Latest / Reformed Thinking / Judges: When Israel Forgot the Lord | Thomas R. Schreiner

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Judges: When Israel Forgot the Lord | Thomas R. Schreiner · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're digging into a book
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  that's, well, it's pretty difficult.
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  This is part of our Reformed Thinking series.
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  We're tackling the Book of Judges.
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  We are, and you know, a lot of people might know the big
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  stories like Samson or Gideon, but they often skip the rest.
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  Which is a shame because it's so central to the whole biblical
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  story. So our goal for this deep dive
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  is to look at the big picture of judges.
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  We want to see how the book is put together and why it seems,
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  well, almost designed to show the need for a king, a righteous
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  king. That's it.
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  We're going to trace Israel's downward spiral and ask what
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  solution the Bible itself offers for the mess we see.
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  OK, so let's set the scene. We're coming right off the end
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  of the book of Joshua. The conquest is, for the most
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  part, done. Israel is in the land we are.
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  So where does that put them? You know, in relation to that
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  huge promise made to Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant.
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  It's a really good question because the situation is kind of
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  mixed and that's what sets up the whole tragedy of judges.
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  The promise had you could say 3 parts. 1st the promise of a
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  great nation, a seed, Second, the promise of the land of
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  Canaan, and 3rd the promise that through Israel the whole world
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  would be blessed. So by the time we open Judges
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  Chapter 1, what's been checked off the list?
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  Well, the first two parts are physically there.
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  They're big population, a nation and they are living in the land
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  of Canaan. OK.
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  So geographically, demographically, they're about
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  2/3 of the way there. You could look at it that way,
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  yeah, They're settled, they're numerous.
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  They've got their inheritance. So you'd think they're perfectly
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  in position for that third part to be a light to the nation's,
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  to be that vehicle for blessing. That's the logical next step,
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  but The Book of Judges just slams the brakes on that hope.
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  It makes it crystal clear that just being in the land isn't
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  enough to bring that blessing to the world.
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  Why not? What goes wrong?
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  The book is just relentless in showing that their failure is
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  entirely spiritual. It's a systemic refusal to live
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  under Yahweh's rule. I can almost hear someone
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  pushing back on that. Though they might say, well hold
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  on, at the start of judges, they still hadn't driven out all the
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  Canaanites. You could argue their problem
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  was an incomplete military conquest, a political failure.
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  Why does the text insist it's something deeper?
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  That's really the heart of the matter.
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  The problem isn't political or military at its root.
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  Some scholars, Gregory Wong, for instance, he calls the theme of
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  the book progressive deterioration.
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  It's. Aggressive deterioration.
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  He sees Israel just spiraling downwards into, you know, worse
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  and worse apostasy, the oppression they face from other
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  nations. That's God's judgment on their
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  spiritual sickness. It's not the cause of it.
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  So things like having no central government or the tribes not
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  getting along, those are just the symptoms.
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  That's it exactly. The actual disease, the root
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  cause was their failure to submit to the lordship of
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  Yahweh. They already had a king.
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  Their covenant God. Yes, he'd given them their
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  entire legal and governmental structure at Sinai, but they
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  just refused to be ruled by him. It was like they were declaring
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  independence from their own divine king.
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  Yeah. And the the book has that one
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  phrase that just hammers this point home over and over again
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  at the. End.
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  Oh, it does that chilling refrain that perfectly captures
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  the spiritual anarchy. Everyone did what was right in
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  his own eyes. It's there in chapter 17, and
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  then again, like the final word on the matter at the very end of
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  chapter 21, it. Is and when every person just
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  decides for themselves what's right and wrong based on what
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  they feel. I mean, any sense of national
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  unity just falls apart. It's a recipe for total
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  collapse. So let's break that down.
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  How did this doing what feels right actually play out?
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  What were the specific things they were doing?
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  Well, the two big ones were just rampant idolatry and maybe even
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  worse, a complete loss of knowledge about God from one
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  generation to the next. The idolatry part, yeah.
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  The text mentions the bales and the ash troth a lot.
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  It does. Israel kept turning away from
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  the Lord to serve these Canaanite gods.
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  Can you give us a sense of what that actually involved?
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  Why was that so tempting for them?
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  Well, Bell was the Canaanite God of storms and fertility.
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  He was supposed to bring the rain, make the crops grow, make
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  the livestock multiply. So for a nation of new farmers,
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  that's a pretty big A. Huge draw.
