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“They found Adonibezek there and fought him. He ran away, but they chased him, caught him, and cut off his thumbs and big toes. [He] said, ‘Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up scraps under my table. God has now done to me what I did to them.’ He was taken to Jerusalem, where he died.” (Judges 1:5-7 – GN) • “He took his concubine’s body, cut it into twelve pieces, and sent one piece to each of the twelve tribes of Israel.” (Judges 19:29 – GN)
“The LORD’s servant Joshua son of Nun died at the age of a hundred and ten...That whole generation also died, and the next generation forgot the LORD and what he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:8-10 – GN)
“Whenever the LORD gave Israel a leader, the LORD would help that leader and would save the people from their enemies as long as that leader lived. The LORD would have mercy on them because they groaned under their suffering and oppression. But when the leader died, the people would return to the old ways and behave worse than the previous generation. They would serve and worship other gods, and stubbornly continue their own evil ways. Then the LORD would become angry with Israel and say,
‘This nation has broken the covenant that I commanded their ancestors to keep. Because they have not obeyed me, I will no longer drive out any of the nations that were still in the land when Joshua died. I will use them to find out whether or not these Israelites will follow my ways, as their ancestors did.’ So the LORD allowed these nations to remain in the land; he did not give Joshua victory over them, nor did he drive them out soon after Joshua’s death.” (Judges 2:18-23)
“And so the people of Israel settled down among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. They intermarried with them and worshiped their gods.” (Judges 3:5,6 – GN)
“The people of Israel sinned against the LORD again. Because of this the LORD made King Eglon of Moab stronger than Israel. Eglon joined the Ammonites and the Amalekites; they defeated Israel and captured Jericho, the city of palm trees. The Israelites were subject to Eglon for eighteen years. Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, and he sent someone to free them. This was Ehud, a left-handed man...The people of Israel sent Ehud to King Eglon of Moab with gifts for him. Ehud had made himself a double-edged sword about a foot and a half long. He had it fastened on his right side under his clothes. Then he took the gifts to Eglon, who was a very fat man. (Judges 3:15-17 – GN)
With his left hand Ehud took the sword from his right side and plunged it into the king’s belly. The whole sword went in, handle and all, and the fat covered it up. Ehud did not pull it out of the king’s belly, and it stuck out behind, between his legs.” (Judges 3:21-22 – GN)
“…Sisera, running for his life, headed for the tent of Jael, wife of Heber…Jael stepped out to meet Sisera and said, ‘Come in, sir. Stay here with me. Don’t be afraid.’ So he went with her into her tent. She covered him with a blanket. He said to her, ‘Please, a little water. I’m thirsty.’ She opened a bottle of milk, gave him a drink, and then covered him up again. He then said, ‘Stand at the tent flap. If anyone comes by and asks you, Is there anyone here? tell him, No, not a soul.’ Then while he was fast asleep from exhaustion, Jael wife of Heber took a tent peg and hammer, tiptoed toward him, and drove the tent peg through his temple and all the way into the ground. He convulsed and died.” (Judges 4:17-21)
“Lord, may your friends shine like the rising sun.” - Judges 5:31
“So may all your enemies die like that, O LORD, but may your friends shine like the rising sun!’ And there was peace in the land for forty years” (Judges 5:31 – GN)
“Lord, may all your enemies die with a tent peg driven through their temple. But, may your friends shine like the rising sun.” - Judges 5:31
“Break the teeth of these fierce lions, O God. May they disappear like water draining away; may they be crushed like weeds on a path. May they be like snails that dissolve into slime; may they be like a baby born dead that never sees the light. Before they know it, they are cut down like weeds; in his fierce anger God will blow them away while they are still living. The righteous will be glad when they see sinners punished; they will wade through the blood of the wicked.” (Psalms 58:6-10 – GN)
“Happy are those who pay you back for what you have done to us---who take your babies and smash them against a rock.” (Psalm 137:8,9 – GN)
“LORD, if I argued my case with you, you would prove to be right. Yet I must question you about matters of justice. Why are the wicked so prosperous? Why do dishonest people succeed? You plant them, and they take root; they grow and bear fruit. They always speak well of you, yet they do not really care about you. But, LORD, you know me; you see what I do and how I love you. Drag these evil people away like sheep to be butchered; guard them until it is time for them to be slaughtered… • The LORD said, ‘Jeremiah, if you get tired racing against people, how can you race against horses? If you can't even stand up in open country, how will you manage in the jungle by the Jordan?’” (Jeremiah 12:1-3,5 – GNB)
“Then I said, ‘Lord, you understand. Remember me and help me. Let me have revenge on those who persecute me. Do not be so patient with them that they succeed in killing me…I did not spend my time with other people, laughing and having a good time. In obedience to your orders I stayed by myself and was filled with anger. Why do I keep on suffering? Why are my wounds incurable? Why won’t they heal? Do you intend to disappoint me like a stream that goes dry in the summer?” (Jeremiah 15:15-18 – GNB).
