The first chapters of Judges overlap the book of Joshua and repeat what some believe are inconsistencies in Scripture. Recall that the more reasonable way to look at those accounts is to understand that the Israelites failed to kill those inhabitants as God commanded, and they came back after being defeated. Within a single generation of the conquest, “the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord… and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them.” (2:11-12) God wasn’t kidding when He warned them that if they didn’t destroy these people, they would be thorns in their sides, and their gods snares to the Israelites.
It’s not clear from the account whether some of the tribes even attempted to engage the enemy, and they lived in the midst of them. In time they were subject to the peoples around them instead of those people being subject to them. Those people plundered them. The tribe of Dan was even pushed out of their territory by the people they failed to remove. God had given them the land, but they failed to possess it. Let’s not miss the object lesson for us New Covenant folk: God gives us many great promises by which we can live: again, one of my favorites is “everything we need for life and godliness.” But we can fail to take possession of these promises if we don’t exercise the faith it takes to put them into practice in our lives. The result is defeat for us, just as it was for the people living under God’s Old Covenant.
The source of the problem wasn’t just that these pagan peoples were living among them and influencing them, but also that the generation of the conquest failed to teach their children to know God. Verse 2:10 says that after that generation died, “there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.” It is incredible that that meant so little to them that they failed to teach their children. No wonder remembrance was so important to God in the holy days He established for His people! This is a sobering reminder to parents of the need to teach our children.
The Israelites may have failed to teach their children to love and follow God, but the cultures around them didn’t fail to teach them other values, and their pagan parents didn’t fail to teach them to serve other gods. Yes, they intermarried with the pagan peoples just as God had warned them not to do. We need to accept that God knows the influence our culture is on us: it will impact our values and our thinking. Because its very impact prevents us from perceiving the damage to our devotion to God, we need to take His warnings seriously. That is part of the training we must give our children.
Isn’t it interesting that when they cried out to God in their distress, He gave them a leader? As long as that leader lived, they followed him (or even her, in one case), but then after that leader died they strayed and invoked God’s anger again. What a blessing a leader is! As a democratic society and as Christians valuing the personal relationship with God, we tend to take our leaders for granted. They make a lot more difference than we think. Understanding the importance of a leader, we must recognize that Satan potentially has much to gain by attacking our leaders. We need to pray for them and encourage them regularly. How can you best encourage your leader(s) today?
Their sin entrapped them in a cycle of defeat. Notice that each time they turned back to their sin, they “acted more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them.” That is the nature of sin – it grows more and more foul. Let’s consider this and appreciate sin for the foul and dangerous thing that it is. May we hate it as much as God does! Only He can give us the transformed mind that hates sin as He does; will you seek that from Him?
Judges can be challenging to read because it doesn’t comment on the action. We can bet, though, that each one doing as he saw fit was not a good thing. Although we have likely been conditioned by our postmodern culture to value as a good thing each one doing as he sees fit, in reality fallen human nature makes that an ugly prospect. We see it in Judges, and we see it in our own culture. Since you have recently finished reading the law, see if you can determine what is wrong with the actions of the family in chapter 17.