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  They look over at their Canaanite neighbors who were
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  performing all these rituals, sometimes a pretty chaotic
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  rituals involving things like ritual prostitution, and they
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  thought, hey, that seems to be working for them.
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  It gets them rain. So it wasn't just about a
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  statue, it was trading the covenant relationship with
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  Yahweh for what felt like a more direct transactional system.
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  We do this, we get rain. You've.
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  Got it. They thought they could
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  manipulate the divine. The Bible uses really strong
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  language here. It says they hoard after other
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  gods. It's a metaphor for spiritual
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  adultery. They were breaking the very
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  first, most basic rule of the covenant.
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  And this spiritual decay, it didn't just stay with the
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  adults. No, and this might be the most
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  heartbreaking part of the whole book.
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  The text says a new generation grew up who did not know the
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  Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.
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  That's just devastating. It points to a total failure of
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  the family of the community. It does.
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  The whole structure given in Deuteronomy was that parents
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  were supposed to constantly teach their children about the
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  law, about the Exodus, about the covenant.
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  But they were too busy with Baal and doing what was right in
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  their own eyes. So the teaching stopped and the
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  kids grew up essentially as pagans.
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  They had no story, no memory of being rescued from Egypt, no
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  real reason to obey Yahweh. Which brings us to that summary
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  of their state you mentioned earlier.
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  Yeah, they were in the land, but not in the Lord.
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  They had the geography, but not the devotion.
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  They were supposed to be this agent of blessing for the world,
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  but instead they just look like everyone else.
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  They attracted judgment, not blessing.
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  This really sets the stage for the whole cycle we see in the
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  book. Then the sin, the judgment, the
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  crying out, the deliverance. It's the repeating pattern that
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  gives the book its shape. Israel sins.
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  God allows them to be oppressed. They cry out for help.
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  And then in his mercy, God sends a judge, a deliverer.
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  But it never sticks. It never sticks.
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  As soon as the judge dies, the people go right back to their
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  old ways and the whole cycle starts over again.
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  The source material is really clear, though, that these judges
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  are sent by God. They are saviors.
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  Their victories are a sign of God's grace.
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  Oh, absolutely, they are sign of grace.
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  But the whole point of the narrative is to show that the
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  judges were not a permanent fix for Israel's problem.
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  Because the problem was spiritual, not just military.
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  Right. The judges could deal with the
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  symptom, the foreign oppression, for a while.
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  They could bring peace for a few years, but they couldn't cure
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  the disease in the people's hearts, the stubbornness, the
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  defiance. You're like a temporary patch on
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  a deep wound. A very temporary patch, and the
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  fact that the judges themselves were often deeply flawed people
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  just highlights that the whole system, the whole office of the
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  judge, wasn't enough to bring about real, lasting salvation
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  for the nation. That's a great point.
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  The stories often seem to go out of their way to show us how
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  unlikely these saviors were. It's like the author wants to
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  make sure we know it was God's hand at work, not human
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  greatness. The author uses irony and
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  surprise all the time to make that very point, to show that
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  God's plans were happening in spite of the people he was
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  using. So you have someone like Ehud.
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  Ehud. Yeah, the guy who takes out the
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  Moabite king Eglon. The text makes a point of
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  telling us he was left-handed, which was often seen as a
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  weakness or a defect. But that's how he gets the
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  hidden dagger past the guards. And then there's Deborah.
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  A woman leading Israel, which was highly unusual in that
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  culture. And the final victory doesn't
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  even go to her general Barack. It goes to jail.
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  A non Israelite woman with a tent.
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  It's a way of making sure God gets all the credit.
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  It is, and then you get to Gideon, maybe the best example
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  of an unlikely hero. He's from the weakest clan,
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  calls himself the least in his family.
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  He's hiding in a winepress when the Angel of the Lord finds him.
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  He's scared. He's reluctant.
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  He keeps asking for signs. You know the famous story with
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  the fleece? So when he wins, it's obvious it
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  wasn't him, especially after God shrinks his army down to just
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  300 men. And Jephta, too, the son of a
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  prostitute, an outcast who becomes a warlord, and then he's
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  begged to come back and save everyone.
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  It all shows God's power, but it also prepares us for the fact
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  that these saviors are, well, they're going to have some major
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  problems. Let's get into those problems
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  because they really drive home why a temporary leader was never
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  going to be the answer. Let's start with Gideon again.
