Judges

Overview

Judges is the book of the downward spiral. Israel serves God, then forgets Him, then is oppressed, then cries out, then is rescued by a deliverer God raises up — and then does it all again, each cycle worse than the last.

The judges themselves are a mixed lot: a left-handed assassin, a reluctant farmer, a woman who led a nation, a man made of appetite and strength. God uses them anyway, which is much of the point.

Background

The conquest was never finished. Pockets of Canaanites remained, and with them their gods, and Israel intermarried and worshiped where it had been told not to.

There was no central government, no standing army and no king. The last chapters — an idol-making household, a Levite’s butchered concubine, a civil war that nearly wipes out a tribe — show how far a people can fall with no one to say otherwise.

Key themes

• Compromise with the surrounding nations leads to bondage to them.
• God raises up deliverers who do not deserve the role.
• The cycle repeats because the heart problem is never fixed.
• God is patient far past the point anyone else would have stopped.
• Without a king, and without the law kept, everyone does what is right in his own eyes.

Outline

1. Why it happenedChapters 1–2

   The conquest left unfinished, and the cycle explained before it begins.

2. Othniel, Ehud, DeborahChapters 3–5

   A first deliverer, a dagger and a fat king, and a prophetess who sings the victory.

3. GideonChapters 6–8

   A fleece, three hundred men with trumpets and pitchers, and an ephod that became a snare.

4. Abimelech and othersChapters 9–12

   A son who murdered his brothers to be king, then Jephthah and his rash vow.

5. SamsonChapters 13–16

   Set apart before birth, undone by his appetites, and strongest in his death.

6. No king in IsraelChapters 17–21

   Stolen gods, a Levite’s concubine, and a war that nearly ends Benjamin.

Key passages

• Judges 2:10-12 Another generation arose, which knew not the LORD.
• Judges 4:4-9 Deborah sends Barak against Sisera.
• Judges 6:12-16 The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour — said to a man threshing in a winepress.
• Judges 7:7 By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you.
• Judges 11:30-35 Jephthah’s vow, and the daughter who came out to meet him.
• Judges 16:20 He wist not that the LORD was departed from him.
• Judges 16:28-30 Samson’s last prayer, and the house that fell.
• Judges 21:25 Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Christ in Judges

Every judge delivers and every judge dies, and the trouble comes back. The book is an argument for a better deliverer and a better king — one who does not fail, does not compromise, and does not die and leave the people where He found them.

Reading it

• Track the cycle in chapter 2; the rest of the book runs on it.
• Resist making the judges heroes — the text does not.
• Read the last five chapters even though they are grim; they explain why Israel wanted a king.