Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / September 28, 2026 - Judges 21 & Proverbs 16:13-16

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September 28, 2026 - Judges 21 & Proverbs 16:13-16 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bible Plan, where you're seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, with God's word lighting the way.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Josiah Smith, lead pastor of Compass South Valley.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Today is Monday, September 28th, 2026.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Judges 21.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now the men of Israel had sworn at Mizbah, no one of us shall give his daughter in marriage to Benjamin.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the people came to Bethel and sat there till evening before God, and they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, O Lord, the God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel that today there should be one tribe lacking in Israel?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the next day the people rose early and built there an altar and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the people of Israel said, Which of all the tribes of Israel did not come up in the assembly to the Lord?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: For they had taken a great oath concerning him who did not come up to the Lord to Mizbah, saying, He shall surely be put to death.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the people of Israel had compassion for Benjamin their brother, and said, One tribe is cut off from Israel this day.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: What shall we do for wives for those who are left?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Since we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them any of our daughters for wives.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that did not come up to the Lord to Mizba?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And behold, no one had come to the camp from Jabesh Gilead to the assembly.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: For when the people were mustered, behold, not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead was there.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the congregation sent twelve thousand of their bravest men there and commanded them, Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead with the edge of the sword, also the women and the little ones.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you shall do.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall devote to destruction.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead four hundred young virgins, who had not known a man by lying with him, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then the whole congregation sent word to the people of Benjamin who were at the rock of Ramon, and proclaimed peace to them, and Benjamin returned at that time, and they gave them the women whom they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh Gilead, but they were not enough for them.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the people had compassion on Benjamin, because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then the elders of the congregation said, What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, There must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin, that a tribe not be blotted out from Israel.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yet we cannot give them wives from our daughters.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: For the people of Israel had sworn, Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So they said, Behold, there is the yearly feast of the Lord at Shiloh, which is north of Bethel, on the east of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebanon.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they commanded the people of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in ambush in the vineyards, and watch.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: If the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards and snatch each man his wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, Grant them graciously to us, because we did not take for each man of them his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the people of Benjamin did so and took their wives, according to their number, from the dancers whom they carried off.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then they went and returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and lived in them.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the people of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and they went out from there every man to his inheritance.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: In those days there was no king in Israel, every one did what was right in his own eyes.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs sixteen, thirteen through sixteen.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Righteous lips are the delight of a king, and he loves him who speaks what is right.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: A king's wrath is a messenger of death, and a wise man will appease it.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the light of a king's face there is life, and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we are rounding off another book of the Bible here on the lamp and light Bible reading plan, finishing off the book of Judges.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are keeping tally, that means that we finished Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and now Judges.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And just to give you a quick recap, there are 50 chapters in Genesis, 40 in Exodus, 27 in Leviticus, 36 in Numbers, 34 in Deuteronomy, 24 in Joshua, and 21 in Judges.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we have finished one, two, three, four, five, six, seven books in two hundred and thirty-two days of reading.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been with us this whole time, congratulations on being hopefully faithful and consistent and uh encouraged along the way.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Judges ends in, of course, a devastating way.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it's it's a disaster of a story, it's a disaster of a nation, you could even say in the nation of Israel.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is right after the the war that was waged against Benjamin Benjamin, and it even starts here in verse one.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: The men of Israel had made this vow, they had sworn at Mizbeth, no one of us shall give his daughter in marriage to Benjamin.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So after this war, after all the carnage had had ceased, they realized that essentially they had killed off the majority of the tribe of Benjamin.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so they they've come to this great concern uh by their own actions, I might add, that the tribe of Benjamin would would cease to exist because there were so few people, and specifically it seems like there's men, but there's not any women because of the wreckage that happened in Judges 20.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they come up with a variety of different plans.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: The first one, I mean, both of the plans, by the way, the two primary plans that we see are sinful, they're morally reprehensible.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: We see here uh that the first plan is they start by asking, okay, who didn't come to the meeting at Mizbah?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who wasn't there?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so someone responds, Behold, no one had come to the camp from Jabesh Gilead, which was in the the land of Gilead.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so they didn't come to the meeting, that they weren't there, they didn't participate in the carnage.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it even says in verse 9, for when they're for when the people were mustered, behold, not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead was there, which by the way is a good thing because now they're they're regretting the actions that they just took in the previous chapter with the war and the the taking of so many lives unnecessarily uh because of their just their response to a horrid situation with the Levite and his concubine.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that was wicked and evil, but the response was also wicked and evil.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so someone, a town, decided they weren't going to be involved in this, and now they're they're being punished as a result of that.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So verse 10 says the congregation sent 12,000 of their bravest men.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love how it says that their bravest men to attack an innocent town.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think think about what was being being said here that their bravest men and commanded them go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead with the edge of the sword, also the women and the little ones.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is what you shall do.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Every male and every woman that has lain with the male, you shall devote to destruction.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead four hundred young virgins who had not known a man by lying with him, and they brought them to the camp at Shilah, which is in the land of Canaan.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they go and they literally take four hundred virgins, young women, that they are intending to give to the tribe of Benjamin, the Benjaminites, that four wives, that so that their tribe won't be wiped off the face of the earth.