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  He has that amazing moment where he refuses to be king.
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  It's such a high point in the book.
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  The people come to him and say rule over us, you and your son
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  and your grandson. And he gives the perfect
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  theological answer. The Lord will rule over you.
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  It sounds like he gets it. It sounds like it, but then in
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  the very next breath he undoes it all.
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  He declines the title of king, but then he immediately starts
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  acting like one. Also, he demands all the gold,
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  earrings and loot from the battle and uses it to make a
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  golden ephod. Which is a priestly garment,
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  something he had no right to make.
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  No right at all. And the text says all of Israel
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  hoard after it. This object made from the spoils
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  of a holy war became an idol in his own hometown.
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  It just goes to show that even a great deliverer could
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  immediately lead the people back into idolatry because of his
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  own, I don't know, his own ego or bad judgement.
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  So he proved he wasn't fit for that kind of permanent,
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  righteous leadership. Not at all.
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  And Jeff, though his flaw is maybe even more horrifying.
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  It's this blend of devotion to God with Pagan ideas.
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  Jeff the story is such a tragedy.
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  It all centers on this rash vow he makes before he goes into
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  battle. He promises God that if he wins,
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  he'll sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house to
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  greet him when he gets back. Which is just That's not how
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  you're supposed to approach Yahweh.
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  That sounds like a bargain you'd try to make with a Pagan God.
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  Completely rooted in a Canaanite worldview, trying to bribe or
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  coerce God instead of trusting in his covenant promises.
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  And the first thing to greet him is.
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  His daughter, his only child. Now people debate whether he
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  actually killed her or just dedicated her to a life of
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  service, but the plain sense of the texture really suggests he
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  went through with. It a human sacrifice.
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  A human sacrifice. It's a total violation of God's
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  law and it shows how messed up even the Savior's were.
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  A judge chosen by God uses a Pagan practice that ends up
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  destroying his own family. Which brings us to Samson.
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  He feels different from the others.
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  It's like his whole life is a living parable of Israel's
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  story. That's a great way to put it.
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  His life is a symbol of Israel's calling and Israel's failure.
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  He was set apart from birth as a not to right.
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  With very specific rules. No wine or grapes, no haircuts
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  and no touching dead bodies. And the text goes out of its way
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  to repeat those rules three times in chapter 13.
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  It's underlining how special his calling was.
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  He was supposed to be completely dedicated to God.
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  And on top of that, he gets this supernatural strength.
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  The Spirit of the Lord rushes upon him.
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  He has the calling, he has the power, and yet it's all wasted
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  because of his own selfish appetites.
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  His downfall is his attraction to foreign women.
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  First the Philistine woman from Timna, then a prostitute, then
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  Delilah. And the parallel is intentional
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  and obvious. Samson falls for foreign women.
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  Just like Israel falls for foreign gods, his choices are
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  all about him, he tells his parents.
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  Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.
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  It's that same theme again. And he just systematically
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  breaks every one of his Nazarite vows.
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  All of them. He touches the deadline carcass
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  to get honey. He goes to a wedding feast where
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  there would have been wine and of course the big one.
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  He tells Delilah the secret of his hair and she has it cut.
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  And when the covenant vow is broken, the power is gone.
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  His strength, which was a sign of the Spirit's presence, leaves
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  him. He loses his strength and he
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  loses his sight. He literally becomes a picture
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  of Israel. He really does.
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  Israel was called to be wholly set apart, but they broke their
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  vows, they lusted after idols, and they ended up becoming blind
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  slaves to their enemies, the Philistines.
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  Samson grinding grain in a Philistine prison, Blind and
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  powerless is Israel. It's such a bleak picture, but
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  even there, at the lowest point, the narrator gives us this tiny
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  little sliver of hope. It's one of the most powerful
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  lines in the book, I think. After his hair is cut and he's
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  captured, Judges 16.22 just quietly says, But the hair of
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  his head began to grow again. Even though Samson and Israel
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  had been unfaithful, God's faithfulness hadn't run out.
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  It's this tiny hint that God isn't finished with him and he
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  isn't finished with Israel. Restoration is still possible.
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  And that little bit of hope is what carries us into the final
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  section of the book, chapter 17 to 21, and while things get even
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  darker. They get so much darker.
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  This whole section is not just an appendix.
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  It's the author's final thundering argument for why a
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  king is desperately needed. It's meant to show the shocking
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  extent of the evil in Israel when there's no leadership.
