'And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and
served Baalim; 12. And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers,
which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods,
of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed
themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. 13. And they
forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. 14. And the anger of
the Lord was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands
of spoilers that spoiled them, and He sold them into the hands of their
enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before
their enemies. 15. Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the Lord
was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had
sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed. 16. Nevertheless the
Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those
that spoiled them. 17. And yet they would not hearken unto their
judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves
unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers
walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so.
18. And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the
judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days
of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings, by
reason of them that oppressed them, and vexed them. 19. And it came to
pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted
themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve
them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings,
nor from their stubborn way. 20. And the anger of the Lord was hot
against Israel; and He said, Because that this people hath transgressed
My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened
unto My voice; 21. I also will not henceforth drive out any from before
them of the nations which Joshua left when he died: 22. That through
them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the Lord, to
walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not. 23. Therefore the
Lord left those nations, without driving them out hastily; neither
delivered He them into the hand of Joshua.'--JUDGES ii. 11-23.
This passage sums up the Book of Judges, and also the history of Israel
for over four hundred years. Like the overture of an oratorio, it
sounds the main themes of the story which follows. That story has four
chapters, repeated with dreary monotony over and over again. They are:
Relapse into idolatry, retribution, respite and deliverance, and brief
return to God. The last of these phases soon passes into fresh relapse,
and then the old round is gone all over again, as regularly as the
white and red lights and the darkness reappear in a revolving
lighthouse lantern, or the figures recur in a circulating decimal
fraction. That sad phrase which begins this lesson, 'The children of
Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,' is repeated at the beginning
of each new record of apostacy, on which duly follow, as outlined here,
the oppression by the enemy, the raising up of a deliverer, the gleam
of brightness which dies with him, and then, _da capo_, 'the children
of Israel did evil,' and all the rest as before. The names change, but
the incidents are the same. There is something extremely impressive in
this uniformity of the plan of the book, which thus sets in so strong
light the persistence through generations of the same bad strain in the
nation's blood, and the unwearying patience of God. The story of these
successive recurrences of the same sequence of events occupies the book
to the end of chapter xvi., and the remainder of it is taken up with
two wild stories deeply stained with the lawlessness and moral laxity
of these anarchic times. We may best bring out the force of this
summary by considering in their order the four stages signalised.
I. The first is the continual tendency to relapse into idolatry. The
fact itself, and the frank prominence given to it in the Old Testament,
are both remarkable. As to the latter, certainly, if the Old Testament
histories have the same origin as the chronicles of other nations, they
present most anomalous features. Where do we find any other people
whose annals contain nothing that can minister to national vanity, and
have for one of their chief themes the sins of the nation? The history
of Israel, as told in Scripture, is one long indictment of Israel. The
peculiarity is explicable, if we believe that, whoever or how numerous
soever its authors, God was its true Author, as He is its true theme,
and that the object of its histories is not to tell the deeds of
Israel, but those of God for Israel.
As to the fact of the continual relapses into idolatry, nothing could
be more natural than that the recently received and but imperfectly
assimilated revelation of the one God, with its stringent requirements
of purity, and its severe prohibition of idols, should easily slip off
from these rude and merely outward worshippers. Joshua's death without
a successor, the dispersion of the tribes, the difficulty of
communication when much of the country was still in the hands of its
former possessors, would all weaken the sense of unity, which was too
recent to be firm, and would expose the isolated Israelites to the full
force of the temptation to idolatry. It is difficult for us fairly to
judge the immense strain required for resistance to it. The conception
of one sole God was too high to be easily retained. A shrine without a
deity seemed bare and empty. The Law stringently bridled passions which
the hideous worship of the Canaanites stimulated. No wonder that, when
the first generation of the conquerors had passed away, their
successors lapsed into the universal polytheism, with its attendant
idolatry and immorality. Instead of thinking of the Israelites as
monsters of ingratitude and backsliding, we come nearer the truth, and
make a better use of the history, when we see in it a mirror which
shows us our own image. The strong earthward pull is ever acting on us,
and, unless God hold us up, we too shall slide downwards. 'Hath a
nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? but My people hath
changed their glory for that which doth not profit.' Idolatry and
worldliness are persistent; for they are natural. Firm adherence to God
is less common, because it goes against the strong forces, within and
without, which bind us to earth.
Apparently the relapses into idolatry did not imply the entire
abandonment of the worship of Jehovah, but the worship of Baalim and
Ashtaroth along with it. Such illegitimate mixing up of deities was
accordant with the very essence of polytheism, and repugnant to that of
the true worship of God. The one may be tolerant, the other cannot be.
