Old Testament Study -
Judges
- +++
- Our study
- of the
- th book of the Bible,
Judges
which details the cycle of ups and downs the Israelites entered after the death of Joshua
Now fully established in the promised land, the Israelites again stray from God and worship idols and pagan deities, only for military & spiritual leaders called
judges
to arise and deliver them. Once the judge dies, Israel returns to its idolatry until another judge saves them.
- Discussion Questions
- Judges 2:6-23
In v. 10, how is that a generation can arise that does not know the Lord?
The Israelite generation that lives with Joshua had the responsibility of teaching its children about God, as we read in multiple places, like when Moses instructed them to teach their children the Law, and when Joshua commanded 12 memorial stones to be set up after they crossed the Jordan River.
So that generation became lackadaisical (carelessly lazy) in teaching, but also they themselves started serving other gods, and by serving other gods, they themselves forgot the Lord, even though they “knew” about Him.
This reminds us that knowing God is not just knowing Scripture, but actually living it. That’s why we stressed a couple weeks ago that our responsibility for teaching new generations our Faith requires both literally teaching it AND living it.
What/Who are Baal & Ashtoreths?
Baal is a Canaanite god and Ashtoreth is a Canaanite goddess. Worship for Baal is particularly infamous for
“temple prostitution and sexual immorality, as well as human sacrifices—specifically child sacrifice.”
Who are the judges “the Lord raised up”
They were more like military leaders than a traditional judge, although they would judge legal cases between the Israelites too. They were not necessarily on Moses’s level of authority, but also above tribal leaders, in-between the two.
V. 22 makes it seem as if God tests us, but we have read something different in James 1:13. So why does God leave those nations among the Israelites?
James 1:13
“Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone”
As we have covered, and as read in James 1:14, and as we will continue to remind ourselves, temptations arise from our own evil desires. But in this case, Israel was pleading to be saved from these nations that oppressed them.
Why were they not then entirely removed?
To paraphrase St. Isaac of Nineveh,
some of humanity’s petitions are granted by God right away, and that’s because it’s something no man can be saved from, which is consistent with what we read in
1 Corinthians 10:13
There are, however, some petitions God withholds from us, and on certain occasions, He permits us to be tempted, that this trial may cause us to draw nearer to God, and that so we have the experience of dealing with temptations.
How can a trial/temptation drive us closer to God you may ask? For when a temptation arises, you can either defeat it through power of Christ and His Cross, meaning you throw yourself into prayer, or sign The Cross, or rebuke the temptation in the name of Jesus Christ,
Or…. you can fall into the temptation and sin, which will humble you, cause you to repent, and thus prepare you for the next temptation which will inevitably come! St. James tells us this in
James 1:2-4
So the Lord leaves the nations for this reason, and also because He is the lover of all mankind, and the Gentiles receive that love too, which the Israelites should have learned front too, so that Christ’s (and His apostles) love and ministry to the Gentiles would not come off as foreign!
Judges 3:1-11
Doesn't V.2 disagree with what we talked about why the nations were allowed to remain?
No, the nations being left DID allow the Israelites to learn war, but there are 2 types of war: physical and spiritual warfare.
Our war against the nations among is a spiritual warfare against evil and sin among us, as we read in
Ephesians 6:12
, “Because your fight has not been with flesh and blood, but with Principalities and The Rulers and The Powers of this dark world and with wicked spirits which are under Heaven.”
Why did we read about Othniel?
- Going back to
Judges 2:16-19
, Othniel is the first example of that cycle, and the Israelites are now fully in it. From this point on, Israel will pretty much always be at physical war with the nations around them in some capacity or another, with periods of peace here and there.
This is where the notion seeps into the Israelites that their future Messiah would be a war-lord who would finally deliver them from all the Gentile nations around them. They would cry out to the Lord, and God would raise up a judge to save them from physical oppression.
But when Christ begins His ministry, and He preaches being humble, non-materialistic, to pray and love your enemies, and that His kingdom is not of this world, the Jews & Pharisees reject Him, and their misunderstanding comes largely in part from this cycle of Judges..
- Judges 17 & 19
After reading both, these are the questions for both chapters in order.
- Judges
- 17
What are we taught from Micah’s idolatry, in accordance with V.6?
Firstly, what Micah did was make an idol, and then make his own son a “priest” to serve his idol and its shrine (i.e. pagan altar). Later he met a Levite from the land of Judah and made him the priest, thinking that because he was a Levite, God would be happy with him for making him the priest.
Micah’s example demonstrates that people can have religious language but abandon obedience. Micah believes he is honoring God, yet creates idols and appoints a priest outside the Law. That teaches us that:
error often appears under the appearance of piety (holy living),
and that sincerity alone does not make worship true.
Good intentions do not justify wrong-doing and straying from the order that God has placed! This is consistent with what verse 6 says, that everyone
“did what was right in their own eyes”
For us today, we see that with so many preachers popping up for themselves and leading “churches”. There are over 45,000+ denominations of Christianity because we have not listened to Christ, and especially His words in
- Luke 10:16
to the disciples
“Whoever listens to you listens to Me; whoever rejects you rejects Me; but whoever rejects Me rejects Him Who sent Me.”
On instagram/youtube/tiktok, these random preachers that come across our feed fall into the same error as Micah; they have good intentions, but are outside of God’s established order, and that leads to a corrupt faith. This is without even going into the fact that these preachers have a false doctrine.
We have to pray for them, that God leads them to His true Church, so that they worship God in truth. To our shame, these people often have the zeal we should have, but are just misguided. Many of them do end up in the True Church, and become diligent workers in Christ’s field!
- Judges 19
What are we to learn from the events of this chapter?
That everyone doing “what was right in their own eyes” DID truly lead to moral corruption and filth, as we see with the woman being raped and killed by the homosexual men.
Like how we said before the flood that mankind had become very wicked, imagine things of this nature going on then. But this is happening while the Law is in effect, and after the Israelites had entered the promise land, which now confirms to us the miserable state of affairs the Israelites are in yet again.
Something so evil is recorded in Scripture to warn us that mankind will end up like this when they abandon God. It should move us to truly hate sin. It reminds us to have shame both as individuals AND as a community, because the shame that the master of the house had did not prevent the community from engaging in this sin, just as we saw with Lot in Sod. & Gom.
And lastly, it should teach us to pray for the world that still experiences these things today, and work to prevent it from happening.
So our takeaway from Micah’s idolatry is that we need to be living in the Church, learning from it and being governed by it. Our takeaway from the abuse of this woman is that being godless leads to moral chaos.
The woman, faithful to her husband, still returns to him before dying at the doorstep, and the man, faithful to his wife and understanding that this happened against her will, was still willing to take her back home.
He then cuts up the woman into 12 pieces to move the Israelites tribes to avenge this crime, which they do in the next chapter, where they all assemble and go to war against the tribe of Benjamin, where this happened.
This concludes the book of Judges, in which we skipped over the account of all the judges, except for Othniel. The most notable judges was Samson, who is known for being the physically strongest man ever, and whose strength lied in his long hair that had never been cut.
So we can see that this period of Judges was unstable, but when Israel would repent and cry out to the Lord, the Judges that God raised up ALWAYS brought them peace and prosperity.