“To this the Lord replied, ‘If you return, I will take you back, and you will be my servant again. If instead of talking nonsense you proclaim a worthwhile message, you will be my prophet again” (Jeremiah 15:19 – GNB).
Gideon • “Once again the people of Israel sinned against the LORD, so he let the people of Midian rule them for seven years. The Midianites were stronger than Israel, and the people of Israel his from them in caves and other safe places in the hills” (Judges 6:1,2 – GN) • “Then the LORD’s angel came to the village of Ophrah and sat under the oak tree that belonged to Joash…His son Gideon was threshing some wheat secretly in a wine press, so that the Midianites would not see him. The LORD’s angel appeared to him there and said, ‘The LORD is with you, brave and mighty man!’
Gideon said to him, ‘If I may ask, sir, why has all this happened to us if the LORD is with us? What happened to all the wonderful things that our fathers told us the LORD used to do---how he brought them out of Egypt? The LORD has abandoned us and left us to the mercy of the Midianites.’
“Then the LORD ordered him, ‘Go with all your great strength and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I myself am sending you.’ Gideon replied, ‘But Lord, how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least important member of my family.’ • The LORD answered, ‘You can do it because I will help you. You will crush the Midianites as easily as if they were only one man.’ Gideon replied, ‘If you are pleased with me, give me some proof that you are really the LORD. Please do not leave until I bring you an offering of food.’ • He said, ‘I will stay until you come back.’ (Judges 6:11-18 – GN)
“So Gideon went into his house and cooked a young goat and used a bushel of flour to make bread without any yeast. He put the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, brought them to the LORD’s angel under the oak tree, and gave them to him. The angel told him, ‘Put the meat and the bread on this rock, and pour the broth over them.’ Gideon did so. Then the LORD’s angel reached out and touched the meat and the bread with the end of the stick he was holding. Fire came out of the rock and burned up the meat and the bread. Then the angel disappeared. When Gideon realized that it was the Angel of the LORD, he cried out, ‘Oh, Sovereign LORD, I’m doomed! I have seen the Angel of the LORD face to face!’ ‘It is all right,’ the LORD replied. ‘Do not be afraid. You will not die.’” (Judges 6:19-23)
“Then Gideon said to God, ‘You say that you have decided to use me to rescue Israel. Well, I am putting some wool on the ground where we thresh the wheat. If in the morning there is dew only on the wool but not on the ground, then I will know that you are going to use me to rescue Israel.’
That is exactly what happened. When Gideon got up early the next morning, he squeezed the wool and wrung enough dew out of it to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, ‘Don’t be angry with me; let me speak just once more. Please let me make one more test with the wool. This time let the wool be dry, and the ground be wet.’ • That night God did that very thing. The next morning the wool was dry, but the ground was wet with dew.” (Judges 6:36-40 – GN)
“It was by faith that Abraham… • “Should I go on? There isn't enough time for me to speak of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. Through faith they fought whole countries and won. They did what was right and received what God had promised.” (Hebrews 11:32,33) • “While Gideon’s men were blowing their trumpets, the LORD made the enemy troops attack each other with their swords” (Judges 7:22 – GN)
“Gideon made an idol from the gold and put it in his hometown, Ophrah. All the Israelites abandoned God and went there to worship the idol. It was a trap for Gideon and his family.” (Judges 8:27 – GN) • “He had seventy sons born to him, for he had many wives. He also had a concubine in Shechem, who gave birth to a son, whom he named Abimelech.” (Judges 8:30-31 – GN)
“After Gideon’s death the people of Israel were unfaithful to God again and worshiped the Baals. They made Baal-of-the-Covenant their god, and no longer served the LORD their God, who had saved them from all their enemies around them” (Judges 8:33 – GN) • Gideon’s son Abimelech – The men of Shechem “gave him seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-of-the-Covenant, and with this money he hired a bunch of worthless scoundrels to join him. He went to his father's house at Ophrah, and there on top of a single stone he killed his seventy brothers, Gideon’s sons.” (Judges 9:4,5 – GN)
“Then Abimelech went to Thebez, surrounded that city, and captured it. There was a strong tower there, and every man and woman in the city, including the leaders, ran to it. They locked themselves in and went up to the roof. When Abimelech came to attack the tower, he went up to the door to set the tower on fire. But a woman threw a millstone down on his head and fractured his skull. Then he quickly called the young man who was carrying his weapons and told him, ‘Draw your sword and kill me. I don't want it said that a woman killed me.’ So the young man ran him through, and he died.” (Judges 9:50-54)
“Again the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight. They worshiped images of Baal and Ashtoreth... Not only this, but they abandoned the Lord and no longer served him at all. So the Lord burned with anger against Israel, and he handed them over to the Philistines and the Ammonites, who began to oppress them that year. For eighteen years they oppressed all the Israelites…The Israelites were in great distress. Finally, they cried out to the Lord, saying, ‘We have sinned against you because we have abandoned you as our God and have served the images of Baal.’
