the Arab mothers have had enough of their children dying to further the interests of selfish people, then there will be peace in the Middle East.  Of course, there is one other point I want to make.  The mothers in Northern Ireland came to the realization that their children were dying for no reason when they turned to God.  There is one more point from the Song of Deborah and Barak that I want to note.  People came from disparate parts of Israel to stand for God.  And those who failed to answer the call had to reflect on why they did not risk themselves for God.

Which brings me to the account of Gideon.  I know I have written about this before, but we often miss what may be the most important part of Gideon’s call.  When the Israelites cried out to God for rescue from the oppression by the Midianites, God sent them a prophet.  The prophet condemned the Israelites for worshiping the gods of the Amorites despite the fact that God had commanded them not to do so.  The prophet did not lead the Israelites against the Midianites.  In fact, there is no further mention of this prophet, but, when God called Gideon to save Israel out of Midian’s hand the first thing Gideon did (after making an offering to God and building an altar to Him) was to destroy his father’s altar to Baal and tear down the accompanying Asherah pole.  There are some interesting things to note in the aftermath.  Gideon was afraid of both how his family and his neighbors would react to him destroying his father’s altar to Baal.  However, even though it was his altar, Gideon’s father defended his actions while Gideon’s neighbors were angered by it.  All of this resulted from a prophet who called Israel to forsake idolatry.

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

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

I struggled with writing this today, but for a different reason than any of those I usually have.  I knew from the second read through what I wanted to write about, but I struggled with how to start.  The writer gives the theme for this book in the latter portion of the second chapter.  As the Israelites continued to conquer the land after the death of Joshua they made deals with the people living in the land, contrary to what God had commanded them.  The writer seems to make a distinction between those peoples living in the land that the Israelites were unable to drive out at that time and those whom they chose to live alongside.  He brings up the failure of the initial generation to break down the altars of the people of the land.  He implies that they did not destroy their altars because they were leaving open the possibility of worshiping those gods, and indeed they did worship the gods of the people whose land they were conquering.  Rather than call the people who remained in the land to turn to God and worship Him, the Israelites joined with them in worshiping their false gods.  The Israelites were unable to drive all of those living in the land out, but instead of having limited dealings with those that did not worship God, they saw economic benefit in taking part in their worship practices.  As the dominant people, the Israelites forced the peoples they did not drive out of the land to serve them as labor for jobs the Israelites did not wish to do.

The situation reminds me of one aspect of the way many in the U.S. deal with illegal immigration.  The Israelites joined the people of the land in the practices which had resulted in God handing the land over the the Israelites.  In the same way, rather than call immigrants to adopt the practices of the U.S., including worship of Christ, all too often we encourage them to continue the practices of their homelands.  Practices which led to the conditions which led these immigrants to leave those lands.  Of course we often make the same mistake with those born and raised in this country who have become immersed in an idolatry that is American in origin.  This failure to call people from the practice of idolatry has led to progressively worse consequences for our society, just as it did for the Israelites.  And just as He did for the Israelites, God will send people to call us back to Him.

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