Fear No Fear

(All scripture from Lexham English Bible, Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software)

Joshua died at the end of the book named after him. Judges records the period of time between when Joshua died and when the era of kings began in Israel. It was the opportunity for the Israelites to walk out the Law. To use the system God established and taught to them. It is not always inspiring stuff. But it does teach valuable lessons. When they followed God completely, no problems turned into defeats. When they went their own way and relied on their own thinking, problems turned into defeats. As Ephesians paralleled the book of Joshua, Galatians parallels the book of Judges.

The first bit is a recap. The territory of the land of promise was divided among the tribes and they were to go up and possess it. God was fighting for them (Exodus 14:14; Deuteronomy 20:4). They didn’t need to fight and make victory. They needed to be obedient and HIS fighting would give them the victory. So Judah got another tribe to come help them with their territory. Not an auspicious start. They didn’t NEED to help each other. They NEEDED to trust in God.

They went and fought Adoni-Bezek (probably a title, not a name) and although he bolted, they caught up with him. Then they treated him like he treated seventy other kings. They cut off his thumbs – he would never hold a sword again – and cut off his big toes – he would never run away again – and carted him back to Jerusalem, where he ended his life. Adoni-Bezek saw it as God paying him back in kind for what he had himself done.

After this, Judah took Jerusalem and burnt it – they still hadn’t killed all the people or driven them out. It was actually Benjamin’s territory. Like I said, they didn’t drive out the Jebusites. They were there until David’s day. Judah kept going and went to the hill country to battle there. This was Caleb’s territory, and like we saw in Joshua 14, he took it successfully. He drove out the people. He offered his daughter as wife to whomever took Kiriath Sepher (later Debir). Othniel (nephew of Caleb, cousins are NOT forbidden to marry in Leviticus 18) took it and got himself a wife. She urged him to ask her father for a field (land), which he did – this man did well, but he had no drive of his own, no initiative. He was a man of God, and he trusted in God (he took territory from giants, after all), but he never seems to be the instigator. She asked her father for water and Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs. This was a woman with foresight.

The descendants of Joseph went against Luz, took it, and called it Bethel. Manasseh didn’t do well in their territory. Five cities and their daughter villages remained. When they got strong they enslaved them, but didn’t drive them out. God does not condone slavery, so it was a VERY weak compromise with His command that they were attempting. Ephraim failed to drive out the inhabitants of Gezer.

The other tribes did no better. Zebulun failed in two cities. Asher failed in seven. Naphtali failed in two. The Amorites pushed Dan back up into the hills and would not let them on the coastal plain of their inheritance. The Amorites stayed in their three regions, determined to live there. They eventually became slave labourers – as did the cities in Zebulun and Naphtali – but they were not driven out. In all these areas the Israelites lived AMONG the Canaanites, which they had been explicitly told NOT to do (Deuteronomy 7:1-6 & 20:16-18). Perhaps this inability to trust God completely and to choose to let them live was part of the harvest of the seeds of disobedience the Lord noticed in their hearts in Deuteronomy 31:21. They weren’t heeding the Song of Moses which was a witness and a warning to them about this kind of thinking and behaviour (Deuteronomy 32). If they would only trust God and obey Him by doing it His way, then everyone would flee before them and victory – total victory – would have been theirs. It is a good lesson for us and the MANY ways we compromise and let the world into our thinking, lives, and homes. This is the part where we start to see that God GAVE them all the land of the promise, but the Israelites failed to POSSESS the land given.

“And the angel of Yahweh went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up from Egypt, and I brought you to the land that I had promised to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.” (Judges 2:1)

The Angel of the Lord WALKED from Gilgal to Bokim where the elders and people were gathered. Gilgal was where the Israelites spent their first night in the promised land. They erected stones as a memorial to how God supernaturally brought them into the land. They gave offerings to the Lord there. They renewed their covenant there. That is where this Angel of the Lord started. He went from there NOT to Shiloh where the tabernacle was, but to Bokim where the people were. When He starts talking He says I brought you. I had promised. He does not say ‘The Lord says’. Many people – myself included – believe this is a pre-incarnate Jesus Himself. This was serious stuff and much like outside Jericho with Joshua and the burning bush with Moses, He came personally to communicate His message.