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, they're they're greatly concerned about that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so 400, I mean, they've already taken lives, they deserced a whole town, took all of their you know, the 400 young virgins, killed everyone else, and and it wasn't enough.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there wasn't as many wives, uh, there wasn't as many women as there was men, and so they have to come up with another plan, and they have to basically go and and kidnap wives from another tribe, from another area in in Israel.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So they go to Shiloh, and by the way, this is during it, it talks about uh how this is during a feast or a festival, a celebration that is intended to be to the Lord.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there's just no regard for the Lord, there's no regard for properly worshiping him.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, so what we see here is this plan that's concocted, go and lie in ambush, verse 20, in the vineyards and watch.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: If the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards and snatch, I mean, literally kidnap each man his wife from the daughters of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we have kidnapping, we have murder, which, and of course, was also kidnapping uh from another surrounding village, the uh the bravest men, 12,000 other bravest men, uh killed all everyone there, took the 400 young women, gave them as wives to the Benjamin Knights, and then we have another plan.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so all this, I mean, you can clearly see it's it's a disaster.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the the ethics, the morality, the of course, even the the focuses, the priority, the the twisted sense of justice, the lack of concern for uh life in general, the the lack of proper treatment of women.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's just so many different things that are clearly so evidently wrong.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is summed up really well by the end of the book, verse 25.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: In those days, there was no king in Israel.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can see that in this chapter, you can see that in the previous chapter, you can see that even in in the Levite hacking up the concubine, sending the 12 pieces throughout uh the nation of Israel.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just it's just a free-for-all.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's ethical chaos, it's uh just moral depravity on full display.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a great summary uh intentionally by the author of Judges.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: In those days, there was no king in Israel, and as a result of a lack of leadership, as a result of a lack of fear of the Lord, they descended just deeper and deeper into their own wickedness, deeper and deeper into their own sin, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, hopefully, that phrase you've you've picked up on, because it's this is the fourth time now in the last few chapters where that phrase is repeated.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So as the spiral gets tighter and tighter, and with the descent gets lower and lower, you you start to see this phrase kind of pop up almost as a kind of a commentary, a note uh that that helps kind of orient us to what's going on.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's no king, there's no leadership.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, all the judges have come and gone, and even the judges failed, many of them pretty egregiously themselves.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so here we're left with no king, no leadership, no fear of the Lord, everyone doing what was right in their own eyes.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is gonna set up the story uh that we're gonna pick up eventually in 1st and 2nd Samuel of ultimately King David and how all of that comes about.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but but this here is where we're left with.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Israel is in dire straits, they're in disarray, their actions, the Lord is kind of just giving them over to their actions, they're facing their own consequences.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Even by the way, the problem that they're trying to solve of this worry that they have of the tribe of Benjamin being wiped off.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's their problem, right?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is the the consequences, the reality of their sin.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so this vow that they made to not give their daughters, I mean, it's it's another rash vow.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me think of uh the vow that was made by Jepha of sacrificing the first thing that came out of his house.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: If he won the war, he did win the war, he won the battle.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was his daughter that was the first thing that came out, and he ultimately ended up sacrificing his daughter.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: He he made a vow that ultimately he should have broken because the vow was rash, it was it was not a proper and good vow.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see here another example of the the people in Israel making a rash vow and deciding to keep a rash, foolish vow uh rather than uh not go through with all of this ridiculous response uh to try to fix the problem that they themselves created.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: These plans, the concoctions, the the the kidnapping, the the murder, the the destruction of of towns.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just it's it's all just again a spiral into chaos.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so no better way to summarize judges than in those days there was no king in Israel.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we transition to Proverbs 16, 13 through 16, the first three Proverbs actually address uh kings or things that are related to kings.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, verse 13 righteous lips are the delight of a king.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So those who speak what is right and good and true, and the king loves him who speaks what is right.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: There, there's a you can feel even a king often would have counselors that would help him decide, that would give him advice and counsel and help him think through different scenarios or different needs, and and so someone who spoke what is right, someone who had righteous lips was a delight to a king.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is somewhat obvious.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And even the next verse, verse 14 a king's wrath is a messenger of death.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when a king was angry and given over to their anger and their wrath, you can see how that would have a ripple effect in a negative way into the kingdom, to those who were underneath the king and who uh were subordinate to the king, but a wise man will appease it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: A wise man will know how to kind of uh assuade the wrath of the king, a wise man will know how to navigate the complexities of a king that perhaps is given over to anger.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And even verse 15 in the light of a king's face, there is life, and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So even the way that a king presented themselves, even uh their, you could even say this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but their emotional state almost uh that was expressed through their face, the light of a king's face, right, could bring a sense of comfort, it could bring a sense of confidence into the citizens of the kingdom.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And his favor, the king's favor, is like the clouds that bring the springs, that bring the spring rain.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we have kind of a juxtaposition.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: The king's wrath is a messenger of death, but a king's favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, we're kind of seeing all all the the negative sides of this spectrum in judges, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, there is no king, uh, but a lot of the judges uh they're given over to wrath, they're given over uh to a lack of righteous lips, they they uh you know are not showing favor to the nation of Israel, they're certainly not being obedient to the Lord in in many cases, and as a result, everyone's doing what's right in their own eyes.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So some interesting Proverbs here to ponder.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then verse 16 of Proverbs 16 says, How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, the Proverbs continue just to reiterate the precious nature of wisdom, the reality that wisdom is something that ought to be pursued and considered as valuable.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, how much better to get wisdom than gold, to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the desire that we have.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's our hope in this podcast is that we'd be pursuing wisdom, that we'd be gaining in knowledge through the fear of the Lord, walking with the Lord, growing it in our love for him, because the wisdom that comes is better than gold.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: How much better to get wisdom than gold.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass bible sv.org.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.