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  It moves from the failure of individuals to the total moral
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  collapse of the society. Right.
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  It starts with the story of a man named Micah and his personal
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  idol. Story that sounds a lot like
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  Gideon's failure, actually. It does.
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  Micah steals a bunch of silver from his mom, then he gives it
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  back and she says she's consecrating it to the Lord to
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  make an idol. It's the same twisted logic as
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  Gideon's Ephod using things for Yahweh to make things that
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  Yahweh hates. And he sets up his own little
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  private religion. He does.
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  He makes one of his sons a priest, which is totally against
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  the law, and then when a traveling Levite wanders by, he
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  hires him for 10 pieces of silver and a new set of clothes.
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  He thinks having a real Levite will be like a good luck charm.
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  Yeah, he says. Now I know the Lord will prosper
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  me. It's just reducing religion to a
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  transaction to a personal convenience.
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  It's the ultimate what is right in my own eyes.
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  And this rot just gets worse. It spreads to an entire tribe,
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  the tribe of Dan. The Denites can't conquer their
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  own territory, so they go looking for an easier target and
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  they find this quiet, peaceful town called Lashish.
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  And instead of following the rules of warfare and
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  Deuteronomy, you know, offering peace first.
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  They just attack. They just wipe them out.
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  It's brutal and vicious and on the way there they stop by
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  Micah's house and steal his idols and kidnap his hired
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  priest to come work for them. So you have an entire tribe now
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  organized around stolen idols and violence.
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  It's a terrifying picture and the author drops this little
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  detail. And that is just, it's
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  devastating. The Levite priest they hire,
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  he's the great grandson of Moses himself, the direct descendant
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  of the man who got the law on Sinai, is now the paid priest
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  for a band of thugs worshipping a stolen idol.
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  It shows that even the most sacred institutions had
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  completely broken. Down.
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  If we think it can't get any worse, it does with the story
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  from Gibia. Gibia is the absolute bottom.
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  The story is deliberately written to remind the reader of
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  the wickedest story in the Bible up to that point, Sodom and
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  Gomorrah. So you have a Levite traveling
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  with his concubine, and they need a place to stay in Gibia, a
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  town in the tribe of Benjamin. And just like in Sodom, no one
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  will take them in except for one old man who is an outsider
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  himself. And then the men of the city
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  surround the house. And they demand the Levite be
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  brought out so they can rape him.
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  It's the exact same pattern as Sodom, but this time it's not a
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  Pagan city, it's a town of Israelites.
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  And the Levites response is just as horrifying.
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  He throws his concubine out to the mob to save himself.
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  An act of unbelievable cruelty and cowardice.
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  She's abused all night and dies on the doorstep and this man who
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  should represent the law carves up her body and sends the pieces
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  to the 12 tribes to call them to.
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  War, the horror of it, is just. It's hard to read.
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  It is, and when the other tribes find out, they demand that
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  Benjamin hand over the guilty men.
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  But they refuse. They choose tribal loyalty over
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  God's justice. They decide to protect their
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  own, even though their own committed this monstrous act.
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  And that leads to a brutal civil war.
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  A war that almost wipes out the entire tribe of Benjamin.
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  Almost completely. It's a terrifying picture of
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  what happens when a nation turns its back on Yahweh entirely.
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  But then, even in their attempt to fix the problem, they make it
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  worse. They realize they can't let a
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  tribe disappear, so they have to find wives for the few 100
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  Benjamite men who survived. But they'd all sworn an oath not
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  to give their own daughters. So they come up with these human
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  devices, these schemes. First they attack another
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  Israelite town that didn't show up for the war, kill everyone
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  except the young virgin women, and give them to the Benjamites.
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  More murder and abduction. And when that's not enough, they
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  tell the rest of the Benjamites to go hide in the vineyards and
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  kidnap girls who come out to dance at a festival in Shiloh.
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  It's just one horrific self-made solution after another.
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  And this whole ugly, violent, chaotic section is designed to
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  scream. One thing the need for
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  leadership, the need for a king. That's it.
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  The political chaos is the final, undeniable symptom of the
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  spiritual disease, and the author makes it impossible to
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  miss by repeating that phrase four times in these last few
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  chapters. In those days, there was no king
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  in Israel. And it's always pure to the
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  chaos. There was no king, so Micah made
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  an idol. There was no king, so the
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  Danites took what they wanted. There was no king, and everyone
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  did what was right in his own eyes.
