Chapter 7 JUDGES
Things were so full of promise under Joshua. Why ever did Joshua hand over to twelve elders? Didn’t he know that would just cause a power struggle? Didn’t he realize the nations would be pulled twelve ways? Didn’t he realize weak leaders end up with everyone “doing what was right in their own eyes”? The book of Judges is the story of human frailty, weak personalities, the decline of a nation, a lack of purpose and fall to depravity.
Figure 25: 7 times they cycle in Judges
If we add together the all the years the judges ruled, it would come to four-hundred. But the book of Judges only covers two-hundred-years, so these “deliverers” reigned concurrently not consecutively. The land was divided into three by two natural valleys. The North constituted one section while the wide South valley might be regarded as a plane. Joshua used these geological valleys to divide and conquer the land in stages.
With no strong leader to take over, the elders saw the land up for grabs. They stood loosely by the allocations of Moses but that left pockets of land unallocated. Once they were in the land the elders of each tribe was responsible for taking the full allocation of land prescribed. Stronger leaders could have encouraged the whole nation on but the more people laid claim to their little plot the less the enthusiastic they became to help others. So they settled for their bit and left weaker tribes to fend for themselves. They did not drive all the residents out and those tribes would come back to haunt them in a very short time. Besides this there was sibling rivalry. Ephraim and Manasseh thought, because their father was Joseph the important, they should have had more land than they were allotted. They had more than plenty for their size so they were simply told to role their sleeves up and chop down the trees to make more land and not to expect others to do it for them.
Besides sibling rivalry, priests became preoccupied with establishing their priestly towns and making them comfortable. This meant moral and ethical standards were left to decline. The plan was that the Levites, who were to spread evenly over the land in allocated towns, were not to have their own land but to graze on common-land. Charged to be the conscience of the nation by living and expounding the law would have been well and good if the scrolls and ark had not been left in Shiloh. Rather than making the effort to travel there or taking time to check out the scripture, they started pronouncing their own judgements and philosophizing. When the Israeli tribes found foreign girls attractive, the Priests presided over intermarriages. This opened the way to bring other gods and lowering moralities to the nation. Along with wives came the in-laws who taught them much lower standards. Thus the corruption set in. It was left to just seventeen individuals to take over at times of crisis.
Othaniel85, Caleb’s younger brother captured Kiriath and was given Caleb’s Daughter Acsah in marriage. He managed to buy peace with the king of Jericho for forty-years. After this, Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim oppressed the tribe for eight years. The Israelites then cried out to the Lord, and God sent Othniel to deliver them.
Ehud86 was left-handed and managed to get in to the palace and kill the fat king of Moab by concealing an eighteen-inch knife under his cloak. He was the son of Gera the Benjamite and ruled Israel in peace for eighty years.
Shagmar87 managed to kill six-hundred Philistines using an Ox-goad88. Swords were not allowed by the Philistines who had discovered the technology of making iron rather than bronze at the time.
Deborah89 prophesied to Barak, her military leader, that he should go against the Amalekites. But he wouldn’t go unless she went with him. Deborah stands as an example of female leadership in the Bible. She is a woman tribal leader who manifests both military and legal competence. She successfully campaigned against Sisera, the Canaanite general under Jabin King of Hazor. It was Jael, a Kenite woman who actually killed Sisera by dispatching him with a tent peg through the head! Deborah is also one of scripture’s songwriters.
"So may all your enemies perish, O Lord!
But your friends be like the sun
as he rises in his might.
"And the land had rest for forty years. 90
It took two attempts at a fleece to persuade Gideon God really did tell him to go up against the Philistines. Gideon,91 came from a family of Baal worshippers. The emphasis in his story is on his fear. He is portrayed as an untrusting wimp because of his fear. Nevertheless, God turned this weak fearful man from a small tribe into a strong saviour. He was not really a warrior but a very clever strategist. God gave Gideon the plan to defeat the Midianites by reducing his army to three-hundred men chosen from those that lap water like a dog!92 It is here we see the beginnings of the “We want a king” campaign as the men of Israel asked Gideon to rule over them, promising his sons could succeed him on the throne.93 One of his sons, Abimelech liked the idea, tried to become king but failed. Gideon had seventy sons and many wives so it is no wonder there was conflict in his household.
