Day 18: Judges 3:28 – Judges 15:12

Judges. Not the best of times for the Israelites. We touched on this yesterday, but here's the basic plot of Judges. The Israelites do evil in the eyes of the Lord and serve other gods. God punishes them by handing them over to ________ who enslaves and/or oppresses them. Israelites cry out to God for help. God sends ____ judge to save them. While the judge lives, Israelites live in peace and (most likely) don't serve other gods. Until the judge dies. And repeat. But with each repetition, the Israelites rebel even worse against God and the judges start becoming less and less admirable.

I was initially planning to highlight some of the cooler judges for my post, but I think I'm going to go a different route with this blog after talking to my roommate, Steve. Here are the main judges we read about today: Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, and Sampson. There's quite a few other ones mentioned too. One of the more tragic stories is Jepthah, the judge who makes a rash vow to the Lord that he'll sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house when he returns. It's his daughter, and he can't break a vow to the Lord. So sad.

Deborah rules. In fact, women rule in the book of Judges. First off you have Deborah who leads Israel for many years. She leads the army into battle and holds court to settle disputes among the Israelites. Then you've got Jael who kills Jaban, the king of Canaan who had oppressed the Israelites. You've also got random unnamed women who drops a millstone on the head of Abimelek and strikes what would have been the fatal blow had he not acted quickly to have his armor bearer finish him off so they can't say a woman killed him (quite the sexist, he was).

One of the biggest take aways for me with the story of Gideon is that God likes to use us in our weaknesses so that when He accomplishes something great, there's no way for us to take the credit. He basically chose the weakest, least important guy in Israel to lead the smallest army ever in battle.

Here's the big theological debate of the day that I'd love to hear your opinion on: who is the Angel of the Lord? It seems that most of the people who encounter the Angel of the Lord come away with the understanding that they'd just seen and interacted with God. After his encounter, Gideon says, “Ah, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!” Manoah, Sampson's father says, “We are doomed to die! We have seen God!” Also, when Manoah asks the Angel of the Lord his name, he responds, “Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding.” So it seems that an encounter with the Angel of the Lord is an encounter with God, Himself. But since God told Moses that no one could see His face and live, does this mean that they encountered a pre-incarnate version of Jesus? What do you think?

Also, did you realize that Gideon, after insisting that he wouldn't become their king because God is their King, makes a golden ephod that all the Israelites proceed to worship? Most of the judges ended up having some serious flaws.

Then we have the Incredible Hulk, er, I mean, Sampson. Sampson is an interesting case study because there's really not much in his character to admire. He's filled with a desire for revenge, and I think he's possibly a sex addict. But he does flip out and kill a lot of the Philistines. When the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him, he has some ridiculous strength and he helps the Israelites a lot in their struggle against the Philistines.

Here's your Bible quiz of the day...who was the first king of Israel? I'll confirm the answer tomorrow.

Also, today we read about “Shibboleth.” Thank you President Bartlett for teaching me this Bible story.

Tomorrow's reading is Judges 15:13 through I Samuel 2:29.

Peace.