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  It's not just a historical note, it's the author's diagnosis of
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  the problem. It's a theological argument.
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  The author is looking at this history and concluding that the
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  only way to fix this is for Yahweh's rule to be mediated
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  through a human king who will actually enforce God's law.
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  And the biblical story immediately picks up on that
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  threat. Immediately right after judges
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  comes the book of Ruth which is like the anti judges.
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  It's a story of covenant faithfulness set during the time
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  of the judges. And how does it end with?
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  A genealogy. Royal genealogy.
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  It promises a future king from the line of Boaz, who is the
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  great grandfather of David. Which leads his right into one
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  until he's Samuel and the coming of the monarchy.
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  Exactly. We see the failed kingship of
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  Saul and then the rise of David. And David's reign looks like the
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  answer. He unifies the nation, he brings
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  victory. And in second, in Samuel 7, God
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  promises that David's dynasty, his throne, will last forever.
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  It seems like the problem is solved.
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  The chaos of judges is over. David is the king they needed.
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  He is the immediate historical answer.
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  But the Bible doesn't let us stop there.
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  Why not? Because even David, this man
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  after God's own heart, he has the same basic flaw as the
• 18:30
  Judges. He does what is right in his own
• 18:32
  eyes. With Bathsheba and Uriah, he's
• 18:35
  driven by selfish desire. He commits adultery and murder.
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  He's a great king, but he's a flawed, sinful man.
• 18:43
  He can't be the final answer to the deep spiritual problem.
• 18:46
  So the story is still pointing forward.
• 18:49
  It's looking for a king who is even greater than David.
• 18:52
  That's right, the ultimate solution has to be a king who is
• 18:55
  not only righteous himself, but who can actually change the
• 18:58
  hearts of his people. A king who doesn't just manage
• 19:01
  the sin, but defeats it. Which is where the story finds
• 19:04
  its final fulfillment. In the reign of Jesus the
• 19:06
  Christ, He is the true King that Israel and the whole world
• 19:10
  needed. And this connects all the way
• 19:11
  back to the very beginning of the Bible.
• 19:13
  It does. It's the fulfillment of that
• 19:15
  promise in Genesis 3 that the offspring of the woman would
• 19:18
  come and crush the head of the serpent.
• 19:20
  Jesus is that promised offspring, that perfect king.
• 19:23
  The judges failed because they were human and couldn't fix the
• 19:26
  spiritual problem. Christ succeeds because he is
• 19:30
  God and He can. So the Book of Judges isn't just
• 19:33
  a collection of old war stories, it's a carefully constructed
• 19:36
  argument designed to create this, this desperation for a
• 19:40
  real king, a need that only Christ can fill.
• 19:43
  That's it. The failures of Gideon,
• 19:44
  Jephthah, Samson, they all show the uselessness of human
• 19:48
  solutions for a spiritual disease.
• 19:50
  They're all signposts pointing away from themselves and toward
• 19:53
  the one true King who was to come.
• 19:55
  So if we were to wrap up this deep dive, the main take away is
• 19:58
  that Judges shows us that temporary human saviors can't
• 20:01
  fix a deep spiritual problem like apostasy and self rule.
• 20:05
  Right. Israel didn't just need a better
• 20:06
  general, they needed a righteous eternal to conquer the chaos in
• 20:10
  their own hearts. The book is really a warning
• 20:12
  about what happens when people are left to their own devices,
• 20:15
  even religious people, without submitting to God's rule.
• 20:18
  It is once they got comfortable in the land, once life was
• 20:21
  secure, they immediately traded their devotion to God for the
• 20:25
  comfort of just doing what everyone else was doing.
• 20:27
  That pattern feels uncomfortably familiar, the way they slid into
• 20:32
  spiritual decay as soon as things got easy.
• 20:35
  And that really raises a question for us to think about,
• 20:37
  doesn't it? How does Israel's pattern of
• 20:39
  decline right after being delivered shed light on the
• 20:42
  temptation we all face today, the temptation to substitute
• 20:46
  real covenant devotion to God for whatever seems right in our
• 20:49
  own eyes, especially when life is good and the pressure is off?
• 20:52
  That's a good place to leave it. Israel's problem then is really
• 20:55
  the human problem now, the desire for self rule over the
• 20:58
  revealed rule of Yahweh.