Abimelech94 was the son of Gideon by a concubine in Shechem. He ruled for three years, he was an evil ruler by God’s standards. God sent an evil spirit on Abimelech and the people of Shechem. He attempted to make himself king but failed. He murdered all but one of his seventy brothers. His remaining brother prophesied the parable of trees.
“In accepting inappropriate leadership the cedars of Lebanon have set themselves up to be burned!” 95.
That is precisely what happened. Later the prophet Zechariah will pick up the story and prophesy the burning of these vast forests that Solomon used for building the temple.
Tola96 had a reign of relative quiet. I am not sure why he was in Ephraim’s the hill country. He from the tribe of Issachar so his home should have been much further south. However, he managed to hold off the king of Hazor.
Jair’s97 immense wealth made him the judge of thirty cities, one for each of his sons to rule. Each of his sons owned a donkey which was like owning a Rolls-Royce today. When a band of Eastern Midianites came making their usual harvest-time trouble by stealing the grain, Jair, (and presumably his merry sons), saw them off on their donkeys, and they had no more trouble for twenty-two years.
Eli,98 We will meet this man again in the book of Samuel. He led Israel, based in the tabernacle, for forty-years. He died when he was ninety-eight years old, by falling backward off his chair when he heard that the Ark of the Covenant of God had been captured. God said none of his descendants would ever live long lives again.
Jephthah99 was an illegitimate child and therefore an outcast. He was the son of a prostitute and banished from his family. But when his family needed someone to lead them against the attacking Ammonite king, his family brought him back. Jephthah admirably fought against the Ammonite king who tried to claim the land East of Jordan.100 Jephthah’s recounted to them how, two-hundred-years before, the Israelites had asked them for safe passage through that land, but they refused. So Moses conquered the land. Unfortunately, such a victory came at a great cost in two ways: first, Jephthah had made a rash vow to the Lord in asking for victory which he needed to fulfil, but also the Ephriamite tribe, metaphorically stabbed him in the back by claiming the triumph was theirs and not his. This led to an internal war between tribes.
Ibzan,101 not to be outdone by Jair, also had thirty sons. His ambition for wealth led him to break the covenant law and find thirty wives from surrounding tribes, one for each of his sons. The object of this exercise was to expand his territory and power. He governed for ten years and died in Bethlehem.
Elon102 was a Zebulunite and ruled for ten years Nothing was recorded in his achievements as the Zebulunites were at peace, He was buried in Aijalon.
Abdon103 Also rose to power by wealth. He had forty sons, thirty grandsons and “rode seventy asses”, (presumably not all at once). He brokered a trade deal with the Amalekites and achieved peace. Not surprisingly, Abdon died an old man, and obtained a magnificent burial in Pirathon in Ephraim, the hill country of the Amalekites.
Under the rule of Sampson104 the Israelites had become complacent in their exile. No longer did they cry out in distress to God as in past cycles. Indeed, they were content to be ruled by the Philistines. Nevertheless, God raised up Sampson as a symbol of the salvation that comes with a godly vow. He is born to a barren woman by promise of her vow that he would be dedicated to the Lord. Unfortunately the faithfulness of his parents was not matched by his own. Samson is used by God out of God’s respect to his parents not for himself. Though he was a Nazarite, he broke his vows regularly and in the end became a womaniser and drunkard. The spirit filled Sampson is granted divine strength, the self-sufficient Sampson dies a tragic death. God helped him bring relief from the Philistines by his superhuman strength. Judges are not the answer to Israel’s need for rule and administration, so God raised Samuel who was a prophet priest and Judge.