To unite Baal with Jehovah was to forsake Jehovah.
These continual relapses have an important bearing on the question of
the origin of the 'Jewish conception of God.' They are intelligible
only if we take the old-fashioned explanation, that its origin was a
divine revelation, given to a rude people. They are unintelligible if
we take the new-fashioned explanation that the monotheism of Israel was
the product of natural evolution, or was anything but a treasure put by
God into their hands, which they did not appreciate, and would
willingly have thrown away. The foul Canaanitish worship was the kind
of thing in which, if left to themselves, they would have wallowed. How
came such people by such thoughts as these? The history of Israel's
idolatry is not the least conclusive proof of the supernatural
revelation which made Israel's religion.
II. Note the swift-following retribution. We have two sections in the
context dealing with this, each introduced by that terrible phrase,
which recurs so often in the subsequent parts of the book, 'The anger
of the Lord was kindled against Israel.' That phrase is no sign of a
lower conception of God than that which the gospel brings. Wrath is an
integral part of love, when the lover is perfectly righteous and the
loved are sinful. The most terrible anger is the anger of perfect
gentleness, as expressed in that solemn paradox of the Apostle of love,
when he speaks of 'the wrath of the Lamb.' God was angry with Israel
because He loved them, and desired their love for their own good. The
fact of His choice of the nation for His own and the intensity of His
love were shown no less by the swift certainty with which suffering
dogged sin, than by the blessings which crowned obedience. The first
section, referring to the punishment, is in verses 14 and 15, which
seems to describe mainly the defeats and plunderings which outside
surrounding nations inflicted. The brief description is extraordinarily
energetic. It ascribes all their miseries to God's direct act. He
'delivered' them over, or, as the next clause says still more strongly,
'sold' them, to plunderers, who stripped them bare. Their defeats were
the result of His having thus ceased to regard them as His. But though
He had 'sold' them, He had not done with them; for it was not only the
foeman's hand that struck them, but God's 'hand was against them,' and
its grip crushed them. His judgments were not occasional, but
continuous, and went with them 'whithersoever they went out.'
Everything went wrong with them; there were no gleams breaking the
black thunder-cloud. God's anger darkened the whole sky, and blasted
the whole earth. And the misery was the more miserable and awful
because it had all been foretold, and in it God was but doing 'as He
had said' and sworn. It is a dreadful picture of the all-withering
effect of God's anger,--a picture which is repeated in inmost verity in
many an outwardly prosperous life to-day.
The second section is in verses 20-23, and describes the consequence of
Israel's relapse in reference to the surviving Canaanite and other
tribes in the land itself. Note that 'nation' in verse 20 is the term
usually applied, not to Israel, but to the Gentile peoples; and that
its use here seems equivalent to cancelling the choice of Israel as
God's special possession, and reducing them to the level of the other
nations in Canaan, to whom the same term is applied in verse 21. The
stern words which are here put into the mouth of God may possibly refer
to the actual message recorded in the first verses of the chapter; but,
more probably, 'the Lord said' does not here mean any divine
communication, but only the divine resolve, conceived as spoken to
himself. It embodies the divine _lex talionis_. The punishment is
analogous to the crime. Israel had broken the covenant; God would not
keep His promise. That involves a great principle as to all God's
promises,--that they are all conditional, and voidable by men's failure
to fulfil their conditions. Observe, too, that the punishment is the
retention of the occasions of the sin. Is not that, too, a law of the
divine procedure to-day? Whips to scourge us are made of our pleasant
vices. Sin is the punishment of sin. If we yield to some temptation,
part of the avenging retribution is that the temptation abides by us,
and has power over us. The 'Canaanites' whom we have allowed to lead us
astray will stay beside us when their power to seduce us is done, and
will pull off their masks and show themselves for what they are, our
spoilers and foes.
The rate of Israel's conquest was determined by Israel's faithful
adherence to God. That is a standing law. Victory for us in all the
good fight of life depends on our cleaving to Him, and forsaking all
other.
The divine motive, if we may so say, in leaving the unsubdued nations
in the land, was to provide the means of proving Israel. Would it not
have been better, since Israel was so weak, to secure for it an
untempted period? Surely, it is a strange way of helping a man who has
stumbled, to make provision that future occasions of stumbling shall
lie in his path. But so the perfect wisdom which is perfect love ever
ordains. There shall be no unnatural greenhouse shelter provided for
weak plants. The liability to fall imposes the necessity of trial, but
the trial does not impose the necessity of falling! The Devil tempts,
because he hopes that we shall fall. God tries, in order that we may
stand, and that our feet may be strengthened by the trial. 'I cannot
praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed,
that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the
race, where that immortal garland is to be run for,--not without dust
and heat.'