The Lord reminded the people that He had brought them up from Egypt. He had made covenant with their forefathers. He had brought them to the land of promise. He had sworn NEVER to break His covenant. They were not to make covenant with the inhabitants of the land. They were to tear down their idols. But they had not done that and God was here to ask them why. Why hadn’t they done it? The agreement they had entered was to do this. If they had, He (God) would have driven out the inhabitants before them. Because THEY broke the covenant, God was not going to continue in it. He would NOT be driving them out. Because of that, they would be thorns in their sides. Their idols would be snares to the Israelites.

And the people wept. They wept and offered sacrifice – which strengthens the idea this was preincarnate Jesus because angels do NOT accept worship. Also, it implies that maybe they had the tabernacle in Bokim and not Shiloh at this time because they would need the altar for sacrificing on. They were sorry (maybe for being caught vs actually repentant). And when Joshua dismissed them (implying that this was a look back, to when Joshua was still alive), they went up to possess the land – each to their own possession.

Joshua did pass away. He was a hundred and ten. The point being made in these two chapters is that the people honoured the Lord while Joshua was alive. As long as Joshua was alive and the elders who had witnessed the great works of the Lord were alive, the people followed the Lord. When that generation died, the next generation arose and these did NOT know the great works that the Lord had done for Israel. This shows a failure of the Israelites to pass on what they’d learned. A failure to USE the memorials to being remembrance of what God had done to the following generations. Whenever we become ignorant or forgetful of our history with Adonai, we’re doomed to the same foolishness. One of the reasons Abraham was chosen by God is that he would teach his children about God (Genesis 18:19).

The Israelites of that new generation served the gods of the Canaanites. They ignored God, bowed to idols and set up poles to those gods. And as the Lord had promised in song (Deuteronomy 32), when they stepped outside of His Blessing and His covenant, they ended up in a bad place. They couldn’t fight effectively when God wasn’t fighting for them. When they were oppressed, they cried out. God in His mercy would give them a judge to lead them. They’d follow. But when the judge died, they’d go back to what they did before – and in many cases they did it worse. This is the pattern of Judges.

First up was Othniel, nephew and son-in-law of Caleb (marrying a cousin was not forbidden – Leviticus 18). The Israelites had forsaken God and worshipped the gods of the Philistines. So they were defenseless when the king of Mesopotamia descended on them. They served him for eight years. God raised up Othniel, who went out to battle and they defeated the king. Josephus writes that Othniel and a small group of men overpowered the king’s bodyguards and killed the king. With Othniel as judge, they had peace 40 years. This shows how much he was a man of God. He kept in tune with the Lord and the people followed his example. Then Othniel died.

The Israelites once more did evil. They turned from God. They walked away from His protection. The king of Moab, Eglon, joined forces with both the Ammonites and Amalekites. They attacked Israel, took possession of the City of Palms. The Israelites served Eglon for eighteen years. The Israelites sent tribute payment to Eglon, who was a VERY fat man. God raised up Ehud, son of Gera, a left-handed man. Ehud brought the tribute this time, and strapped a sword to his right thigh under his cloak.

They delivered the tribute and left, but Ehud went back alone and claimed to have a secret message for King Eglon. The king sent everyone out of the room. Ehud leaned down to speak into his ear, drew his sword, and stabbed him. Ehud left the room, locked it behind him, and booked it. By the time the king’s servants unlocked the doors to investigate, it was all over.

Back home again, Ehud raised the alarm on a ram’s horn trumpet in the hills of Ephraim. The people roused and followed him down. They defeated the king’s forces because God was with them. They struck down ten thousand men and again Israel was free. They stayed free for eighty years.

After Ehud died, God raised up Shamgar, son of Anath. He fought off six hundred Philistines with an ox goad – not the most vicious of weapons and proof God was fighting with Him. This seems to indicate he took over from Ehud instead of being raised as a judge after another separate turning away by the people.

All in all, even when they were disobedient, God was merciful to them. In these chapters we have a recorded 26 years of subservience and 120 of freedom under God’s judges. God’s mercy is always greater than what we deserve.

Summary

Key Players: God, Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar

Key Themes: Covenant, Obedience, Mercy

Key Verse(s): Judges 2:1-4; 3:11, 30-31