The Lord replied, ‘Did I not rescue you from the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Sidonians, the Amalekites, and the Maonites? When they oppressed you, you cried out to me, and I rescued you. Yet you have abandoned me and served other gods. So I will not rescue you anymore. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen! Let them rescue you in your hour of distress!’ But the Israelites pleaded with the Lord and said, ‘We have sinned. Punish us as you see fit, only rescue us today from our enemies.’ Then the Israelites put aside their foreign gods and served the Lord. And he was grieved by their misery” (Judges 10:6-16 – NLT)
Jephthah • “Jephthah, a brave soldier from Gilead, was the son of a prostitute…” (Judges 11:1 – GN) • “Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. There he attracted a group of worthless men, and they went around with him.” (Judges 11:3) • “Jephthahpromised the LORD: ‘If you will give me victory over the Ammonites, I will burn as an offering the first person that comes out of my house to meet me, when I come back from the victory. I will offer that person to you as a sacrifice.’ So Jephthah crossed the river to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave him victory.” (Judges 11:30-32)
“When Jephthah went back home to Mizpah, there was his daughter coming out to meet him, dancing and playing the tambourine. She was his only child. When he saw her, he tore his clothes in sorrow and said, ‘Oh, my daughter! You are breaking my heart! Why must it be you that causes me pain? I have made a solemn promise to the LORD, and I cannot take it back!’ She told him, ‘If you have made a promise to the LORD, do what you said you would do to me, since the LORD has given you revenge on your enemies, the Ammonites.” (Judges 11:34-36)
“But she asked her father, ‘Do this one thing for me. Leave me alone for two months, so that I can go with my friends to wander in the mountains and grieve that I must die a virgin.’ He told her to go and sent her away for two months. She and her friends went up into the mountains and grieved because she was going to die unmarried and childless. After two months she came back to her father. He did what he had promised the LORD, and she died still a virgin. This was the origin of the custom in Israel that the Israelite women would go out for four days every year to grieve for the daughter of Jephthah of Gilead.” (Judges 11:37-40)
“Should I go on? There isn't enough time for me to speak of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. Through faith they fought whole countries and won. They did what was right and received what God had promised.” (Hebrews 11:32-33 – GN)
“Given the state of morality that is evident in Judges…God had almost nothing positive to work with as he looked at his people…[In Jephthah’s] attitude toward oaths we have a glimmer of integrity, a slender thread out of which God could begin to weave a garment of righteousness and justice. God had to begin with the raw materials that were ready at hand…In the work of character development, one can at least begin to work with a person who stands for something, even though he may be too rigorous and may even be standing for the wrong thing.” – Alden Thompson
Samson • Why would God choose to bless someone with this gift? Why not create Samson as “the kindest person ever”? • R-E-S-P-E-C-T • Each nation had a ‘god’ who ruled in his territory • Yahweh was the God of Israel • Chemosh was the ‘god’ of Moab • “When the king of Moab realized that he was losing the battle, he took seven hundred swordsmen with him and tried to force his way through the enemy lines and escape to the king of Syria, but he failed. So he took his oldest son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him on the city wall as a sacrifice to the god of Moab. The Israelites were terrified and so they drew back from the city and returned to their own country” (2 Kings 3:26,27 – GN).
“Then Samson prayed, ‘Sovereign LORD, please remember me; please, God, give me my strength just this one time more, so that…. • …with this one blow I can get even with the Philistines for putting out my two eyes” (Judges 16:28 – GN) • Hebrews 11 • Anyone else blessed with remarkable talents that blew it?
