Here are my thoughts. Mind you, they're not especially insightful or anything. I just jotted down some notes on things that stood out to me and/or bring up questions.
Judges 1:
I'm not a history major, but Judges is definitely a book chock full of history. From the get-go, it's clear that God grants Judah victory over the Canaanites. With God's help, they're able to swipe out 10,000 enemy warriors. I don't know about you, but that's a gargantuan number. It makes me think how much is possible when we are walking in accordance with God's ways.
v.6- The Israelites capture King Adoni-bezek and cut off his thumbs and big toes. First thing that came to mind: Kill Bill. Second: Dang, what a cruel form of torture. In some ways, this can be seen as a worse punishment than death by the sword because while one brings immediate death, the other is just elongating the pain. When I read that King Adoni-bezek had cut off the thumbs and big toes of 70 kings in the past, it suddenly clicked: Now the Israelites (and incidentally, God) is exacting revenge on him by meting out the same punishment. (Any significance in the 70, by the way?)
Lesson learned: Do not mess with God.
v. 8- Judah captures the town of Gaza: Is this the Gaza of the Middle East that we know of today? (Disclaimer: I have limited background on American/World History, seeing as I didn't take a single history class in college...unless you count Chinese Civilization.)
v. 28- It seems only Judah was successful in wiping out their enemies. The remaining tribes 'never drove them out of the land'. However, they force the native inhabitants (of the land they take over) to become their slaves. This is a recurring pattern.
Judges 2:
"Bokim" = weeping
The Israelites fall away from God and worship man-made idols (Baal, Ashtoreth..). They assimilate into their prevailing culture, which reminds me of Lot. We as Christians are called to live in the world, but not be 'of the world.' However, if you look at the way Lot and his family lived, they didn't even move out of Sodom & Gomorrah. They got too comfortable with their non-God-fearing neighbors.
God causes the Israelites to lose battles to their enemies. Even after God gives them judges, do the Israelites show remorse? Nope. When one judge dies, the Israelites just go back to their evil ways. And while it's easy to berate the Israelites (What's wrong with you guys?? Why do you keep messing up?! AGH FRUSTRATION), if we look at our own lives, we tend to do the same thing. Maybe not to such a drastic degree, but still.
God is both passionate and compassionate. He is easily incited to righteous(?) anger when the Israelites choose to willfully disobey him. Yet, he also takes pity on them...like poor little children.
God rescues. The Israelites disobey. God punishes. He rescues again.
And the cycle continues...
[I almost felt like including a: To Be Continued. Stay tuned for the Third installment of Judges!]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Judges 1:6-7
ReplyDeleteA note in my Bible reads that cutting off the thumbs and big toes of a person means that he cannot run quickly or grip a sword guaranteeing that the enemy could never effectively fight again.
Judges 1:8 and 1:21
Verse 8 states that Jerusalem has been put to the sword and set on fire by Judah. Verse 21 states that the Benjamites cannot dislodge the Jebusites in Jerusalem. Different Jerusalems? Different time periods? I'm confused here.
Note: David eventually conquers Jerusalem and he was from the tribe of Judah. That might be what verse 8 means but that's a completely different time period. So still confused.
Judges 1:27-36
Long list of peoples the various Israelite tribes did not drive out. Somewhere in the Torah, God had ordered the Israelites to destroy and drive out all the Canaanite nations in the Promised Land. Not destroying them would thus be disobeying God. We can only speculate why they didn't but we know they made a big mistake. The Canaanites that remain are able to entice Israel away from God as Judges 2 shows us.
Judges 2
Cue foreboding music. This chapter is basically the summary of the cyle Israel follows for the rest of its history each time sliding closer and closer to the point of no return.
By the way, Gaza was one of the five main Philistine cities other than Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron. If the Gaza mentioned in 1:18 is the same Philistine city (as seems likely by its inclusion in a list with two other Philistine cities), then according to Wikipedia, this Gaza was at least in the same area as the Gaza strip of today.
***To Be Continued. Stay tuned for the Third installment of Judges!***
can I just say I got so tripped up on all of the historical stuff that I know this study is going to be immensely difficult for me! And the sad part is I definitely remember learning about the historical stuff in RN 101 last year... but I can't remember anything :/ anyway, here are my thoughts for Judges 1-2, which are by no means justified or backed by scholarly research or commentary. So please feel free to correct me if I'm blatantly off.
ReplyDeleteThe trend that seems to come out is that if you are obedient to God, God blesses you and His favor rests with you. I was reading Judges 1:27-36 and in addition to getting tripped up on names I was wondering why there was so much fail. Then I read Judges 2:6-23, conveniently titled by NIV as "Disobedience and Defeat"... connecting disobedience with defeat. Anyway, I thought it was also interesting in Judges 1:19-21 that Caleb was successful in gaining Hebron. If I recall correctly, Caleb and Joshua were the two spies that went into the promised land and reported affirmatively? At any rate, Caleb is blessed. That verse was also very interesting to me, particularly the iron chariots. It just made me think like... God is doing big things but there is always spiritual opposition as the kingdom of God moves forward... and it literally is as the boundaries are expanding. Not sure if that's what the author of Judges was going for, but that's how I saw it.
I was struck by Judges 1:2 and how it says "I have given the land into their hands" and not "I will give the land into their hands." When God speaks at that moment, He has already given them the land, and everything that happens is just fulfilling what God said.
I don't know if this has to do with anything, but Hebron and Bethel I remember Suzie from Toah Nipi was saying how they were cities of sanctuary (and hence the name of the buildings at Toah Nipi). But then there is so much fighting in those cities in these passages...
Judges 2 reminded me of the importance of teaching children (the next generation) about God. It's sad that the generations after just did not know God. And so, it just makes me think that it is our responsibility when we have kids to be teaching them about God, not just assuming that just because we are Christians, that they will be, too.
These two chapters I also saw a lot of compassion and grace and love on God's part. Which like you said is the cycle of disobedience, punishment, but then always, always rescue. I really like that song "Rescue" by Newsong.
haha, it seems like a serial novel or a soap opera or something as we anticipate the third installment! But anyway, my prayer is that we don't just read the book of Judges as a history, but that we let it touch our lives and transform us!!
ps- are we doing 2 chapters per week??
ReplyDelete