Samuel105 was also the prophet who anointed the first two kings of Israel under God’s orders. We will meet him again in the book that bears his name. He is known as the last Judge as his two sons ruled concurrently and only served in Beersheba. Samuel travelled the land but his base was the tabernacle at Shiloh. “He was prophet of all Israel from Dan to Beersheba”.
Joel,106 was the first and wicked son of Samuel, Joel like his father Samuel was from the tribe of Ephraim but served Beersheba.
Abijah,107 Samuel’s second and evil son, who also a Judged at Beersheba
So it was that just seventeen people in a population of about two-million acted as deliverers and then only while the Spirit came on them. In English, we call them Judges, they did Judge (verb) but were not Judges (noun). They were deliverers who acted as trouble-shooters—they saved a situation, The only place where the noun is applied in Judges, it refers to God.
Many times the enemies of Israel did bad things to the people, so the Israelites would cry for help. And each time the Lord felt sorry for the people and sent a deliverer to save them from their enemies. But as soon they were delivered they returned to Idolatry. So the Lord became angry with the Israelites, and he said:
"This nation has broken the agreement that I made with their ancestors. They have not listened to me. So I will no longer defeat the nations and clear the way for the Israelites the nations will remain a thorn in their side.108
Most noticeably throughout this book is the cause and effect of the downfall. The Levites lost respect for the Scriptures, so the Spirit of God could not raise up strong leaders. The people lost respect for Levites who spoke without authority and the people looked to other gods to fill the lack. Once again we see the principle, when the word of God is left in Shiloh, those charged with its deliverance to the people simply become opinionated mouthpieces. The final straw came when they deliberately turned to idolatry in chapters-seventeen to twenty-one.
Two Levite priests became the cause of national depravity. There was a man from the North in Ephraim country named Micah who stole one-thousand-one-hundred silver coins from his own mother’s retirement fund. He became frightened when she put a curse the man who had stolen it and gave it back. Mother, who was clearly the doting kind, indulged him by having an idol made out of the silver. It was for him to add to the collection of gods which he displayed as an added tourist attraction to his guest house. A priest living in the Levite town of Bethlehem and serving the people of Dan, hurriedly travelled North to Ephraim to escape a scandal. He stayed overnight in that guest house, got to know the proprietor who offered him an annual sum to become the “priest for all the gods” in his grove.
Meanwhile, back in the land of Dan, leaders who had failed to clear the surrounding area of occupants, travelled North to view a large area of unoccupied land just above Ephraim country. They ‘just so happened’ to lodge in the same house. They convinced the Levite, “You don’t want to be just a priest for this family why not be a priest for the whole tribe for more money.’’ He went with them and setup groves of idols in Dan. That is how the tribe of Dan became an idolatrous tribe. For this God erased them from his book and where twelve-thousand people of each tribe were listed in Revelation, Dan is missing from the list.
When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. 8 Let his days be few; and let another take his office.109
Another Levite, this time serving the tribe of Ephraim, kept concubines in Bethlehem. The suggestion is he was using them in the Temple. What the people were beginning to call the Temple was in fact still only the tabernacle tent which had stood in one place for so long. One concubine ran home and the priest went to bring her back. When the father finally let them go, they started of too late in the day and only travelled as far as the North of Benjamin country. A man gave them bed for the night but a “gay” gang in the city heard and came to rape the Levite. The man, to save himself, said they could have the concubine and the rape was so brutal that she died. The Levite was so angry at his loss of income that he cut the body into twelve pieces and sent one piece to each of the tribes of Israel. For the very first time in Judges all tribes united in horror, raised an army and came to fight the tribe of Benjamin. After the battle only six-hundred men from Benjamin were left alive.
On both these occasions the scandal began in Bethlehem. Bethlehem of Judea is very significant because it is the battleground of several spiritual battles.