The Levite and his concubine • “…he and his concubine started on their way, with their servant and two donkeys with pack saddles. It was late in the day when they came near Jebus (that is, Jerusalem), so the servant said to his master, ‘Why don't we stop and spend the night here in this Jebusite city?’ But his master said, ‘We're not going to stop in a city where the people are not Israelites. We’ll pass on by and go a little farther and spend the night at Gibeah or Ramah.’ So they passed by Jebus and continued on their way. It was sunset when they came to Gibeah in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin. They turned off the road to go and spend the night there. They went into town and sat down in the city square, but no one offered to take them home for the night.”
“While they were there, an old man came by at the end of a day's work on the farm. He was originally from the hill country of Ephraim, but he was now living in Gibeah. (The other people there were from the tribe of Benjamin.) The old man noticed the traveler in the city square and asked him, ‘Where do you come from? Where are you going?’ The Levite answered, ‘We have been in Bethlehem in Judah, and now we are on our way home deep in the hill country of Ephraim. No one will put us up for the night, even though we have fodder and straw for our donkeys, as well as bread and wine for my concubine and me and for my servant. We have everything we need.’ The old man said, ‘You are welcome in my home! I’ll take care of you; you don't have to spend the night in the square.’ So he took them home with him and fed their donkeys. His guests washed their feet and had a meal.”
“They were enjoying themselves when all of a sudden some sexual perverts from the town surrounded the house and started beating on the door. They said to the old man, ‘Bring out that man that came home with you! We want to have sex with him!’ But the old man went outside and said to them, ‘No, my friends! Please! Don’t do such an evil, immoral thing! This man is my guest. Look! Here is his concubine and my own virgin daughter. I’ll bring them out now, and you can have them. Do whatever you want to with them. But don’t do such an awful thing to this man!’ But the men would not listen to him. So the Levite took his concubine and put her outside with them. They raped her and abused her all night long and didn’t stop until morning.
“At dawn the woman came and fell down at the door of the old man’s house, where her husband was. She was still there when daylight came. Her husband got up that morning, and when he opened the door to go on his way, he found his concubine lying in front of the house with her hands reaching for the door. He said, ‘Get up. Let’s go.’ But there was no answer. So he put her body across the donkey and started on his way home. When he arrived, he went in the house and got a knife. He took his concubine’s body, cut it into twelve pieces, and sent one piece to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Everyone who saw it said, ‘We have never heard of such a thing! Nothing like this has ever happened since the Israelites left Egypt! We have to do something about this! What will it be?’” (Judges 19:10-30 – GN)
How could God allow this to happen? • What does this story say about God? • Why is this story even in the Bible?
“You got your start in sin at Gibeah— that ancient, unspeakable, shocking sin— And you’ve been at it ever since.” (Hosea 10:9 – The Message) • “When Israel was only a child, I loved him. I called out, ‘My son!’—called him out of Egypt. But when others called him, he ran off and left me. He worshiped the popular sex gods, he played at religion with toy gods. Still, I stuck with him. I led Ephraim. I rescued him from human bondage, But he never acknowledged my help, never admitted that I was the one pulling his wagon, That I lifted him, like a baby, to my cheek, that I bent down to feed him. Now he wants to go back to Egypt or go over to Assyria—anything but return to me! That’s why his cities are unsafe—the murder rate skyrockets and every plan to improve things falls to pieces. My people are hell-bent on leaving me. They pray to god Baal for help. He doesn’t lift a finger to help them. But how can I give up on you, Ephraim? How can I turn you loose, Israel? How can I leave you to be ruined like Admah, devastated like luckless Zeboim? I can’t bear to even think such thoughts. My insides churn in protest. And so I’m not going to act on my anger. I’m not going to destroy Ephraim. And why? Because I am God and not a human. I’m The Holy One and I’m here—in your very midst.” (Hosea 11:1-10 – The Message)
How did God feel? • “My insides churn in protest” • What did God do? • “Still I stuck with him” • Which 2 tribes were left in Jesus’ day? • Judah, Benjamin • The Bible: an inspired textbook of horrible disease and the wonderful healing remedy
Judges - Summary • “There was no king in Israel at that time. Everyone did whatever they pleased” (Judges 21:25 – GN)
Where is God’s Justice? • “We will bring the terrorists to justice.” (George Bush)
“While the Cross was a violent episode, we are not witnessing God’s violence…Good Friday was not the outpouring of God’s violence upon Christ to assuage his own wrath. That day was God’s ‘No!’ to wrath and ‘Yes!’ to love and forgiveness in the face of our violence and wrath.” (Stricken by God?)
God’s justice • Biblically, to "bring justice" does not mean to bring punishment, but to bring healing and reconciliation • Justice means to make things right • Justice is an expression of mercy