III. Respite and deliverance are described in verses 16 and 18. The
Revised Version has wisely substituted a simple 'and' for
'nevertheless' at the beginning of verse 16. The latter word implies
that the raising up of the judges was a reversal of what had gone
before; 'and' implies that it was a continuation. And its use here is
not merely an instance of inartificial Hebrew style, but carries the
lesson that God's judgment and deliverance come from the same source,
and are harmonious parts of one educational process. Nor is this
thought negatived by the statement in verse 18 that 'it repented the
Lord.' That strong metaphorical ascription to Him of human emotion
simply implies that His action, which of necessity is the expression of
His will, was changed. The will of the moment before had been to
punish; the will of the next moment was to deliver, because their
'groaning' showed that the punishment had done its work. But the two
wills were one in ultimate purpose, and the two sets of acts were
equally and harmoniously parts of one design. The surgeon is carrying
out one plan when he cuts deep into the quivering flesh, and when he
sews up the wounds which he himself has made. God's deliverances are
linked to His chastisements by 'and,' not by 'nevertheless.' We need
not discuss that remarkable series of judges, who were champions rather
than the peaceful functionaries whom we understand by the name. The
vivid and stirring stories associated with their names make the bulk of
this book, and move the most peace-loving among us like the sound of a
trumpet. These wild warriors, with many a roughness and flaw in their
characters, of whom no saintly traits are recorded, are yet treated in
this section as directly inspired, and as continually upheld by God.
The writer of the _Epistle to the Hebrews_ claims some of them as
heroes of 'faith.' And one chief lesson for us to learn, as we look on
the strange garb in which in them faith has arrayed itself, and the
strange work which it does in nerving hands to strike with sharp
swords, is the oneness of the principle amid the most diverse
manifestations, and the nobleness and strength which the sense of
belonging to God and reliance on His help breathe into the rudest life
and shed over the wildest scenes.
These judges were raised up indiscriminately from different tribes.
They belonged to different ranks, and were of different occupations.
One of them was a woman. The when and the where and the how of their
appearance were incalculable. They authenticated their commission by no
miracles except victory. For a time they started to the front, and then
passed, leaving no successors, and founding no dynasty. They were an
entirely unique order, plainly raised up by God, and drawing all their
power from Him. Let us be thankful for the weaknesses, and even sins,
recorded of some of them, and for the boldness with which the book
traces the physical strength of a Samson, in spite of his wild
animalism, and the bravery of a Jephthah, notwithstanding his savage
vow and subsequent lapse into idolatry, to God's inspiration. Their
faith was limited, and acted but imperfectly on their moral nature; but
it was true faith, in the judgment of the _Epistle to the Hebrews_.
Their work was rough and bloody, and they were rough tools, as such
work needed; but it was God's work, and He had made them for His
instruments, in the judgment of the Book of _Judges_. If we try to
understand the reasons for such judgments, we may learn some useful
lessons.
IV. A word only can be given to the last stage in the dreary round. It
comes back to the first. The religion of the delivered people lasted as
long as the judge's life. When he died, it died. There is intense
bitterness in the remark to that effect in verse 19. Did God then die
with the judge? Was it Samson, or Jehovah, that had delivered? Why
should the death of the instrument affect gratitude to the hand that
gave it its edge? What a lurid light is thrown back on the unreality of
the people's return to God by their swift relapse! If it needed a human
hand to keep them from departing, had they ever come near? We may press
the questions on ourselves; for none of us knows how much of our
religion is owing to the influence of men upon us, or how much of it
would drop away if we were left to ourselves.
This miserable repetition of the same weary round of sin, punishment,
respite, and renewed sin, sets in a strong light the two great wonders
of man's obstinate persistency in unfaithfulness and sin, and of God's
unwearied persistency in discipline and patient forgiveness. His
charity 'suffers long and is kind, is not easily provoked.' We can
weary out all forbearance but His, which is endless. We weary Him
indeed, but we do not weary Him out, with our iniquities. Man's sin
stretches far; but God's patient love overlaps it. It lasts long; but
God's love is eternal. It resists miracles of chastisement and love;
but He does not cease His use of the rod and the staff. We can tire out
all other forbearance, but not His. And however old and obstinate our
rebellion, He waits to pardon, and smites but to heal.